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Business versus industry

Throughout the series “Institutional Economics”  Commons emphasizes the difference between industry and business.  He even quotes Thorstein Veblen in this regard with “business activities are lucrative without necessarily being serviceable to the community” (pg. 663, Commons).  Here we can note that is not automatic but perhaps probably that business can be lucrative without being socially lucrative.  This was of course noted earlier by other figures in history.  It is major theme of Commons in his magnum opus.

Further in various parts of the nearby text, he writes that business is the abilit to withhold supply and industry is the abilit to be productive or increased supply.  This is repeated so often throughout institutional economics that it must be noted as a major theme of the book.  He also writes of Vebln that, “intangible assets are pecuniary privileges of business arising only from control of supply and power to withhold supply if prices are not satisfactory” (pg. 664, Commons).

I will go through all of these examples but it is clearly an important these in the work of Commons.  How it uses it further will part of their blog posts.


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