CHAPTER XIX. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRANSACTION. NOVEMBER 12, 2007.
The cashier overlooked the milk in my shopping cart, so there had to be a separate transaction
to process it. I paid for it with American Express and it suddenly occurred to me to
apologize. I'm so sorry for that, your fees on that card will probably exceed your profit.
She looked at me as if I were speaking an unintelligible language.
My fees?
She asked.
Yes, American Express is the most expensive card on the market.
You guys have to pay per charge and also a percentage of the transaction.
This was only a couple of bucks spent here, so these fees can really eat into your profit
margin.
I don't pay any fees, she said.
It was at this point that I realized that we were on two different planets.
She works for the company as a worker. The store makes a contract with her to show up
and do certain things. She does them. She gets paid for this. That's the beginning
and end of her economic role in the matrix of exchange. She is unaware that she is a
consumer too of the employment services offered by the store. These services must be paid
for out of revenue generated by sales. From this revenue, the business pays the clerk.
The business pays the credit card company. The business pays tax. The business pays rent. The business pays for shelving and machinery. The business must acquire, usually purchase, the goods it sells before it sells them.
In doing all of this, it is taking a risk because the profit is the last stage of the transaction. The expenses are paid earlier in the production process.
Here is the other side of the coin that the worker doesn't have to think about at all. Neither does the consumer.
We walk into stores and think, wow, great stuff, or what a bunch of junk.
We examine the place to see if there's anything that would be valuable enough for us to acquire in exchange for the marked amount of money that the store wants from us.
The deal is there for the taking. It is up to us to decide if we want to take it.
Take it. No one forces us. If we walk away, there is no penalty for us. We don't have
to think about the strange reality that these retail and grocery stores carry millions in
inventory. Tens of millions, all of it gathered together in one spot in the hope that we will
like it and be willing to give our money in exchange for it.
I was in a sporting goods store the other day that seemed to have everything one can
And here I was buying a $2 pair of socks, and that's a tiny chink out of the inventory.
They might clear 25 cents on the transaction after all the expenses are paid, and yet they
And then, what does the store do with its profits after wages, expenses and inventory?
Why, it has to replace those socks I just bought, so that someone else can buy another
pair.
It has to expand more to compete with the new sporting goods store that just opened
up down the street, so it has to acquire ever more great stuff and sell it at the lowest
There is no final victory in this battle. All profits are
yesterday. All losses could be tomorrow. To call enterprise a risk is really to
understate the problem. Entrepreneurs have a special capacity to discern the
uncertain future, but they possess no power to actually create that future. It
could be that tomorrow morning no one will show up at the grocery store. That
This crazy uncertainty of the future, a factor which we cannot overcome, no matter how much data we accumulate or how many fortune-tellers we call upon, is a universal problem that we cannot overcome.
Universal condition, always maddening and infuriating but completely unsolvable.
It doesn't change for a rich or poor.
The largest corporation and the smallest lemonade stand face this trial in precisely the same
way.
Neither knows what the future truly does hold.
The difference between the rich and the poor is how much money a person can afford to lose
when he turns out to be wrong.
To possess a consciousness about the two sides of enterprise is a burden in some ways.
It destabilizes you and actually makes you wonder how the system can work at all.
How can a store hold on to millions in inventory and pay for it 25 cents at a time while being
required by competitive pressure to expand ever more?
More questions.
How can a business employ hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people to produce goods
long before they know with certainty that anyone will buy them?
Why are there such people as entrepreneurs who are willing to take all this on?
Why are they so unlike the masses of people who would rather act solely as consumers of
all the glories that the free enterprise system dishes out?
These thoughts are the ones economic understanding gives rise to, and they are not exactly comforting.
The old-style classical liberals reveled in the fact that these impersonal forces worked
without anyone really being aware of them or having to understand them.
The checkout lady at the store just shows up, pushes buttons, gets paid and stays or
leaves based on her assessment of her own well-being.
The pursuit of self-interest generates this amazing global matrix that benefits everyone.
The old liberals reveled in the fact that no one had to understand it, but then the
system itself came under attack and needed defense.
It had to be understood to be explained and explained in order to be preserved.
This is why Ludwig von Mises set out to revise liberal doctrine.
It is not enough that people participate unknowingly in the market economy.
They must understand it and see how, and precisely how, their smallest and selfish contribution
leads to the general good, and, moreover, they must desire that general good.
All of which is to say that, in an enlightened world, it would be a good thing for that cashier
to understand economics from the point of view of those who pay her.
It would be good for striking workers to understand how they are harming not only their bosses,
but also themselves.
It would be good for voters to see how supporting government benefits for themselves harms society
at large.
An economically literate public is the foundation for keeping that amazing and wild machine
and The Market, Working and Functioning for the Benefit of the Whole of Humanity.