Note 14 — Chapter IV · THE FRENCH SCHOOL (THE SCHOOL OF THE ENVIRONMENT).

“Economic phenomena may be regarded from three points of view: first, from the point of view of their repetition, which has to do chiefly with the propagation of habits of consumption, called needs, and of the corresponding habits of labor; second, from the point of view of their opposition, which includes principally the contests of producers among themselves by acute or chronic competition, during strikes, or crises of overproduction,—or contests of consumers among themselves, through sumptuary laws, aristocratic or democratic, or monopolies of consumption over which they dispute in a thousand ways, in time of famine, or scarcity, or any form of underproduction,—or contests of producers with consumers, through their attempts to exploit one another, monopolize prices, or laws regulating the maximum price, municipal tariffs, or protectionist rights, etc.; third, finally from the point of view of their adaptation, always being renewed and always incomplete, which embraces the series of successful inventions, fortunate associations of ideas from which proceed all fruitful associations of men, from the division of labor and of commerce, an association spontaneous and implicit, to industrial, commercial, financial, and syndical societies, etc.”14