ABSTRACT
Throughout the Nineteenth Century, and even back to John Locke, the double meaning of the word Wealth lay at the root of the conflicting schools of economic thought. It was the meaning of Wealth as materials and as their ownership. The contradictions are plainly a confusion of output with income, of materials with ownership of materials, of efficiency with scarcity, of wealth with an owner's assets. Depressions, scarcity, and misery became as natural and divine as Prosperity, Abundance, and Happiness. Hence they and all others turn to many kinds of collective action in lieu of God or Nature, in order to regulate private property and self-interest. Efficiency and Scarcity are treated each abstractly in order to distinguish them. In fact, they set limits to each other, according to the principle of limiting and complementary factors. The first essential of ownership is scarcity; the collective action of society constructs the rules of exchange of ownership.
