ABSTRACT
To clear the ground for this enquiry it will be well to begin by making plain the sense in which risk-taking and saving are ‘productive’ activities. Neither of them is ‘work’ in the ordinary organic sense of the application of muscle or nervous energy to the production of wealth. Both would rather be considered as activities of the human will and judgment which increase the efficiency of the directly productive operations. Their productivity may thus be regarded as indirect. But it is none the less real and important on that account. For unless there was postponement of some consumption which might have taken place, and the application of the non-consumptive goods, which this postponement enabled to come into existence, to uses involving risks of loss, ‘work’ would be very unproductive in comparison with what it is.
