User:Huckelberry

"'The most general presupposition for the existence of this present-day capitalism is that of rational capital accounting as the norm for all large industrial undertakings which are concerned with provision for everyday wants. Such accounting involves, again, first, the appropriation of all physical means of production--land, apparatus, machinery, tools, etc. as disposable property of autonomous private industrial enterprises. This is a phenomenon know only in our time, when the army alone is the exception to it. In the second place, in involves freedom of the market, that is, the absence of irrational limitations on trading in the market. Such limitations might be of a class character, if a certain mode of life were prescribe for a certain class or consumption standardized along class lines, or if class monopoly existed, as for example if the townsman were allowed to own an estate or the knight or peasant to carry on in industry; in such cases neither a free labor market nor a commodity market exists. Third, capitalistic accounting presupposes rational technology, that is, one reduced to calculation to the largest possible degree, which implies mechanization. This applies to both production and commerce, the outlays for preparing as well as moving goods..." "The sixth and final condition is the commercialization of economic life. By this we mean the general use of commercial instruments to represent share rights in enterprise, and also in property ownership..." "...Speculation reaches its full significance only from the moment when property takes on the form of negotiable paper.' - Max Weber, General Economic History (p. 209)"

Becoming an accountant somehow seemed natural...