Ralph Waldo Emerson: Common To Costly
on Tuesday, October 31, 2017Ralph Waldo Emerson Money Quote saying a merchant must only find a way to bring things from unknown places to where they are needed to earn his way. Ralph Waldo Emerson said:
“The craft of the merchant is this bringing a thing from where it abounds, to where it is costly” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson seems to be characterizing a core function of merchants and commerce. By stating that the “craft of the merchant” involves “bringing a thing from where it abounds, to where it is costly”, Emerson appears to be describing the process of arbitrage or exploiting differences in supply and demand across locations.
He portrays merchants as facilitating trade by transferring goods from regions where they are plentiful and cheaper to other areas where they are scarcer and thus more valuable. The quote conveys Emerson’s view that merchants play an important economic role in balancing distributions of resources, enabling societies to access necessary items even if they are not locally abundant.
Overall, Emerson characterizes merchants’ work as optimizing resource allocation on a larger scale by transporting surplus supplies from one community to fulfill needs in another.
Birthday: May 25, 1803 – Death: April 27, 1882