The peculiar advantage that I have in prospect does
not come out of him, but out of myself. He must not pretend to sell
what is not his, what attaches, not to him, but to me. He can only
sell his own loss, risk, pains and labour. At the same time, if I have
any gentlemanly or generous feeling in me, I shall be forward to
bestow extra remuneration on one who has rendered me so timely a
service: but this is matter of my gratitude, not of his right and
claim in justice. Gratitude must not be put into the bill. And this
much of private exchange.
4. Commercial exchange is conducted according to market value. Apart
from dire necessity--and one in dire necessity is not fit to enter
into commercial exchanges--the rule is, that a seller may always ask
the market value of his article, however much that may be above what
the thing cost him, or the use value which it bears to him. Thus, if
one finds in his garden a rare Roman coin--so far as his tastes go, a
paltry bit of metal--he may sell it for whatever price numismatists
will offer: whereas, if there were no market for coins, but only one
individual who doted on such things, the finder could make no profit
out of that individual, the coin having neither market value with the
community, nor use value in the eyes of the finder.
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