CHAPTER X

CAIRNES

§ 1. Cost of production, as ultimate regulator of value, defined in purely subjective terms 114

§ 2. Wages and interest, being rewards, cannot be costs 116

§ 3. Conception of the “average sacrifice” 117

§ 4. The problem of the influence of subjective cost upon exchange value, more clearly stated than ever before 118

§ 5. The theory of “non-competing groups” 119

§ 6. Consequent limitation of law of costs 120

§ 7. And resort to a principle of “reciprocal demand,” which fails to replace the law of costs 121

§ 8. Cairnes’ theory of non-competing groups signifies that the existence of skilled labor is fatal to the Ricardian labor theory 123

§ 9. Ricardo’s assumption of perfect competition does not foreguard against the difficulty of skilled labor 124