The third question an economy answers involves determining who gets the product. For example, if family A acquires $5,000 worth of goods this year and family B receives five times as much, how is this division to be decided? The incomes of individuals are determined by the quantities of resources (labour skills, capital in all its forms) they own and the prices they receive for the use of these resources. Workers are encouraged by the price system to acquire new skills and to exercise them diligently, and families are encouraged to save (capital accumulation) because of the rewards paid as interest or dividends. Inherited ability and wealth also contribute to the distribution of income.
If the price system is working reasonably well (some of the common failures will be noted later), it performs all of these economic functions with remarkable subtlety and precision. Society desires not only the correct amount of wheat but also that it be consumed more or less evenly over the crop year, with a surplus to carry over in case of a partial failure of the next yearâs crop. The price system provides a seasonal price pattern that encourages the holding of inventories rather than early splurging and richly rewards speculators who correctly anticipate a crop failure and hold grain that will alleviate it. In the same way, the desires of every sizable group of consumers (or resource owners) are registered through the price system; entrepreneurs are incited by price offers to provide opera and musical comedy, kosher food, and Persian delicacies. One might almost say that the price system is devoted to minority rule, since the only pressure toward uniformity is in the possibility of lowering costs of production by standardizing goods.
High prices in a properly functioning price system thus serve as incentives to produce more and consume less, and lower prices serve as corresponding deterrents. In addition the price system is a method of communicating information. The English philosopher Herbert Spencer once stated, rather ponderously, that only by constant iteration can alien truths be impressed upon reluctant minds: the price system, with its capacity for infinite repetition, is well suited to this sometimes unpleasant task. A higher price of steel scrap, for example, tells thousands of owners and collectors of scrap that more scrap is wanted and that a more exhaustive search for abandoned rails, boilers, radiators, and machines is worth undertaking. A higher price of gasoline tells thousands of automobile drivers that gasoline should be used more sparingly, and the message is repeated each time each driver purchases more gasoline.
