two interesting games that demonstrate jevons' notion of utility maximisation (1869) is "unfair flips" and "a game about digging a hole", where one must "spend money to make money", as it were. thus, buffing the stats of particular attributes increases aggregate productivity. as jevons says, this relates to the division of labour, since increasing the use of labour to different ends causes wealth in general to increase. smith highlights this also. the collaboration of different products into a higher order commodity is spoken of by menger too, as a mode of increasing value; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. so to say, marginal utility (e.g. exchange-value) decreases as total utility (e.g. use-value) increases. spending leads to lesser costs. bernie sanders has also discussed this "infrastructural" or public provision (what in lockean terms may refer to "trust", the element of liberty as a social contract), in terms of services like healthcare - it is also conceived of by fuller; "a stitch in time saves nine". we can certainly see the concept of a public, or "civil society" within the liberal idea, then.
jevons further stated his support not just for public services but also co-operative ownership of business by workers, which he saw as a form of self-government. another 19th century liberal, john stuart mill, wrote of his "socialist" ideals in his autobiography (sidenote: adam smith claimed that capitalists destroy society by their class interest and that if there was no need for their mastery, things would be better. smith later inspired early socialist thought, from the "ricardians" to proudhon, in a period from 1816-48, later inspiring engels and marx with an "enlightened" political economy, furthered by ricardo). other liberals like murray rothbard (via locke) and ronald reagan similarly expressed their support for public and co-operative ownership (see: "confiscation and the homestead principle", 1969 and "transcript of speech presented at the white house", august 3, 1987):
(i)
https://panarchy.org/rothbard/confiscation.html(ii)
https://www.cesj.org/about-cesj-in-brief/history-accomplishments/pres-reagans-speech-on-project-economic-justice/ john maynard keynes i
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