Michael Perelman wrote:
do you like Marshall's concept of quasi-rent?
yes, I like the concept. It makes sense from the point of view of the individual capitalist (and thus from that of the neoclassical economist). Industrial and commercial profits are quasi-rents, resulting from the temporary scarcity of the means of production. Also, interest is a quasi-rent arising due to the temporary scarcity of loanable funds (until those rentiers are euthanized).
From a societal point of view, however, these temporary scarcities
simply give the owners of the means of production and the loanable money-capital a claim on society's surplus-value. Temporary scarcity does not explain the production of that surplus-value, only its distribution. -- Jim Devine / "Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them, they translate it into their own language, and forthwith it means something entirely different." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
