e winds throw up waves a few feet high,
but the fluidity keeps the general surface surprisingly level; and so
civilized society, made as it is of fluid material kept in vigorous
agitation, finds, as it were, its level easily. If in any year we
could and should stop the dynamic disturbances, the economic society
would assume the static shape which the conditions of that year called
for as readily as the sea would find its normal level if winds and
tides should completely cease. Static influences that draw society
forever toward its natural form are always fundamental, and progress
has no tendency to suppress them.

_Competition a Cause of Rapid Changes in the Standard Shape of Society
and of a Quick Conformity of the Actual Shape to the Standard
One._--The competition which is active enough to change the standard
shape of society rapidly--that, for example, which spurs on mechanical
invention and causes a large profit to be realized in a particular
subgroup--has also the effect of calling labor and capital quickly to
the point at which the profit appears, and, in the absence of any
monopoly, reduces this profit to _nil_ and restores, in so far as this
cause of disturbance goes, the equilibrium of the groups. Under the
influence of active competition a particular group frequently
undergoes quick changes which call for more labor and capital, but it
gets them quickly; and, as has just been said, the standard shape of
a society which is in this highly fluid condition does not differ so
much from the actual shape as does that of a society the movements of
which are sluggish. The standard shape is like the hare that moves
quickly and irregularly; while the actual shape is like the pursuing
hound, which moves equally quickly, follows closely all turns of the
course, and, if the game were to stop moving, would in short order
close on it.

_The Equalization of the Productive Power of Labor and of Capital in
the Different Subgroups._--We have seen that in a static state labor
and capital do not move from subgroup to subgroup in the system, and
that this absence of flow in a fluid body is not brought about by
monopoly or by any approach to it. That, indeed, would obstruct
transfers of the producing agents from point to point; but monopoly is
a thing most rigorously excluded by the static hypothesis. At every
point we have assumed that the power to move is absolute, while only
the motive is lacking. The equalization of the produc