A civilization which is dominated by this matter-of-fact insight must prevail against any cultural scheme that lacks this element. This characteristi… - Frank Knight

In Professor Pigou's study the argument that free enterprise lead to excessive investments in industry having relatively upward-sloping cost curves is developed with the aid of concrete example, the case of two roads; Suppose that between two points there are two highways, one of which is broad enough to accommodate without crowding all the traffic which may care to use it, but is poorly graded and surfaced; while the other is a much better road, but narrow and quite limited in capacity. If a large number of trucks operate between the two termini and are free to choose either of the two routes, they will tend to distribute themselves between the roads in such proportions that the cost per unit of transportation, or effective returns per unit of investment, will be the same for every truck on both routes. As more trucks use the narrower and better road, congestion develops, until at a certain point it becomes equally profitable to use the broader but poorer highway.

[Weber] is the only one who really deals with the problem of causes or approaches the material from that angle that can alone yield an answer to such questions, that is, the angle of comparative history in the broad sense.

Most striking feature... is the author’s failure to understand the elementary mechanics of the competitive economic organization.