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Squirrels

Rodrigo Rodriguez on Unsplash

Successful production is so complex an endeavor that it’s easy to forget some of the steps. For example, saving. As economists say: Saving leads to Investment leads to Production leads to Consumption ― Consumption being the end goal and purpose of Production. Absent funds to buy equipment and pay employees, before anything yet exists to sell for revenue, there can be no production. And absent savings, there can be no funds.

At the same time, it is interesting to note that saving itself involves production. Like all productive action, successful saving requires learning and effort, in that for your savings to grow ― let alone not be lost ― you must know where to put it and why (or how to select a skilled professional to help you with that). In the spirit of this blog, then, we see yet another atypical example of production.

Nature too evinces that saving is productive. Consider, for example, the squirrel: a better saver it is difficult to imagine. In squirreling away his store of nuts for the winter, he labors extensively. If he didn’t, he’d starve. In this he is doubly like us, or we like him. For one, he produces to consume, eating some of what he gathers. For another, he abstains from eating everything he gathers, retaining some for later. Eat some, bury some. In this way, he models the important economic lesson that production nourishes in two ways: it yields goods that we can use now, such as food, fuel, and entertainment; and it also yields goods that we can sell and use the proceeds of to fund future production and consumption.

Thus, like the squirrel, we eye both today and tomorrow, knowing that continuous consumption requires continuous production requires savings.

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