“A multiplicity of manufacturing activities will make a kingdom or city abound in money when they are diverse and produce things necessary or useful or pleasing to people in quantities that exceed the needs of the country. There are four reasons why this is so. First, there is greater certainty in manufacturing activity, for a manufacturer is more certain to earn from his work than a farmer or other person who tills the soil or deals in his agricultural produce, for the earnings of these people depend not just on human labour but on the weather—since the land sometimes needs rain, and sometimes sun—as well as other conditions. And if these conditions are not forthcoming or the weather is bad, their work is wasted and instead of making money they lose it. But a manufacturer’s earnings are always certain, provided that he keeps working. Second, in manufacturing activities it is possible to achieve a multiplication of products, and therefore of earnings. The same cannot be done with agricultural produce, which is not subject to multiplication. If a given piece of land is only large enough to sow a hundred (bushels) of wheat, it is impossible to sow a hundred and fifty there. In manufacturing, by contrast, production can be multiplied not merely twofold but a hundredfold, and at a proportionately lower cost. Third, the sale of manufactured products is more certain than that of agricultural produce, and this certainty of sale means a greater certainty of profit. For it is difficult to preserve agricultural produce for a long time without its deteriorating, so it is risky to export from country to another one far away; and it is also risky to preserve it for the future, should it not be sold immediately. Manufactured products, on the other hand, can easily be preserved even for long periods, so they can easily be exported to far off lands. And since navigation—the only art in which the moderns surpass the ancients—has been so greatly facilitated that trade is carried on not merely between east and west and north and south, but even between one hemisphere and the other, and goods can be easily transported from one to the other, who will deny that the sale of manufactured products is more certain and more profitable than that of agricultural produce? Fourth and last, manufactured goods generally yield much higher earnings than agricultural produce. ... For all these reasons the accident of a multiplicity of manufacturing activities is more important than that of domestic agricultural surplus.” (From Antonio Serra—A Short Treatise on the Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 1613)
The significance of advances in navigation for Serra is that
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