[syndicate]

[jumpy]

> 
> II.3.1
> 
> The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is,
> like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or
> realize itself in any permanent subject; or vendible commodity, which
> endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour
> could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the
> officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and
> navy, are unproductive labourers. They are the servants of the public, and
> are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other
> people. Their service, how honourable, how useful, or how necessary
> soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can
> afterwards be procured. The protection, security, and defence of the
> commonwealth, the effect of their labour this year will not purchase its
> protection, security, and defence for the year to come. In the same class
> must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the
> most frivolous professions: churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters
> of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers,
> &c. The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the
> very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and
> that of the noblest and most useful, produces nothing which could
> afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. Like the
> declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the
> musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its
> production.
>                     - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)
>