tegwick
2d1282a61e
Restructure entity storage from per-chapter subdirectories to a flat
canonical set in output/entities/. Each entity exists as a single file;
duplicates across chapters are detected by slug collision and skipped
(first occurrence wins). Chapter views use {{ include }} transclusion
to reference shared entity files.
Add @{existing_entities} macro to extract-entities template so the LLM
knows which entities already exist and focuses on genuinely new ones.
Refactor _call_llm() from _execute_llm() for callers that handle their
own file I/O. 41 unique entities from 4 chapters (2 duplicates removed).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
26 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
26 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
# Cost of Transport Relative to Value
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## Definition
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The principle that the economic viability of trading a good over distance depends on the ratio of its transport cost to its market value. Only goods whose price is "very considerable in proportion to their weight" can bear the expense of long-distance land-carriage. This ratio determines which goods enter long-distance trade and which remain locally consumed, thereby shaping the composition and volume of commerce between regions.
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## Source Chapter
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Book 1, Chapter 3: "That the Division of Labour is Limited by the Extent of the Market"
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## Context
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Smith introduces this principle in the London-Edinburgh comparison, noting that if only land-carriage existed, trade would be restricted to high-value-to-weight goods. He extends the argument to the hypothetical of land-carriage between London and Calcutta, where the expense would prohibit all but the most precious commodities — and even those could not be safely transported through "the territories of so many barbarous nations."
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## Economic Domain
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Exchange
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## Smith's Original Wording
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> "...as no goods could be transported from the one to the other, except such whose price was very considerable in proportion to their weight, they could carry on but a small part of that commerce which at present subsists between them."
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## Modern Interpretation
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This is a precursor to the modern concept of trade costs and the gravity model of trade, which predicts that trade volumes depend inversely on transport costs and directly on market size. The value-to-weight ratio remains a key determinant of which goods enter international trade.
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