"It is possible to determine in terms of money prices the sum of the income
or the wealth of a number of people. But it is nonsensical to reckon national
income or national wealth. As soon as we embark upon considerations
foreign to the reasoning of a man operating within the pale of a market
society, we are no longer helped by monetary calculation methods. The
attempts to determine in money the wealth of a nation or of the whole of
mankind are as childish as the mystic efforts to solve the riddles of the
universe by worrying about the dimensions of the pyramid of Cheops. If a
business calculation values a supply of potatoes at $100, the idea is that it
will be possible to sell it or to replace it against this sum. If a whole
entrepreneurial unit is estimated $1,000,000, it means that one expects to
sell it for this amount. But what is the meaning of the items in a statement
of a nation’s total wealth? What is the meaning of the computation’s final
result? What must be entered into it and what is to be left outside? Is it correct
or not to enclose the “value” of the country’s climate and the people’s innate
abilities and acquired skill? The businessman can convert his property into
money, but a nation cannot." - Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
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