4,249 works (including 483 books, 3,406 articles and 357 historical documents), 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable.
If coal prices are based on production costs, what incentive remains to lower those costs? In this brief recorded intervention in the German Socialization Commission’s coal-mining deliberations, published in 1920, Emil Lederer challenges a proposed plan at precisely this point. His objection is not merely to a mechanical pricing rule: he doubts that cumbersome oversight can later repair the incentive it removes. The speaking turn offers a compact example of institutional criticism, asking readers to distinguish between a rule that accommodates existing costs and one that encourages producers to reduce them.
A compensation settlement may fix a capital value, but what happens when repayment stretches over decades? In this brief intervention in the 1920 coal-mining socialization commission proceedings, Emil Lederer asks Dr. Rathenau to clarify valuation principles, the timetable for repayment and continued private operation, and the effects of monetary and technological change. His perspective is practical and questioning: entrepreneurs need a definite horizon to plan, yet the value underlying a settlement may shift before that horizon is reached. The recorded turn offers no formula or preferred timetable; it pinpoints the tension between planning certainty and changing economic conditions within a proposed transition from private operation.
A fixed valuation does not necessarily protect a mine from short-term exploitation. In this brief recorded intervention in the coal-mining socialization commission’s 1920 proceedings, Emil Lederer tests a financial arrangement against the operator’s incentives as repayment nears its end. His concrete comparison is wartime mining of the cheapest seams: lowering present costs may come at the expense of the mine’s future condition. Rather than proposing a remedy, Lederer isolates a problem that valuation alone may leave unresolved—the difference between preserving an asset’s assigned value and giving its operator a reason to preserve its productive capacity.
In this single-sentence intervention in the coal-mining socialization commission’s proceedings, Emil Lederer singles out a practical criterion: how far the matter under discussion can actually be monitored. The recorded turn offers a compact glimpse of his emphasis on feasible oversight, but leaves the object of that oversight unspecified. It preserves a question to be tested, not a developed policy position.
Lederer: Wichtig ist, wieweit man das kontrollieren kann.
English translation: “Lederer: What matters is the extent to which that can be monitored.”
What changes when expropriation leaves a coal-mining enterprise in its former holder’s hands for thirty years? In this brief recorded intervention in the Socialization Commission’s proceedings published in 1920, Emil Lederer calls Rathenau’s proposal a compromise and sharpens its ambiguity into a paradox: expropriation today that takes effect only thirty years later. The remark offers a compact distinction between declaring a change in ownership and actually carrying it through, without proposing an alternative.
Will expropriation actually take place? In this single-sentence intervention, recorded in the coal-mining deliberations of Germany’s Socialization Commission published in 1920, Emil Lederer asks for a definite answer on political grounds. He states neither support for nor opposition to expropriation. The brief record instead isolates a practical uncertainty: political deliberation requires clarity about whether the proposed action will happen.
Aber alle politischen Erwägungen machen es wünschenswert zu wissen, ob wirklich enteignet wird oder nicht.
English translation: “But all political considerations make it desirable to know whether expropriation will actually take place or not.”
Emil Lederer’s contribution to the coal-mining commission proceedings is a single sentence: a reservation that the matter under discussion is much more difficult. This brief documentary unit preserves the emphasis of his objection, but not its referent or reasoning; it records a qualification rather than an identifiable policy position.
Es ist aber sehr viel schwieriger.
English translation: “But it is much more difficult.”
In this brief recorded exchange about the security of nationalized ownership, Emil Lederer rejects Rathenau’s suggestion that his objection rests on enterprises being run down. The reply points back to conditions Lederer regards as already present, without spelling them out again. Read alongside the commission debate, the intervention marks the precise moment of disagreement; it does not supply a self-contained argument for nationalization.
Private railway losses become a public problem when they threaten to halt transport. In this brief intervention recorded in the coal-mining deliberations of Germany’s Socialization Commission, Emil Lederer asks whether the state should cover the deficits of private branch railways to avert network closures by 1 July. He adds that the Südbahn faces the same predicament. The turn captures a precise pressure point in public finance: maintaining transport services may require assuming private losses. Lederer raises that choice without prescribing the terms of support.
In this brief recorded intervention in the coal-mining deliberations of the Socialization Commission, Emil Lederer challenges an unequal standard of judgment: why should something count as a natural necessity in private enterprise but as irrational under socialization? The circumstances he refers to are not identified within this speaking turn. What remains clear is his demand for consistency—a pointed objection that lets readers examine how the terms of an economic debate can favour one form of ownership before the alternatives are assessed.
The freedom to invest money, rather than merely hold it, is the decisive advantage Emil Lederer identifies in this brief intervention in the coal-mining deliberations of the German Socialization Commission, published in 1920. He objects to entrepreneurs receiving unrestricted control over funds and proposes that the Reich Coal Council acquire co-ownership or voting rights in enterprises in proportion to repayment quotas. The institutional form remains open; the demand is presented as a minimum. This short speaking turn offers a precise glimpse of Lederer’s reasoning: financial arrangements must be judged not only by the sums involved, but by the powers they confer on those who control them.
Can the profits from gradually acquired ownership offset the payments needed to acquire it? In this brief intervention in the coal-mining socialization commission proceedings published in 1920, Emil Lederer argues that Hilferding’s proposal already meets Cohen’s aim. Annual payments of 3½ percent, he suggests, would build an ownership stake whose profit share would cover those payments after fifteen years. His point turns on the difference between a continuing payment obligation and its net economic burden. The recorded speaking turn captures that distinction sharply, while leaving the proposed arrangements and the basis of the fifteen-year calculation unstated.