And on the other hand there is the indirect, social, economic having of those who consume the goods and services produced. In a market society with the division of labor, coffee is grown and transported to breakfast tables in response to consumer wishes. Though consumers do not legally or directly own coffee plantations, coffee bean roasting plants, and oceangoing steamers, their purchases and refusals to purchase tell property owners how to use these various factors of production. Many factors must be brought into play and a complex network of market transactions developed. Some plantation owners are induced to grow coffee, some investors to construct coffee bean roasting plants, and others to build oceangoing steamers to carry the roasted coffee beans to market.
Entrepreneurs are the arrangers, the expediters.
Thus, in a market society, the legal owners of the factors of production do not have the final say. Rather it is the consumers who actually buy and drink coffee who determine through their natural or economic having how the factors of production will be used. The ownership of property is in a continual state of flux, as a result of what Adam Smith called the propensity in human nature . . . The configuration of property ownership worldwide is changing from day to day, minute to minute. The owners of production goods are always adjusting and readjusting production in the attempt to better serve consumers.