The primary attribute of competition, universally recognized and evident at a glance, is the "tendency" to eliminate profit or loss, and bring the value of economic goods to equality with their cost. Or, since costs are in the large identical with the distributive shares other than profit, we may express the same principle by saying that the tendency is toward a remainderless distribution of products among the agencies contributing to their production.

But in actual society, cost and value only" tend" to equality; it is only by an occasional accident that they are precisely equal in fact; they are usually separated by a margin of "profit," posi­tive or negative. Hence the problem of profit is one way of looking at the problem of the contrast between perfect competition and actual competition.

But Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar notion of Risk, from which it has never been properly separated. The term "risk," as loosely used in everyday speech and in economic dis­ cussion, really covers two things which, functionally at least, in their causal relations to the phenomena of economic organization, are categorically different.

The essential fact is that "risk" means in some cases a quantity susceptible of measurement, while at other times it is something distinctly not of this character; and there are far-reaching and crucial differ­ences in the bearings of the phenomenon depending on which of the two is really present and operating.

La principal característica de la competencia, tal y como ésta es reconocida universalmente y resulta evidente a simple vista, es su tendencia a reducir el beneficio o la pérdida hasta que el valor del producto en el mercado se iguala al de su coste. O, dicho de otro modo, en tanto que los costes son, en gran medida, iguales a la cuota participativa sin incluir el beneficio, el mismo principio puede ser igualmente expresado diciendo que dicha tendencia es hacia una completa distribución de todos los productos entre aquellas empresas que han contribuido a su producción.

No obstante, en la sociedad actual coste y valor solo "tienden" a ser iguales. De hecho, ambas magnitudes solo coinciden exactamente de forma ocasional y con frecuencia se diferencian por el margen de beneficio, ya sea positivo o negativo. Por tanto, el problema del beneficio es solo una de las posibles formas de abordar las diferencias que existen entre la competencia perfecta y la competencia real.

El hecho fundamental es que el término "riesgo" hace referencia, en ciertos casos, a una cantidad susceptible de ser medida, mientras que en otras ocasiones adopta un significado claramente distinto de éste, existiendo diferencias fundamentales e ineludibles a la hora de abordar el fenómeno según cuál de las dos acepciones se esté usando.