Human beings are purposeful actors. In our conscious selves we can all think of ends to pursue. However, to achieve our ends we must use the means ready at hand. These means are forever limited relative to the ends we can imagine and for this reason we must economize. That is, we must choose how to employ our means to achieve our ends and seek for ways to increase our means.

To do this requires work. In truth, there are only two economic ways to obtain the means to the achievement of our ends. We can produce the means by our own efforts or we can produce something of value and use that something to trade for that which we want. Since trade is the main way to obtain the means to our ends we call them economic goods.