 Since owned objects serve different uses and are not equally valued by everyone, their exchange requires a common measure of comparison to determine their so-called moral quantity, or price (DJN V.1.1–2). Price is either ordinary or eminent, the latter determined by money as an independent, or objective, unit of value. Money is explicitly created to serve the ends of exchange among both individuals and states, and without it commercial pacts, or contracts, regarding both goods and services are inconceivable (DJN V.2.4). While civil rulers have the authority to regulate property relationships in their realms (particularly specific forms of acquisition like hunting and fishing), and trade with outsiders, they are less free to determine the relative price of things since such arbitrariness would disrupt economic exchange, especially interstate commerce (DJN IV.6.5; V.1.14). In general, sovereign determinations are less apt or useful in pre- or non-civil institutions that relieve human need, than in regard to those that insure human security – if these can be distinguished. Nonetheless, economic tools like contracts may need a civil sanction to insure their reliability and thus efficacy, and rulers may regulate property insofar as it affects the state’s basic security interests and welfare – not only by taxation and eminent domain but also through controls on foreign trade and on the growth of luxury (e.g., sumptuary laws), whereby the state’s economic strength and independence are affected (DJN VII.4.7, VIII.5; Saeter 1996, Gaertner 2005, Young 2008, Skinner 1995, Seidler 2018).