Very amusing, Alan. But it seems to me that you miss the point. Imagine that the planks on the ship can think and choose, as you yourself do when you finger out your email. Would the ship be a ship? Or would it be a construct of the thinking and choosing plank leader who employed the thinking and choosing planks for a wage? The neoclassical firm is a puzzle indeed, albeit not in the context of the marginal productivity theory of distribution. It becomes a puzzle only when one shifts the focus away from consumer sovereignty and toward the issue of how distinctly human actors view what they are doing. When one makes this shift, he recognizes a more robust definition of the firm. The firm, he recognizes, is as an employment compact between a thinking and choosing employer and a thinking and choosing set of employees. Don't you agree that heat seeking missiles, fly-seeking frogs, and deer-seeking wolves are very much different from profit seeking prospective employers and employees. (Not to mention fun-seeking HES members.) Cheers Pat Gunning