Error in "The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and other essays"

Economics Economics Questions
1

I am either misunderstanding something, or there is a big mistake in the book “The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and other essays”. I just got this book the other day, and got up to the essay by Gottfried Haberler, “Money and the Business Cycle”.

He is describing the vertical and horizontal structure of production, when he states "Now, in the equipment of these successive stages of production, the capital stock of a country, which has been accumulated during the centuries, is embodied. The amount of accumulated capital is a measure of the length of the stream. In a rich country this stream is much shorter, and the volume of output correspondingly smaller."

Isn’t this supposed to be the other way around? In a rich country, the productive process is much longer, requiring many more steps to bring a product through the various stages of production to consumer goods?

2

I’m not sure, but maybe he meant that once all the capital was completed and functioning in the structure, time for a product to go from raw materials to final product is shortened. And maybe he meant that the volume of output is correspondingly smaller, relative to the amount of capital. That generally sounds like an error, though.