"That book has to sell so many thousand copies to receive luxury pay from the government. Then both the author and the publisher receive luxury pay in proportion to its sales, which is the indication of its merit. The luxury pay that the publisher receives goes in the pockets of the executives. The luxury pay that the author receives--which is much larger--goes to his stockholders. "Since the author is the source of this transaction, the people invest in him and not the publisher, for they can't get any great return from investing in the publisher, but they can from the author. "Actually, what the whole thing amounts to is a complete shift of emphasis from big business and its speculations--which is what we've always known--to individuals and the intangibles and variables of their ideas and deeds." "There is only one question left," Roald said. "The government doles out all this luxury pay. Pray tell, where do they get it?" "There are two parts to the government. There is the actual administration, with its members drawing set salaries and unable to draw luxury pay, to prevent graft; and then there is the Economics Commission, which controls luxury pay. "This Economics Commission is a business. They invest in galactic corporations, such as ours, and make a profit. That's part of their money. Then--and here's the secret--any time a book is written, or fine merchandise produced, it must be sold on Lyrane at cost. But the government sells it throughout the galaxy for a profit, and keeps that profit to redistribute in luxury pay to Lyranian citizens. "Anyway, the system finally blew up, and now we're holding a messy bag." "But how could it? Why?" "That's just it. Nobody knows what brought it about, but suddenly the men who were corporations just stopped producing. They stopped doing good deeds, stopped writing, stopped research, and what-not and, consequently, stopped drawing luxury pay. "Naturally, their stockholders got mad and wanted to sell, but incorporated men couldn't liquidate and the values of the stocks dropped to zero, along with the value of the luxury pay. The result was a depression and a lot of angry people." "A planetary depression is not such an outstanding emergency that it should cause Universal Relief to be in such an uproar. I believe that it is merely a Class B emergency, with complete regulations on proper handling." Kim was so earnest in his reply that he leaned over and almost rubbed noses with his superior. "On the contrary, sir. There are other factors, so it's not so simple. This Lyranian system has been working for ten years now, and the Lyranians want desperately for it to succeed. They are almost fanatics on it, trying to prove the value of their system so that other planets will adopt it--which God forbid.