I pass to the extreme Individualists,--those who hold to the tradition
of political economy, and are firm in the idea that the system of
employer and employed, buying and selling, banking, and all the other
essential institutions of Commercialism, centering upon private
property, are in themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the
interference of the State. Their chief economic propositions are: land
to be held by individuals or companies for such time and in such
allotments as they use only; redistribution to take place as often as
the members of the community shall agree; what constitutes use to be
decided by each community, presumably in town meeting assembled;
disputed cases to be settled by a so-called free jury to be chosen by
lot out of the entire group; members not coinciding in the decisions of
the group to betake themselves to outlying lands not occupied, without
let or hindrance from any one.
Money to represent all staple commodities, to be issued by whomsoever
pleases; naturally, it would come to individuals depositing their
securities with banks and accepting bank notes in return; such bank
notes representing the labor expended in production and being issued in
sufficient quantity, (there being no limit upon any one's starting in
the business, whenever interest began to rise more banks would be
organized, and thus the rate per cent would be constantly checked by
competition), exchange would take place freely, commodities would
circulate, business of all kinds would be stimulated, and, the
government privilege being taken away from inventions, industries would
spring up at every turn, bosses would be hunting men rather than men
bosses, wages would rise to the full measure of the individual
production, and forever remain there. Property, real property, would at
last exist, which it does not at the present day, because no man gets
what he makes.
The charm in this program is that it proposes no sweeping changes in our
daily retinue; it does not bewilder us as more revolutionary
propositions do. Its remedies are self-acting ones; they do not depend
upon conscious efforts of individuals to establish justice and build
harmony; competition in freedom is the great automatic valve which opens
or closes as demands increase or diminish, and all that is necessary is
to let well enough alone and not attempt to assist it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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