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The Economics of Freedom

Chapter I

The Ailment of Democracy

I

The last few exhausting years have laid bare some latent defects; and perhaps our greatest misfortune is that we have failed to realize them. This failure arises partly from the fact that we have been led to hope for a miraculous cure-all for the whole world which would result incidentally in sudden and permanent well-being for each nation, no matter how organized. It is difficult to understand why the world’s statesmen did not meet at Lourdes instead of Versailles.

Within our own borders we have also advocates of miraculous specifics, such as Syndicalism, the Plumb plan, the Shipping Board and High-tariff, who continue to acquiesce in flagrant abuses of the laws of economic hygiene, yet nevertheless lay the blame for the logical consequences of these abuses upon our refusal to employ their particular formulæ. These reformers, however, actually believe what they preach.

The very opposition in the ingredients of these new remedies—like alkalis and acids in the same prescription—should make us hesitate: the Guild and the One-Big Union; Self-determination and a Supreme Council composed in part of representatives of autocratic states; increased commerce and new barriers to trade; perpetual peace with greater economic aggression;—all these alternatives are put forward seriously; and there are many of us so little accustomed to strike a balance between ideals based on immediate advantage and ideals based on ultimate equity that there is a tendency to advocate a trial of the whole contradictory program.

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