Chapter XV
Disaster
Of course, in our own orderly and (one might well say) blessed times of general scarcity, we simply cannot imagine the social evil that boundless plenty could be. To us it seems that to find ourselves all of a sudden amid unlimited supplies of everything we wanted would be nothing short of the Earthly Paradise. It would be all to the good, we think; there would be enough of everything for everybody—and Lord! how prices would come down!
Well, then, the economic catastrophe which befell the whole world at the period we are describing, as a result of the interference of the Absolute in industry, arose from the fact that people could get everything they wanted, not merely at a low pirce, but simply for nothing. You might help yourself, free of charge, to a handful of tacks, to go into your bootsoles or into the floor; you could just as easily help yourself to a whole cartload of tacks gratis—only I ask you, what would you do with them? Would you haul them a hundred kilometres off and then give them away? You wouldn't do that; for when you stood before that avalanche of tacks, what you
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