The Maker of Shortages
wares are kept out of the home market not because he insists on offering them, but because the home market demands them. A country imports only what it wants. Hence, the tariff has the effect of restraining the primordial urge of the human being—to satisfy his desires with the least effort, at the lowest cost. It makes for scarcity, the very condition that man instinctively seeks to avoid. This is not only a result of the tariff, it is the purpose of the tariff. It is admittedly a scarcity-producing device, and as such it is antisocial. This is emphasized by the ready market which the smuggler, who always follows in the wake of a tariff, enjoys.
The State, particularly in modern times, often assumes an entrepreneurial role "for the good of Society." When it does so it invariably makes use of its monopoly of compulsion to exclude competition from the field into which it enters, or at least to make competition difficult. It admits its own incompetence—its lack of equipment for anything but the acquisition or exercise of power—by removing its operations from comparison with the performance of private entrepreneurs. It fixes its prices and its standards of performance to suit its own convenience and leaves the consumer no recourse. Indeed, as in the case of our post office, the State compels the nonconsumer to pay for its upkeep; the man who never sends or receives a letter is forced through taxes to make up the operational losses of the department. These losses, deficits, are prima facie evidence of the department's inadequacy, which the State hastens to cover up by declaring that the deficits represent more services than the user of the post office pays for. Whether this is so or not, only competition could tell, and that the State will not allow. Under the circumstances, it is safe to conclude that whenever the State undertakes to make goods or render services for which there is a demand it does
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