Our habits of consumption are so complicated by long deprivation on the one hand, and by “the pecuniary canons of taste” (Veblen) on the other, that most of us live and die without ever knowing what we really want. “The Market” for which our producers competitively cater is an unnatural one. What we call “the demand” is not a healthy, legitimate demand; it is uncertain, capricious, subject to strange fluctuations and reactions; and in endeavouring to “supply” it, the most experienced and far-sighted producer often fails.
What is legitimate consumption? Is there any measure by which the world’s market could be regulated? No measure is needed. Our mistake here is due to continually seeking to govern production by an arbitrary system of payment. On the theory that a man will not work except for pay, it follows that his work will be strictly adjusted to the pay; and thus the tendency to a constantly increased productivity is held rigidly in check by our existing means of payment. Commodity money adds the last straw to this heap of folly.
Men will work only for pay.
Pay must be money.
Money must be gold.
So the amount of human productivity must be measured not by the muscular power, brain power, and machine power of society; nor even by the amount of corn and wool, wine and oil, wood and stone, and other necessaries; but by the amount of one particular metal. It is fortunate we have not elected to measure human production by radium!
It was bad enough to try to check our vast output by an arbitrary equivalent in goods; but it is so much worse to squeeze and strain it through this tiny gauge that it does seem as if we might have seen our foolishness long since. But that is where the power of a concept is so much greater than that of a fact. As a matter of fact, the bulk of the world’s business is done on credit; and its material vehicle is paper-a mere matter of record of transaction; but in our minds we still deal only in gold; and every once in a while we must interrupt the course of production and distribution to see if all accounts can be balanced in gold. As the business is necessarily in advance of the gold—always and always—we have to exert ourselves to get more gold—even if we must go to war for it.
Try the imagination again—see the consequence, if gold suddenly grew common as dirt—and lost its supposed “purchasing power.” Talk of “fiat money”—never was any fiat more purely arbitrary than this solemn assumption of ours that a hungry world cannot eat—a strong world cannot work—a vast and intricate organism in full swing of vigorous life cannot perform its functions—without every act of mutual service being measured in gold. The vital facts in the case have no more connection with gold than with wampum. Production and consumption go on as conditions of our organic life; distribution facilitates both; and we, governed by this Punch and Judy troupe of primitive ideas, check and pervert all these great functions.
What are the facts in true social economics as concerning this question? They are these. The earth furnishes us with the raw materials for living. Civilised man is able to combine those materials in consumable form, and to distribute them to all, with increasing facility. Even under all our obstructions, the rate of production and distribution increases with rapid strides; if free—it is impossible to estimate the gain.
Put it something like this: