"On the contrary, it is a social structure of the finest minds in the galaxy. The rest are all weeded out. Although the motives of the system are idealistic, they are enforced with a rigid practicality. They demand quality and truth, and gauge it with the revealing yardstick of public consumption and approval as measured in sales and polls."
Roald gazed out at the pastoral countryside surrounding this vital little nub of a billion-credit business. He swung back to Kim, and said, "But the basic difficulty would be determining just what a good deed or thought is. How in God's name could they determine that, when every act or word that anyone ever commits or utters is open to judgment by so many different standards. For instance, what about the case of the man who trespasses to save a person's life. How are you going to rate that sort of thing?"
"Mr. Gibbons, I am an economist, not a philosopher. It is the wonder of the galaxy that these people did establish and maintain this system, in spite of obstacles such as you mentioned."
"All right, we'll discount the philosophical angle. I still don't understand it. How about big business? How could that develop with this system? They certainly need it to support a planet."
"That's the easiest part of it. People would use their luxury pay to establish businesses. At these businesses men could work their five hours a day to get their commodity pay. It was not only possible, but mandatory that such businesses develop. There were two types: mass production of commodities, with a regulated profit in commodity pay; or specialization and production of fine merchandise that was sold at cost, but which the government paid for in luxury pay in proportion to its quality as thoroughly tested.
"However—all big businesses were closely controlled by the government. They would grant franchises so that there would be no cutthroat competition, and supply was regulated to meet demand. Therefore, business itself was stable, and there was no opportunity for speculating in its stock market. That left only the variable corporation-men for actual stock market trading—and that is what crashed.
"Let's take a writer, for example. He writes a book, and a publishing house prints it. The people buy it—spending luxury pay. The publishing house has to convert that luxury pay to commodity pay to cover costs and payroll. They make no profit, the book being sold at cost.
"That book has to sell so many thousand copies to receive luxury pay from the government. Then both the author and the publisher receive luxury pay in proportion to its sales, which is the indication of its merit. The luxury pay that the publisher receives goes in the pockets of the executives. The luxury pay that the author receives—which is much larger—goes to his stockholders.
"Since the author is the source of this transaction, the people invest in him and not the publisher, for they can't get any great return from investing in the publisher, but they can from the author.
"Actually, what the whole thing amounts to is a complete shift of emphasis from big business and its speculations—which is what we've always known—to individuals and the intangibles and variables of their ideas and deeds."