“You flatter me. I should say that money is a medium for the exchange of value.”
“Very well. Therefore, if a man accepts money without giving value for it in exchange he is violating the fundamental principle underlying the use of money. He is, in short, an economic outlaw.”
“I am afraid I don’t follow you.”
“Let me illustrate by my own experience, and that of my family. My father was possessed of a piece of land which at one time had little or no value. Eventually it became of great value, not through anything he had done, but as a result of the natural law that births exceed deaths. Yet he, although he had done nothing to create this value, was able, through a faulty economic system, to pocket the proceeds. Then, as a result of the advantages which his wealth gave him, he was able to extract from society throughout all the remainder of his life value out of all proportion to any return he made for it. Finally it came down to me. Holding my peculiar belief, which my right and left bower consider sinful and silly respectively, I found money forced upon me, regardless of the fact that I had given absolutely no value in exchange. Now if money is a medium for the exchange of value and I receive money without giving value for it, it is plain that someone else must have parted with money without receiving value in return. The thing is basically immoral.”
“Your father couldn’t take it with him.”
“But why should I have it? I never contributed a finger-weight of service for it. From society the money came and to society it should return.”
“You should worry,” said Transley. “Society isn’t worrying over you. Some more of the roast beef?”
“No, thank you. But to come down to date. It seems that I cannot get away from this wealth which dogs me at every turn. Before enlisting I had been margining certain steel stocks, purely in the ordinary course of affairs. With the demands made by the war on the steel industry my stocks went up in price and my good friend Murdoch was able to report that it had made a fortune for me while I was overseas.... And we call ourselves an intelligent people!”
“And so we are,” said Mr. Squiggs. “We stick to a system we know to be sound. It has weathered all the gales of the past, and promises to weather those of the future. I tell you, Grant, communism won’t work. You can’t get away from the principle of individual reward for individual effort.”
“My dear fellow, that’s exactly what I’m pleading for. I have no patience with any claim that all men are equal, or capable of rendering equal service to society, and I want payment to be made according to service rendered, not according to the freaks of a haphazard system such as I have been trying to describe.”