Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/172

 increase depended upon the distribution of its human costs and utilities among the participants.

This question of distribution kept me continually busy in examining the markets from the standpoint of the bargaining strength of the sellers and buyers. For it became ever more evident that the free competition among producers which was the virtual guarantee of common benefit according to the laisser-faire economics, was declining in many markets, and was destined to give place to various forms and degrees of monopoly. My American studies threw strong light upon this issue, making it clear that in a mainly self-contained community, with little political interference with business enterprise and no effective public support to the weaker workers and consumers, the economic system must become increasingly subject to centralized financial controls and to a regulation of outputs that would greatly restrict the productivity of capitalism. Wild plunges into foreign loans and investments, followed by sudden withdrawals, equally wild plunges into gambling speculations at home, and a temporary closing down of employment in almost all occupations, followed by a revival due to immense expenditures on public works, public loans, and subsidies and armaments — this recent amazing exhibition of economic events in America brings home to intelligent observers everywhere the conviction that there is something seriously wrong with capitalism as seen in the biggest and richest country where it has had the freest play.