Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/39

 ducement to duplicate or to better is very tempting, the community may well be the gainer by keeping hands off. Nothing is gained by community confiscation; for if the state seizes all coal and sells it at a loss, no intelligent citizen is going to look for oil, or any competitor of coal. It is also worth while considering whether our socialistic compromise, the effective patent granted by state-sanction and state-supervision to public-service corporations, is not exceedingly dangerous. In effect, enterprise, effort and inventiveness threaten the farmed-out state-monopoly, and become high-treason.

The only power we need fear is power that may not be duplicated by any effort; and is therefore in a position to impose tribute under the guise of demanding payment for service. If this conception of monopoly is correct, we have only to look for power which has the capacity for demanding tribute without rendering service in return, and which need not fear duplication. Many of the so-called monopolies, against which we rail, are actually created by state-sanction and are simply the modern economic equivalent of the medieval baron who levied toll with the connivance of the king. We are growing conscious of this situation and a little restive under the repercussion of our remedies. As a matter of fact, monopoly is a scent which always urges forward the linked party-hounds of democracy. Where we have failed, as stated, is in pursuing our modern predatory barons so far, that we have allowed the state to pick up and utilize much of their hastily-abandoned coercive equipment. Competition by the landlord is disastrous for the tenant; and competition by the state is equally disastrous for the citizen, since individual effort can never compete with state-control. The moment competition is eliminated by the state, we are then very likely to find that we have to deal with connivance between the supervising bureau and the supervised industry.

The explanation of our present confusion is that we have suffered private control of basic economic value, without contingent responsibility, until combinations have been formed sufficiently dominant to challenge or usurp the taxing power of the state or finally to share it.