I'm skimming Louis Post's book "Social Service" (1909) and came across a couple of elegant paragraphs about Laissez faire.
Doesn't unrestricted competition mean to let everybody alone? That
depends upon what you mean by letting alone. It does not mean to let
everybody or anybody alone to interfere with production, with
rendering
service, with industry. Such interferences, whether by government or
by
highwaymen, are precisely what ought to be stopped in the interest
of
unrestricted competition. Unrestricted competition does mean that
everybody should be let alone in production, in trade, in service,
in
usefulness to his fellows, in making the world better and richer,
and
in securing a fair distribution of service among those who render
service.
Truly enough, "laissez faire" is the word — "let alone," that is the
watchword of competition. But it isn't all of it. As the old
democratic
economists of France put it — those preceptors of Adam Smith — it
was
"laissez faire, laissez aller." Now, how would you translate that,
Doctor? Don't you think that George's free translation of "a fair
field
and no favor" will do? Or we might make it "a square deal and no
odds,"
or best of all, maybe, "equal rights and no privileges."
There is no competition in the policy of "let alone," unless you
abolish privileges. But with equal rights and no privileges, can you
imagine anything fairer or squarer or juster in industry, in trade,
in
social service, than the policy of "let alone"? This doesn't mean a
"struggle for existence and survival of the fittest" in the sense of
survival of the strong at the expense of the weak, nor even of
survival
of the more productive at the expense of the less productive. It
means
fair distribution in proportion to production. It means that he who
renders the most and the best service in his specialty shall get the
most and the best service from other specializers, while those who
render the least and the poorest shall nevertheless get the
equivalent
of what they do render. And it leaves the decision to those who in
equal freedom make the deal for the service.
Competition is the natural regulator of the law of the line of least
resistance. Without such regulation that law might stimulate the
strongest — not the strongest in rendering service, but the
strongest
in
extorting service — to get service without giving an equivalent
service
of his own. There is your savage "tooth and claw" condition, Doctor.
But under free competition this would be impossible, for free
competition restrains the individual desires of each by the
opposition
of the individual desires of others. In other words, competition
tends
to produce an equilibrium of the self-serving impulse at the most
useful level of social service.
It is a word of confusing connotations, this word "competition," as
are
all living words; and it may not be the best word for conveying my
idea. But I can't manufacture words, Doctor. All I can do is to make
unto myself a definition, and always to use my word in that sense;
and
all I can ask you to do is to adopt my definitions when you try to
understand my discourse.
Though competition may not be quite synonymous with natural
co-operation, it is closely related to it, and in such a manner as
to
justify me, I think, in characterizing it as the life principle of
natural co-operation.
Monopoly, on the other hand, whether its purpose be malevolent or
benevolent, is the death principle of natural co-operation.
So it seems to me that you will grasp the significance of
competition
best by contrasting it with monopoly.
To sum it all up, there are only two ways of regulating co-operative
service, that social service which springs from individual desires
for
selfservice. One way is by monopoly; the other is by free
competition.
Monopoly is pathological, and socially destructive; competition is
natural, and socially creative.
Ed Dodson's excellent library resides on the website The School of Cooperative Individualism
Louis F. Post was editor of Henry George's weekly newspaper, The Standard, for a year or so, and went on to edit The Public for a number of years, and then became an Assistant Secretary of Labor in Woodrow Wilson's administration.
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