AN AMAZING IGNORANCE—OR WHAT?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22065, 22 September 1933, Page 9

AN AMAZING IGNORANCE—OR WHAT?

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— The letter of “ Observer "in your issue of to-day quotes Jlr Hartley Withers in what it calls trenchant and logical” criticism of Major Douglass price assistance proposals. It would be as appropriate to quote Galen on modern medicine or Ptolemy on astronomy. Mr Hartley Withers is. whatever else he may be, obsessed by the idea that nioney i , and must be, a valuable commodity in itself; that although the exigencies of modern industry and trade have made paper money useful, if not necessary, "sound finance” is that kind of manipulation of its quantity that will prevent the fraud from becoming too apparent, ana that somehow or other it would be dramin" the resources of the national irearny to adopt a book-keeping, device whereby the goods that modern industry can supply in such abundance may oe distributed .to the. people; as, when, and where required;—in short, that money is “ The country will be flooded with paper money, which will rapidly sink in value. It is interesting to note that this socalled authority quotes the W-year-oW criticism of the Labour Party Committee, despite the rapid evolution of thought, m these matters. Further, no provision appears to be made for cancelling these notes.” Do Mr Hartley Withers and "Observer” not know that the modern money system is simply a system of bookkeeping, in which less than, 1 per cent, of the transactions require paper or other tangible tokens for their negotiation? This talk of floods of paper money and "all these notes,” etc., is a revelation of ignorance—if nothing else. Cancellation is an automatic part of the functioning of this book-keeping system under the Douglas technique, aud would give no more trouble than the cancellation ot a railway ticket. Do we talk about nooning the country with useless railway tickets? , ... i-i Another evidence of the extent to winch Mr Withers is out of date is his phrase “limited supply of consumable goods. He evidently does not know the possibilities of the modern industrial system, or the extent to which sabotage is now practised in order to keep down by sheer waste and destruction the supply ot consumable goods—while millions of people starve for lack of them owing to what Professor Irving describes as our incredibly stupid mechanism of distribution.” — I am. etc., Truth. Dunedin, September 21*