PLANNED ECONOMY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22422, 17 November 1934, Page 12

PLANNED ECONOMY

Our contemporary, the Auckland Star, concludes an article on delegated legislation with the statement, that citizens must understand that in practice more State control and less government by regulation are in practice incompatible and should realise that for good or ill the tendency to-day is all towards more control. The existence of the tendency cannot be disputed. The present interrupted session of Parliament has afforded evidence of a great step towards the fastening of State control upon industry. To admit the existence of the tendency is not, however, to acquiesce in its desirability. A great many people must, indeed,, view with considerable concern the delegation of authority to Ministers and to Government departments over business undertakings that involve heavy responsibilities for the discharge of which they have received no. special training and have exhibited no special aptitude. We are not aware of the precise form in which the Agriculture (Emergency Powers) Act was passed, but we have no reason to believe that it did not include a provision empowering the Commission of Agriculture, acting through the Governor-General-in-Couneil, to “make all such regulations as he may consider necessary for the-economic welfare of New Zealand,” with the additional provision that no regulation thus proclaimed “shall be invalid because it deals with any matter provided for by any Act in that behalf or because of repugnancy to any such Act.” If the Act, as passed, contains this provision, as we imagine it does, it affords complete justification for the remark which has been published that all that the Socialists would have to do, in the event of their gaining power, would be to set the printing presses»at work in order to put their policy into immediate operation. The easy supposition that a central authority, operating on behalf of the State, can successfully control a business upon which there are constantly changing demands is not one that is likely to be confirmed anywhere in actual practice. “ Rightly regarded,” ’ said Sir Percy Mackinnon, ex-chairman of Lloyds, in a valuable speech last month, “ a community whose members engage in trade and industry is a single organisation in which all the working members are playing a part by fulfilling functions that dove-tail into one another and make some contribution to the economic life of the country. It is not a fixed, static organisation. On the contrary, it must be constantly changing. With every harvest, every invention, every shift of population the organisation must adapt itself, get the various functions dove-tailed into one another in a new way, get the contributions of the various members altered with the changing circumstances. That process in any living organisation, that process of change and adaptation, is inevitable.” It is an impersonal influence, the tug and pull of prices, that controls this miscellaneous movement. And it is impossible to believe that any central authority can deal effectively with new situations and with the constant changes that make up the business life of the community.

EGLINTON VALLEY TOURS The decision of the Licensing Authority on the application of the City Corporation for a seasonal license to operate a bus service to Eglinton Valley will not satisfy the proved demand for a tour .of the description which the corporation supplied last summer and is prepared and desirous to supply this summer. The Authority recognises the existence of the demand and has in consequence reviewed the decision at which it arrived in March last, when it granted the Corporation a license for nine trips in the season exclusive of a special trip on Labour Day. But the license which it has now granted provides for only 18 trips at the fate of one per week from next month, together with one during the Labour. Day week-end. The limit which it has imposed is justified by it on the ground that it is necessary to protect the local service supplied by a Lumsden tourist agency. It may be reasonably doubted whether the Lumsden local service would be affected in any material degree by the issue of the seasonal license that was sought by the City Corporation, The people who have travelled by the Corporation buses in the past and will, travel by them this season are not in the least interested in the Lumsden service. Most of-those who have utilised the Corporation service to visit the Eglinton Valley would not have gone at all if it had not been that this service afforded them facilities and ensured them a comfortable trip, which they could not have been certain of obtaining otherwise. The restriction upon the number of trips which the Corporation buses may run will, it may confidently be asserted, simply have the effect of diverting passenger traffic from the Eglinton Valley to some other resort. It is a, poor acknowledgment of the enterprise which the Corporation has exhibited in pioneering the trips to this valley and in , creating what has been justly described as the Eglinton Valley boom that it should be prohibited f m supp'yi.'g the full service «.huih it is prepared to provide. It will be found that a great many people who would have gladly seized the opportunity of making the now . popular trip by one of the Corporation, buses, but cannot adjust their plans to avail themselves of one of the eighteen authorised trips, will forego the pleasure of visiting the Eglinton Valley at .all this season. They will not be driven into making the trip by a service and under conditions that do not appeal to them. -