ECONOMIC SECURITY AND FREEDOM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23805, 11 May 1939, Page 17

ECONOMIC SECURITY AND FREEDOM

TO THE EDITOR Sir,—Your social crediter correspondent S. Townsend asked when the peoples of the world were going to demand what they really wanted I suggest that the answer is when such people as social creditors—who alone seem to be the only ones to see the difference between economic security and freedom for the individual would make—organise and conduct themselves in such a way that they make clear what they mean by social credit At the present time it is rare to find amongst the numerous social credit publications and some half dozen or so maior social credit organisations mi the world anything which even remotely resembles what the author of social credit tried to convey. Social credit has become a mass of abstractionism in the hands of organised groups whose own relation to the individual is certainly not that suggested by its author and is. in fact exactly the same relationship which obtains in Communist Russia Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Labour governed New Zealand. It is all to the good to insist to the other individual that what he desires is economic security and freedom and that you do. too. but it is not much good following that up with statements that money should serve industry and not control it. and that production should equate with consumption. What social credit says is that the monev system should be a ticket system (in which case it neither serves nor controls anything) and that the financial cost of production is the financial cost of consumption (in which case whether production was equal to consumption would depend upon whether the demand for all classes of production was equal to the full rate of supply of production). It is not pretended that these statements are, per se of much use, but there are always opportunities of giving practical examples In New Zealand at the present moment thanks to the halfbaked ideas of the Prime Minister the Minister of Public Works, and the Minister of Finance, such practical examples abound. I am inclined to ask when the Social Credit movement of New Zealand is going to seize it? opportunities.—l am, etc., C. H. Chapman. May 10.