ECONOMIC PROBLEMS.

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3190, 14 June 1932, Page 6

ECONOMIC PROBLEMS.

Sir,;-—Dr Fisher's statement that " the world's troubles to-day are due much less to ignorance of their causes than to reluctance to remove those causes " is profoundly true. This reluctance, however, arises out of the economic needs, not of society, but of the articulate and powerful interests which at present, control production, and is expressed through the voice of the orthodox economist. Would Dr Fisher, agree that the fundamental cause ofi the present stagnation of trade lies in the incapacity of the world market to cope with potential or even existing production? In other words,, is it an indispensable condition of the present system that there should be an expanding world market—expanding, that is, in relation to the constantly developing technique of industry ? If this be true, the demolition of tariff barriers would merely expedite the general collapse. Tariff barriers express the need of commodity sellers to conserve their home market. They are the reduction of strictly material conditions, and cannot be dissipated by Utopian or idealistic theories. The domination of human conditions by this fetish of the market is the tragedy of our times. The machinery of the market has grown up haphazard with the developing economic powers of society, and its failure is expressed in the disparity between the needs and the purchasing power of the masses. So far i'rom disappearing, that disparity is increasing daily, and must do so long as everything that is produced must pass through the market before it can be consumed. Competition for the market between nations produces war, and competition within nations produces poverty and crime. Can Dr Fisher suggest any way of escape from this annihilating tyranny of the market ?—I am, etc., A.B.P.