| The
Challenge of our Time |
Time
was when all men believed that the earth was flat. It
would be difficult now to trace all the errors into
which this assumption led the thinking of those days,
or to ascertain how many practical comforts and advantages
which we now enjoy would have been missed had not this
conceit been exploded. The first serious challenge to
this theory raised a storm of abuse which came not merely
from the vulgar and superstitious but from the leaders
of science and religion. It was a grave shock to human
vanity to be told that the natural universe did not
revolve round the planet which man occupied, that, on
the contrary, the earth was one of many satellites
of a greater sun and that, consequently, there was no
solid reason to believe that man was the king of creation.
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| Landholders'
rights and duties |
The
right of the individual to his full and proper wages
cannot be seriously questioned. To enable him to secure
it two things are essential, firstly he must have access
to land, and secondly he must have security of tenure
so that he may lay his plans ahead and enjoy the fruits
of his effort.
At
the same time, if the rights of his fellows are to be
secured every landholder must duly pay the full rent
of his land into the public fund and must maintain his
land in good condition. Subject to these conditions
he should have the right of access to any free land,
and once he takes possession he should have security
in the holding. This does not mean, of course, that
every man will have five acres and a cow. In many occupations
men require but little land. For very many a desk in
an office or a bench in a factory is the total individual
requirement. How much land is needed depends entirely
on the nature of the industry.
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Economic
theorists hold, with reasonable consistency, that the
essence of a tax is the absence of a direct quid
pro quo between the taxpayer and the public authority.
It is this that distinguishes a tax from other charges
that may be imposed by a public authority. A useful
definition is provided by Hugh Dalton: ‘a tax is a compulsory
contribution imposed by a public authority, irrespective
of the exact amount of service rendered to the taxpayer
in return, and not imposed as a penalty for any legal
offence’. This definition is not a classification of
individual taxes and does not rest on the shifting sands
of what, for one purpose or another, is from time to
time 'always called taxes' or 'never called taxes'.
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| Plato:
Founder of Free Economy |
In
this essay an attempt is made to show that the main
elements of a free economy, which Adam Smith enunciated
in his Wealth of Nations , had already been
formulated by Plato 21 centuries earlier.
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the full text in PDF file - 148k)
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