Heinlein, Robert A For Us The Living

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and have occasion to. Olga is a fine woman, finer than you now imagine. Your association with her is
bound to do you good in every way. I am happy to see it." Master Hedrick yawned and glanced at the
chronometer. "If I don't turn in fairly soon I shall need a stimulant in the morning to attend properly to my
duties. I've just one more thing to say; I want you to make a list of the things you expected to protect or
obtain by driving this other young buck away from Diana. Be as explicit as possible and mind how you
use your terms. Take as long as necessary and let me see the result. By the way, when do you expect her
back?"
"Tomorrow, probably. She just ran up to Chicago for a special broadcast."
"That's good. There's a rather interesting job over in surgery tomorrow that she would like to see.
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Diana's mother is coming here to perform a dexter cerebrectomy. You might drop in too, if such things
interest you. Accident case. Very sad. Young rocket pilot."
"Thank you, sir. I think I will if Diana is back."
Hedrick arose and knocked out his pipe.
"Just a minute, sir. Doesn't anyone maintain a lifetime monogamy anymore?"
Hedrick desisted from tickling Captain Kidd's belly and considered this. "Very possibly. There are a lot
of possibilities in a hundred and ninety million people. Seems unlikely though. You might try your hand at
working out the equation of probability involved, if it amuses you. I think you'll find enough data on file
over in the Archives to give it a try. Well, good night."
"Good night, sir."
IX
"Would have come to see you sooner, but the problem presented unusual features that required study."
The speaker was a little stoop-shouldered man with a bulging bald head. He addressed Perry over a
glass of sherry in the latter's cottage. "When Master Hedrick told me that he wanted me to explain the
theory and practice of our present economic system to a man with the point of view of America
1939,Ithought that he was in need of some of his own treatment. But when he elucidated I realized that I
was confronted with the most startling problem in pedagogy I had ever undertaken. I wasn't able to
undertake it without preparation. I had to search out and read much of the literature of your period and
then spend several days in meditation in order to try to feel the period, understand the point of view,
evaluations, and the fallacies of your time."
Perry shifted uneasily in his chair. "I didn't intend to cause you so much trouble, Master Davis."
"No trouble at all. You have done me a service. This is a most fascinating approach to the subject that
has been my principle interest. By preparing to explain it to you, I understand it better myself. First tell me
what you know of the present system."
"Well, in the first place it has retained private enterprise in industry. There I suppose it's a form of
capitalism."
Davis nodded. "An inadequate word, but let it stand."
Perry continued, "However, although production, and so forth, is private enterprise, each citizen receives
a check for money, or what amounts to the same thing, a credit to each account each month, from the
government. He gets this free. The money so received is enough to provide the necessities of life for an
adult, or to provide everything that a child needs for its care and development. Everybody gets these
checks man, woman, and child. Nevertheless, practically everyone works pretty regularly and most
people have incomes from three or four times to a dozen or more times the income they receive from the
government. There is no such thing as unemployment because there is always a demand for more
production. Consequently wages are high. However prices are low, and to make the situation even more
confusing, merchants regularly sell goods at less than cost, and the government pays them the difference.
That is the general set up, if I understand what I have been told. It sounds impossible, an
Alice-in-Wonderland business, filled with contradictions that deny common sense. It disturbs me. It
challenges my reason. I'd be less annoyed at a perpetual motion machine."
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Davis smiled. "I appreciate your difficulty. It is necessary first to clean your mind of a number of the
errors, superstitions, and half truths that went by the name of 'economics' in your day. Consider for a
moment the physical facts of the situation that you see around you. Disregard the money aspect for a
moment and think in terms of goods, people, production and consumption. What then is the situation?"
"Well I see that everyone has a pretty high standard of living, they live in good houses, and eat plenty
of good food, and they have plenty of the comforts of life. That's the consumption side. On the
production side I see factories and farms, and so forth, that produce at a high rate with lots of labor
saving machinery. Nobody has to work very hard unless he really wants to. Anybody that does gets a big
return for it in terms of goods and services."
"Do you see any difficulty in the picture now still leaving money out of it?"
"Well, no. The physical wealth is there and the work done is enough to turn it into a high standard of
living."
"Now describe 1939 in terms of physical economy again leaving out money. Be careful not to use any
term that implies money, such as wages, debt, price, and so forth."
Perry grinned. "You're preparing a trap for me. I can see it coming."
Davis was serious. "It's not a trap. It's a necessary expedient to lead your mind around its ingrown
economic errors and enable it to think correctly. Go ahead and describe it."
"Okay. The country was just as rich in natural resources richer as a matter of fact. We had plenty of
factories to fabricate raw materials, but lots of them were shut down. Our farms produced liberally,
plenty of good food, enough to feed everybody well. We had the technical knowledge, tools and
materials to produce an abundance of luxuries and comforts, and in fact we did, for our retail stores were
stocked to the ceilings with every sort of desirable article. That is the production side. On the
consumption side about half of the population had less to eat than it needed and that of poor quality and
wrong variety. In other respects they were worse off, living in houses that were fire traps, and disease
breeders, frequently without running water and with primitive heating systems. Most of them had no
medical or dental attention and were rotten with disease. My dentist once told me that four-fifths of the
population never received dental care in their lives. The next third or so of the population just barely got
by. They lived in fair comfort but in the fear of slipping back into squalor. A small group at the top had
more than they needed of everything. While I'm speaking of consumption I suppose I should mention that
we made a practice of destroying annually a large part of our production, especially food. Some people [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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