Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1099

Fragment: One typed page numbered 2 (has similarities to Item 1097)

About 1938?

.. the ownership, administration and exchange of capital goods. Goods no longer in course of administration and exchange as capital are consumers’ goods in the consumers’ hands and no longer subject to democratic or economic disposal, although they may be transferred from their owners to others by any kind of political power that taxes and seizes property.

Different persons, having ownership of or having borrowed the same capital goods, administer them by applying their services to them, and also the services of their employes, before exchanging them. Democracy among persons having ownership of the same property takes the form and practice of parliamentary procedures among the owners.

Different persons or groups having separate ownership of or having borrowed different capital goods which have been separately administered by applying services to them, give them further administration by the services of buying and selling — exchanging — them. Democratic administration under diversity of ownership takes the form and practice of the free market in which the several owners, by voice or writing, vote their wishes and desires as to the terms and rates upon which they are willing to redistribute their wealth — goods and services — and forthwith carry out that redistribution. This democracy of the free market is spontaneous. Its decrees require no legislative enactment, executive enforcement or judicial review. And no person is moved, except by his own desires, either to exchange or not to do so, but exchanges cannot be effected at other rates than those the market prescribes.

Political administration, however “democratic” in form, cannot be democratic in fact, while practicing the seizure of property, because it is coercive and does not practice exchange. But Public Service can be democratic because service, when given for voluntary service or payment, is exchange.