ABSTRACT
The Agricultural Adjustment Act restricts output and subsidises immobility. The Gold Policy attempts to raise prices by a method which increases the scarcity of gold and imposes the maximum inconvenience on the world at large. Restriction in one line of production may benefit the restricted. Restriction all round leads to general impoverishment. From the consumers' point of view, the only justifiable restriction on the supply of one commodity is that which is exerted by the competing demand for others. A plan which was based upon the preferences of consumers would seek so to distribute its productive resources that the demand for all commodities was satisfied to the same level of urgency. A "planned" economy introduced by right-wing parties might for a time acknowledge certain rights to the receipt of income, in the past associated with the ownership of property, which would be destroyed at the outset by a purely socialist dictatorship.
