FOR US THE LIVING BY ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

MONOPOLY (The Trust-Buster’s Argument)

This problem should be set up in three ways, monopoly of raw materials, monopoly of technique, and monopoly of a field of enterprise. In each case modify the data to cause the holder of the monopoly to (a) receive too large returns (b) freeze out a competitor.

Monopoly of raw materials is contrary to public interest. The state must exercise its right of control or expropriation to prevent it.

Monopoly of technique is now limited to the royalty rights of the inventor, but in former times the owner of a technique was legally able to monopolize it entirely, even to the extent of neither using it, nor allowing others to use it.

Monopoly of a field of enterprise, where it is not based on the other types of monopoly, usually indicates greater efficiency and should be controlled in the public interest rather than eliminated. We now believe that the interest of the consuming public is paramount. It was formerly held that the interests of the little businessman were paramount. This point of view is roughly equivalent to that of the machine breakers at the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 19th century.

It is obvious that natural causes alone are sufficient to destroy a big business which serves the public less efficiently than a small business, all other things being equal.

The above illustrations, while by no means exhaustive, show the type of error into which our forefathers fell. In each case, the proponents of the above-listed arguments took a special case of the production-consumption equation and treated it as if it were the general case. In each case they were right—as far as they went—but by assuming their special case to be the general case, their conclusions were invariably fallacious.

For comparison with 20th century economies the problem set up by Perry and Davis will now be worked as an illustration of the general case of the production-consumption cycle, applying the modern method of the dividend-discount for balancing the cycle.

Total cost of product: 126 shekels

Number of units (playing cards): 63 shekels

Assume that holders of purchasing power refrain from spending 26 shekels. Therefore, if the government issues a total of 13 shekels as a dividend, and authorizes a discount of 13.126 or approximately 10%, the spread between production and consumption will be eliminated. Capitalization of the country will be increased by 26 shekels and production will be greater in the next fiscal period, thereby increasing the real wealth of the country.

This problem must be worked out with the chessmen, or their equivalent, to be appreciated. This type of problem is worked out in more detail on page 171.

The invention of the discount method of preventing inflation is usually attributed to C.E. Douglas, a Scottish economist of the early 20th century.

AFTERWARD

“A Clean Sweep.”

Fifty years before Robert Heinlein’s death in 1988, he wrote For Us, The Living, his first novel.

Like many writers, Heinlein found himself repeatedly answering the same questions. In particular, “How did you get published?” His polished tale went like this: He had lost a political campaign in 1938, and faced a mortgage and no prospects of employment. He saw a contest in Thrilling Wonder Stories offering $50 for science fiction stories from unpublished authors and decided he would give it a try. In four days of April 1939, he wrote his first story, “Life-Line”—and decided it was good enough to submit to the top market of the day, John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction. Campbell bought it, and Heinlein never went back to what he called “honest work.”

But as James Gifford has pointed out in Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader’s Companion (Nitrosyncretic Press, 2000), the story is not quite that simple. There was indeed a writing contest, but in the October 1938 Thrilling Wonder Stories. However, there was no $50 prize; instead, it was a call for submissions, at the normal word rates. Future great science fiction writer Alfred Bester won that contest and had his first story printed in the April 1939 issue, when Heinlein was just starting “Life-Line”—which shows another flaw in the polished myth: the contest was already publicly won before Heinlein even began his intended submission.