Dear Sir

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 78, 24 May 1946, Page 4

Dear Sir

Letters to the Editor must be clearly written on one side of the paper only and where a nom-de-plume is used the name of the writer must be included for reference purposes. The Editor reserves the right to amend or withhold any letter or letters.

WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

Sir, —Your correspondent Mr Bradshaw like so many people does not realise that democracy is merely a method which permits government to be changed by peaceful means. This is all it is. Democracy does not guarantee that every government elected by the people is a wise government. The people are often mistaken but so long as, having discovtheir mistake, they have the power to vote a government out and put another government in its place then by a process of trial and error in the long run the best interests of the community are served. We must not confuse democracy with some pet ideas which one. group has as to to the nationalisation of industry or socialisation. Nor must we confuse it with the hobby of another group who first of all demanded the nationalisation of the Banking system. This same group has now somersaulted and now demands the preservation of the competitive system between the Trading Banks and the removal of the Reserve Bank from State control. This group woke up to the fact that once the State obtained complete control of, the Banking system it would create a power ,in government that could be broken only by physical revolution. It meant the end of democratic government, just as socialisation of production and industry means the same thing. The world is facing famine today mainly because governments are trying to regulate production and distribution. Similarly, the depression arose not from clinging to old-fashioned liberal or orthodox methods of finance but by adopting new fashioned or socialist ideas of control of the money system. We have yet to learn that the needs of the community can only be provided by utilising the profit motive in a free competitive system in which prices provide the indicators that production and , consumption follow. We have also yet to learn that democracy can exist only in a system of economic individualism or free enterprise which is only possible under private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange plus the competitive system. Under a competitive system of banking there can be no money monopoly. We have created this by adopting Mr Bradshaw’s ideas of control.

Yours etc., “ONLOOKER.”