PUBLIC AND PRIVATE TRADING.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 148, 2 September 1926, Page 4

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE TRADING.

In the annual report of the Wellington Employers’ Association there

is a very necessary protest against the “increasing tendency of the Government and of local bodies to interfere in the conduct of private enterprise.” We have had so much to say on this subject that it will perhaps weary our readers if we say any of it again; but the evil will not be checked without “ damnable iteration.” For of course it is not only the Socialist who has to be countered. The present Government is utterly opposed to Socialism in theory, and in practice, while few local bodies have a Socialist majority. The trading concerns of the State and of the municipalities continue and enlarge themselves not because those who vote for them think that collective ownership and bargaining are better than private enterprise, but because a few think so while the others think only how to score a temporary success or do not think at all. The truth probably is that nearly all the publiclyowned trading concerns which are not natural and necessary concerns— Post Offices, Railways, Power Works, and so on—grew out of the vanity" of a politician or the self-seeking of an official; but however they began some should be ended and all should be made to carry the same burdens and to submit to the same restrictions as their privately-conducted rivals. Public trading enterprises use the national credit, arid use it free; in many cases they evade "taxation, local and public, and make no direct' return; they are guaranteed against loss and misadventure, in part at least by a levy on those very rivals whose’ businesses they are injuring. AIT this is unfair, and iri the long ran unprofitable, since whatever makes the highest degree of economy find skill unnecessary injures the community. The community has indeed suffered far ■more from misbegotten State' con- > cerns than it realises,, and if it goes on suffering from them its economic efficiency will be seriously lowered. The only. safe way ,ig to place every public trading enterprise on the same footing as" private enterprise, not only with regard to local rates arid State taxes, but with regard to risks, profits and length of life.—Christchurch Press. -