“We already have that,” White Haven protested.

“No, we don’t. I’m talking about true centralization, Hamish,” his brother said very seriously. “Not just planning boards and purely military allocation boards. Complete control of all facets of the economy.”

“My God, it’ll never fly. You’ll lose the Crown Loyalists for sure!”

“Maybe, and maybe not,” William replied. “They’re more fiscally conservative than we are, but remember that the centralization would be under Crown control. That would appeal to their core constituency’s litmus test by actually strengthening the power of the Monarch. Where we’d get hurt would be with the independents we might lose, especially in the Lords… and the toe in the door it would offer the Liberals and Progressives.” He shook his head with a worried frown. “It’s definitely not something we’re looking forward to, Ham. It’s something we’re afraid we may not have any choice but to embrace if we’re going to make use of the industrial and economic slack Sir Thomas just mentioned.”

“I see,” White Haven said slowly, and rubbed his lower lip in thought. The Liberals and Progressives had always wanted more government interference in the Star Kingdom’s economy, and Cromarty’s Centrists had always fought that idea tooth and nail, especially since the People’s Republic had begun its slide into fiscal ruin. The Centrists’ view had been that a free market encouraged to run itself was the most productive economy available. Too much government tampering with it would be the case of killing the proverbial goose that laid the golden eggs, whereas the very productivity of an unregulated economy meant that even with lower tax rates, it would ultimately produce more total tax revenues in absolute terms. The Liberals and Progressives, on the other hand, had argued that unregulated capitalism was fundamentally unfair in its allocation of wealth and that it was government’s proper function to regulate it and to formulate tax policies to influence the distribution of affluence in ways which would produce a more equitable balance. Intellectually, White Haven supposed both sides had their legitimate arguments. He knew which viewpoint he supported, of course, but he had to admit that his own heritage of wealth and power might have a little something to do with that.

Yet whatever one Hamish Alexander might think, Cromarty and William must truly be feeling the pressure to even contemplate unbottling that particular genie. Once the government had established tight centralized control of the economy for any reason, dismantling those controls later would be a Herculean task. There were always bureaucratic empire-builders who would fight to the death to maintain their own petty patches of power, and any government could always find places to spend all the money it could get its hands on. But even more to the point, the Liberals and their allies would be able—quite legitimately, in many ways—to argue that if the Star Kingdom had been willing to accept such control to fight a war, then surely it should be willing to accept less draconian peacetime measures in the fight against poverty and deprivation. Unless, that was, the fiscal conservatives wished to argue that it was somehow less moral or worthy to provide its citizens with what they needed when they weren’t killing other people?