Thus there ruled in the world a state of boundless plenty of all that men could need. But men need everything, everything but boundless plenty.

XV. Disaster

CHAPTER XV

DISASTER

O F course, in our own orderly and (one might well say) blessed times of general scarcity, we simply cannot imagine the social evil that boundless plenty could be. To us it seems that to find ourselves all of a sudden amid unlimited supplies of everything we wanted would be nothing short of the Earthly Paradise. It would be all to the good, we think; there would be enough of everything for everybody—and Lord! how prices would come down!

Well, then, the economic catastrophe which befell the whole world at the period we are describing, as a result of the interference of the Absolute in industry, arose from the fact that people could get everything they wanted, not merely at a low price, but simply for nothing. You might help yourself, free of charge, to a handful of tacks, to go into your boot-soles or into the floor; you could just as easily help yourself to a whole cartload of tacks gratis—only I ask you, what would you do with them? Would you haul them a hundred kilometres off and then give them away? You wouldn’t do that; for when you stood before that avalanche of tacks, what you saw was not tacks—relatively useful objects—but something perfectly valueless and senseless in its profusion, something as purposeless as are the stars in the sky. Of course, such a mound of new and shining tacks was often an uplifting sight, and even inspired poetical reflections as do the stars in the sky. They seemed created to be gazed upon in silent wonder. It was a fine sight in its way, as a piece of landscape, just as the sea is from that point of view. But then again, you don’t take the sea away in carts into the interior of the country where there is no sea. There is no economic distribution for sea-water—and now there was none for tacks.