What Are You Worried About? R. Bradford

WhatAreIbu WORRIED About? RALPH BRADFORD "I can't understand people like you," the man said. He was a per son of middle years, who spoke pleasantly and courteously, but a bit accusingly. "What upsets you so? What are you worried about?" I had just addressed a U niver sity Club audience, followed by a question and answer session. My subject had been "Our Lives and Goods," (see The Freem,an, Feb ruary, 1974) and upon that theme I had tried to construct an argu ment for limited government, the free market, and the unabridged right of a man to the "goods" he has created. Apparently it was my summation of the denials and dangers of supergovernmentalism that had aroused my inquisitor. "Look," he said, with a kind of patient exasperation in his voice, "we are living in the greatest age of all human history. The achieveMr. Bradford is well known as a writer, speaker, and business organization consultant. He now lives in Ocala, Florida.

ments of science are fantastic in scope and consequence. We have put men on the moon, and we are already starting to explore Venus and Mars by means of unmanned probes. As for invention, well, you have only to utter the word 'com puter' to summarize its achieve ments." He paused for breath and I broke in. "But what," I said, "has all this to do with your question?" "I'll get to that in a minute," he answered. "Indeed, what I am say ing is all really a part of my question. I remind you that we live amid comforts and luxuries that were undreamed of a few generations ago, even by the very rich. We have extended education to every social and economic level. Our standards of living are high. Our government has ameliorated the condition of the poor. We have established a system of old age pensions. All this, of course, has cost money, yet we are not hard 451 452 THE FREEMAN August up. If you say taxes are high, or that the cost of living has gone up, I reply so have wages and sal aries."

I had been waiting for him to run down, and at last he did - not, apparently, for lack of argument in his forensic arsenal, but be cause he wanted to get back to the question he had first propounded. "Faced with all this," he said, "I simply can't understand your attitude. Amid all this dazzling evidence of progress, prosperity and general well being, what in the world is it that upsets you so? What are you worried about?" Freedom in Jeopardy Well ... it was a stumper - not that its content was new or for midable, but because of its timing. Other people were waiting, and I was already late for a subsequent appointment. What quick answer could I make to such a question? What would you have said - as suming that you did not secretly half agree with him? I could only attempt a kind of symbolic re sponse. "I'm worried," I told him, "be cause the loaf of bread for which four years ago I paid 26 cents, and which now costs 52, may soon be priced at a dollar or more. And I am also concerned that some day soon I may be required to secure permission from a Washington bureau before I can travel here to address this organization."

I was trying thus on the one hand to convey the threat of ruin ous inflation and on the other to indicate the menacing nuisance of Big Brotherism, both of which are the result of a naive reliance upon the supposed omniscience (and the actual power) of govern ment as a social agency. I was re membering the steady erosion of the American dollar in my life time - the pair of shoes I used to buy for $8 which now cost $60 with the result that I no longer wear that brand; the shirt that once cost me $2 for which I must now pay $10.50; the steak dinner I used to get for $1.50 which now sets me back at least $7.50 - on the rare occasions when I am steak-hungry enough to think I can afford it. More. realistically, I often recall the thick and juicy hamburger, with all the trim mings, that was once available at Dinty Moore's place for 15 cents, and compare it nostalgically with its anemic present-day counter part for 95 cents!

But if my erstwhile questioner were here now he would no doubt remonstrate thus: "Your income is higher. All wages and salaries have gone up proportionately." And I would in turn ask him: "But what of the millions of people who are on fixed incomes - retirees, 1974 WHA T ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT? 453 pensioners? How have they fared in all this? To be sure, social se curity payments have gone up somewhat, and are being increased again this year - at the expense of us all; but what of the man who worked and saved and made what he thought was prudent provision for his less productive years? In terms of what it will buy, his care fully accumulated capital has shrunk by nearly a third in the past few years, and by nearly two thirds in the past thirty." Inflation in France In his introduction to Andrew D. White's essay on Fiat Money Inflation in France,* Henry Haz litt points out that under inflation the real purchasing power of sav ings is constantly eroded, that all savers are cheated, that thrift is discouraged, and that the source of investment is dried up. Thus inflation not only robs the frugal citizen by destroying the value of his money, it also injures th~ economy by diminishing the flow of investment capital.

In passing we may observe that the financial condition which ob tained in the France of 1790 was the classical precondition for a deliberately-induced inflation; namely, a long-continued period of * Republished by the Foundation for Economic Education. Copies available $2.00 cloth; $1.25 paperback. debt accumulation by reason of governmental spending in excess of revenue (known today by the deceptive euphemism "deficit financing") and allowing the debt simply to go unpaid. Eventually a time came (as it always does) when to prolong this unbalanced condition could lead only to gen eral economic collapse; and it was then that the General Assembly came up with the decision to "cure" the situation by the issu ance of four hundred million livres (the equivalent of about 395 million francs) in paper notes called assignats. They looked good, beca use they were to be "secured" by a mortgage on the vast church properties that had recently been seized by the state. Moreover, they bore interest at 3 per cent.

They were launched with great fanfare and received with general acclaim. And of course there was an immediate response in the economy. Some payment was made on the public debt; pressure on the treasury was relieved; credit was revived; trade increased. The rosy predictions of those who had favored and sponsored the assign ats seemed to be on the way to fulfillment. But it took only seven years for the beautiful bubble to burst! The tragedy of the assignats has been well and frequently told, and it is not my purpose to dwell on it here 454 THE FREEMAN August - except for these brief moments while I hold it up as a horrible example. The story can be sum.. marized quickly. In the first place, political human nature being what it is, a single issue was not enough. If one dose of that magic medicine worked such wonders, let's have some more of the stuff! We must get out additional and bigger issues of that healing pa per! So the original issue of 395 million francs was soon doubled, trebled, quadrupled, by subsequent issues. Before long the assignats themselves were retired and super seded by other bills known as mandats - which soon proved to be equally valueless. In only seven years (by 1797) twenty five hun dred million mandats had followed 45 thousand million assignats down the economic drain!

In terms of the American dol lar, the collapse of this paper air castle meant that a bushel of flour which cost only 40 cents in 1790 cost 45 dollars five years later. Other drastic changes during that five year period were these: a pound of sugar - from 18 cents to $12.50; a pair of shoes - from one dollar to forty dollars; a head of cabbage - from 8 cents to five dol lars - and so on. Did wages and salaries also go up, as my inquiring friend as serted? Undoubtedly - but that nluch? And anyway, what of the frugal Frenchman who had been carefully "putting something by for a rainy day?" He, of course, and thousands like him, were com pletely wiped out. And so were a lot of people farther up the eco nomic scale. This is illustrated by the preserved record of a well-to do manufacturer who had retired from business in 1790 with the equivalent of 317,000 francs, and only six years later found that his property was worth only 14,000 francs. The present-day Ameri can counterpart of that experience would be for a man to have saved up $63,400, only to find that in six years' time its value had shrunk to $2,880.

"Not Worth a Continental" But we don't have to reach so far back for such examples - nor so far away. Paper bills issued during our own Revolution were known as Continentals; and what became of them is still memorial ized in the phrase, "Not worth a "Continental." More recently, many elderly Germans remember what happened to the Weimar Republic mark of the early nineteen twen ties, when it took a million marks to buy a loaf of bread - or maybe two million by three o'clock the same afternoon. Still closer to our times, the French franc, which had long been five to the dollar, shrank after World War II until it was 1974 WHAT ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT? 455 over 300 to the dollar; and during the same period the Italian lire dwindled until it was peddled by bell hops at 600 or more to the dollar. Do you suppose French and Italian wages ever caught up with that much inflation? And what of Argentina? It is a rich ,and beautiful country, very similar to our own in climate and natural resources. My first visit there was in 1947. The peso was still strong at four to the dollar.

I went back in 1951; and in that time, after only four more years of Peron ism, the peso had shrunk to twenty to the dollar. And of course it continued to plummet until by 1968 it was well-nigh worthless at 350 to the dollar. All this, of course, practically wiped out the sJavings of the Argentine middle class. But "this can't happen in the United States." Who says it can't? The same kind of, people who said it couldn't happen in the France of 1790 or the Germ,any of 1920 or the' Argentina of the nineteen forties - people who, like my in qUIring friend, calmly disregard the lessons of history and believe we can continue, year after year, to urge or to allow the Federal government to spend more than is realized through taxation, and still avoid the disaster of crippling, if not ruinous, inflation. The deadly process is a little slower and less dramatic with us, but it is under way nevertheless. It is already happening!

And that is what I am worried about. But it is not all. Big Brother I also fear the implications of Big Brotherism. This I expressed earlier, in the idea that I might presently be .required to secure a travel permit in order to go someplace to fill a speaking en gagement. I do not think such a requirement is imminent. Cer tainly lean now proceed unmo lested about my lawful occasions. But it is by no means fantastic to speculate upon such a possibility such a probability, one might say, if the steady march toward com plete governmentalism is not halted. Ours is an increasingly· govern ment-oriented society; and the tendency in any such society is ever toward more central regula tion, not only of economic opera tions but of individual affairs. Already some leaders of what might be called the Post-Keyne sian clique are openly speculating upon how much a citizen should be allowed to save, and how much should be taken away from him for public works and other "social benefits." Such speculation pre supposes a governmental elite of sufficient wisdom to set aside the 456 THE FREEMAN August workings of the free market, and of enough power to force great masses of people to accept a wholly arbitrary and quite fallible direc tion of their lives.

But this is America.! We have no dictators or revolutionary tri bunals to push us around. We do as we please within the law. We are not victimized by the State. We are the State. Well ... that being the case, I sometimes wonder why it is that I can't buy a new car unless it is equipped with a seat-belt device that won't let the car be started until the belt is properly buckled up. Understand, I have no quarrel with seat belts; I am concerned with Big Brother ism. We have complete freedom, except, of course, that I am for bidden to own or use gold coins. Nobody can take my property away from me, except that a planned inflation has deprived me of something like half of my life savings. I can engage in any oc cupation or business I like, except that lam forbidden to set up in the lucrative enterprise of deliver ing letters, because that is a gov ernment monopoly. Small things? Or straws in the wind? What do you think?

We are not here dealing with mere fear-born fancies. Conditions of excessive direction and of out right repre,ssion exist in many parts of the world, alas, and not merely under communism. I well remember the complaints I heard in Copenhagen some years ago about government interference in a very down-to-earth matter. Like Amsterdam and some other Euro pean cities, the Danish metropolis is a place where seemingly the whole population moves on bicy cles. Yet at that time the individ ual could not purchase that every day necessity without first obtain ing a permit from a designated bureau of the government. And in SW,eden, with its vaunted "Middle Way," I found great resentment and some distress because, since housing was a state monopoly, young people wishing to get mar ried often had to wait months be fore they could even apply for an apartment, and sometimes several years before they actually got it.

Some Swedish moralists even at tributed the great increase of pre marital sex partnerships to this bureaucratic housing restriction. Expected Under Communism In the communist world one ex pects this sort of thing - regula tion and regimentation not only of behavior patterns that affect the economy, such as the purchase of bicycles or the renting of apart ments, but of social attitudes and even of mental exercises. Yugo slavia, freer than most communist regimes from this kind of tyranny, 1974 WHAT ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT? 457 nevertheless sees the former trusted lieutenant of Josip Broz serving a long prison sentence be cause he dared disagree - in writ ing! - with parts of "Tito's" pro gram. And of course the persecu tion of literary dissenters in com munist Russia is not limited to the dramatic expulsion of a Solzhen itzyn, but has long been practiced, and in much crueler form. As for China, what could be more drearily awful than to see millions of young people flaunting "a little red book and mouthing the not-so-original "thoughts" of Mao ? Well, yes, one thing could be worse - to reflect upon what happens, once a "cul tural revolution" is unleashed, to anyone who does not wave the little red book!

The worst of such terrorization is not so much in the degradation of intellect with respect to ideol ogy and dogma, as in its general effect upon the attitude and be havior of average people. Once, while Peron was at the top of his power in Argentina, I was in Lima, Peru to attend a hemi spheric business conference. There was still a pretense of complete freedom of opinion and expres sion in Buenos Aires; yet in Lima I saw a prominent Argentine busi nessman support a resolution which struck at the very heart of progress through freedom of en terprise under representative government. It was opposed by the U. S. delegation, and by nearly all the Latin American representa tives. Moreover, it was totally out of keeping with what we all knew of that man's philosophy. Yet "he stoutly defended it; and when he was privately reproached about it, he pointed out that the Argentine delegation was dominated by sev eral representatives of the Peron regime, and said quite frankly that he didn't dare oppose them if he hoped to continue in business when he got home.

An Argentine Experience An even more subtle demonstra tion of intimidation was offered on another occasion in a Buenos Aires hotel where my wife and I had spent some days. Enroute down on the ship, and while there, we had enjoyed pleasant contacts with a Methodist Bishop and his wife from Oklahoma. Ready for departure, we were all chatting in the hotel lobby. An American min isterial friend of the Bishop's, who lived in Buenos Aires, was there to bid him goodbye. He asked me if we were going on the same plane with the Bishop to the west coast, and I, thinking to make a cute reply with a scriptural flavor, said: "Oh no; I'm playing Joshua to the Bishop's Moses, and will first go down into Patagonia to spy out the land." A harmless wisecrack - but, 458 THE FREEMAN August believe it or not, at the phrase "spy out the land" the clergyman was visibly startled and looked around apprehensively, to see if anyone else had heard me! Such is the conditioning of repression.

Such is the involuntary response to ruthless Big Brotherism. I should record in passing that this sort of fear tended to dimin ish as one got farther away from Buenos Aires, where it all cen tered in the Casa Rosada. In Bara loche, for example, far west and high up among the Andean ridges, I had a long talk one day with a local businessman who told me quite openly that he belonged to the opposition, and said that his attitude was well known. How ever, although he hated Peron, he insisted that conditions of repres sion had been exaggerated abroad, and that police-state methods were actually no worse under Peron than they had been in earlier years under one of the so-called "constitutional" Presidents. As to that, I was not impressed, because I recalled that the great old news paper La Prensa had been ruth lessly seized, silenced, and con verted into a Peronista Party organ. (A present-day parallel would be for Richard Nixon to take over by force the New York Times and compel it to become the Pravd,a of the Administration.) But whether by Peron, or by whomever, the fact was that the people of Argentina had been periodically subj ected to police state methods of intimidation, and I was a witness to some of the oblique results.

A Frightening Trend Far away and long ago? Yes. But the spirit of central direction, of repression, of you-do-it-our way-or-else, is by no means dead in the world. It lives ghoulishly in Russia at the present moment, as it does also in China and Yugo slavia; and it thrives elsewhere, too - in Albania, in Czechoslova kia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and in several of the "emerging" countries of Africa, where adven turous dictators have seized pow er. Sometimes it is evidenced by acts of raw violence; sometimes it reveals itself in the capricious ad ministr:ative laws promulgated by irresponsible bureaucrats. But the effect is always the same: at best intimidation, at worst, terrorism and abuse; at best irritating bu reaucratic interference, at worst banishment, imprisonment - or death. Inflation that eats and cheats and robs; Big Brotherism that nags and torments and kills. That's what I'm worried about. Are you?

Well . . . if you are, you can do something about it. At least you can make a beginning; for as 1974 WHAT ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT? 459 Rome was not built i~ a day, the destructive effects resulting from several decades of superstatism can not be neutralized overnight. It will be a long and difficult proc ess, the more so, perhaps, because it must start, and continue, with some .uncompromising self-analy sis. Every concerned person must ask himself whether he really un derstands the forces at work, and whether he himself is in any de gree responsible for them. But first of all, don't panic! Mine is not a heedless and irre sponsible voice crying "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. So walk, don't run - not to the nearest exit (for no exit from this country leads to any place better or half so good) but to some quiet corner fit for contemplation, there to consider a little of history, a bit of elemen tary economics, and a small analy sis of human nature.

Enroute to that corner, take heart. The theatre is not about to burn down; neither is the country in flames. Our America is durable, enormously endowed by nature, fabulously rich - the home of a resilient and resourceful society. We have done much to weaken it, but it has survived our most de structive efforts, and the end is not yet. Consider first our history, en capsulated for brevity. After the period of adventurous exploration, our part of the Western Hemi sphere was settled by people who were eager for wider opportunity and greater freedom than they or their fathers had .known in the older world. When at .last our new nation was established, it was based on a passionate· belief in that same freedom as a necessary condition for human happiness and progress. Inherent in that be lief was the spirit of initiative and self-reliance as to personal status and welfare, and a strong philos ophy of minimal· government as to political institutions.· This was epitomized in Jefferson's famous formula: The best governed are the least governed.

Erosion of Freedom As the decades went by, this concept was gradually diluted by the intervention of an imaginary self-interest. That is where "hu man nature" entered the equation. Ideally men want freedom of ac tion (within recognized and for mulated rules called laws). Ideally they want a government that pro tects them from aggressors, pro vides a situation of security and stability . . . and then lets them alone. But they also want favors, advantages, special privileges, and always "something for nothing." Thus the citizen who wants the government to provide "security" for his old age; thus the farmer 460 THE FREEMAN August who wants the state to subsidize his crops; the businessman who wants the treasury to underwrite his developments or guarantee his investments; the labor leader who seeks the advantage of a special status under the law; the local booster who wants Washington to spend nine zillion dollars for this, that, or the other installation of doubtful necessity or merit. In short, thus an importunate army of people who almost without ex ception are wont to excoriate the government for its alleged or ac tual extravagances, but who de mand loudly that it meet their special "needs" - and who see no inconsistency in their ambivalent attitudes.

These diverse interests and countless others inevitably breed politicians who thrive by catering to the various groups or "blocks" identified with such demands; and the end result is a burgeoning ad ministrative bureaucracy which soon adds not only its heavy cost but its self-perpetuating energy to the general thrust toward debt accumulation and concentrated power. All this is done, often with out conscious guile, in the name of motives so noble and humani tarian that to oppose or question them is to be branded as unpro gressive, unrealistic, lacking in social vision, and generally unde sirable. It was Pascal, I believe, who said: "Evil is never done so thoroughly and so wen as when it is done with a good conscience." It is to be understood, of course, that we are not here concerned about the basic protective func tions of government. Obviously an organized society must have laws and sufficient governmental ma chinery to enforce them. Obviously also, a growing nation will require new laws now and then, and modi fications of old ones to meet chang ing conditions. It would be hope lessly doctrinaire to expect a na tion of over 200 million people to need only the laws and require only the governmental machinery that sufficed for its primitive or agrarian period. Even the "thou shalt nots" necessary for the ordi nary protection of life and prop erty must be increased to cope with the proliferation of criminal ity born of institutionalized cu pidity.

Nor is this a plea for the un bridled exercise of whimsical per sonal "freedom" such as now seems to titillate the fancy of certain types of younger social "philos ophers." Quite the contrary, one of the primary functions of gov ernment is to prevent such indul gence by a few from diminishing the freedom or invading the rights of others. Man, unfortunately, (or perhaps we should say fortunate ly), has never been free from the 1974 WHAT ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT? 461 consequences of his own greed; and government, even under the least amount of Big Brotherism, must exercise certain restraints in the interest of justice for all. A so ciety that operates under law must have the governmental machinery necessary to enforce the law and administer those functions en trusted to it, or enjoined upon it, by the basic law or constitution under which that government ex ists. A Question 01 Solvency So much for a glance at history and human nature. What of solv ency and its part in the affairs of men and governments?

Hardly anyone will dispute the value of personal solvency. The man or family that constantly lives beyond his or its means is soon in trouble. Quite apart from the matter of reputation and stand ing in the community, credit for such people begins to get tight and soon is not to be had at all, which is both a commercial in convenience-and ultimately a social handicap. Nearly everybody, what ever his political beliefs or eco nomic philosophy, recognizes solv ency - that is, the ability to live within one's income, pay one's debts, and save something for emergencies - as the minimal con dition for a satisfactory fiscal ex perience. To adopt the old Micawber formula of spending a little less than is earned is still the goal of most people in their pri vate lives. But many, alas, do not apply that same simple principle to gov ernmental finance. Even business men who are careful to keep their operations solvent, often see noth ing amiss in having their govern ment go deeper in debt year after year, with a resultant and cumula tive cheapening of the currency.

Moreover, some who profess to study and teach economics as an academic discipline have gone over to the big-spend-and-never-pay-it back philosophy; and the attitude of such economists reached what for me was a climax of absurdity when, in justifying one of the many grossly unbalanced Federal budgets of recent years, they said in effect that it was okay, because it was a full-employment budget, based on what employment would have been that year if only it had been up to where it ought to have been! And so more billions were heaped onto the staggering debt of over 400 billions, and the al ready overburdened taxpayers will again be penalized, more paper will be issued, the currency will be further diluted, and .... But at this point faint, distant voices seem to break into my musings: What nonsense you are 462 THE FREEMAN August talking, Messieur! These assignats are as good as gold! ... Hey, what are you, Mister - some kinda arn,ti American or something? Why man, these Continentals are per fec'tly sound money.. .. Liber Gott! How you talk silliness! Do you believe our good Herr Ebert would let these marks become worthless? . . But Senor, our peso is as good as .the silver for which our country was named.

More! - It is as good as gold! Why Gold? As good as gold ! Why that hope ful refrain? Gold was demone tized in this country some 40 years ago, yet in everyday speech it is still cited as the standard of ex cellence. That is because across many centuries of human experi ence that yellow metal has been a symbol of value and stability. Per haps it is not possible at this ad vanced stage of inflation to per suade people to stop relying on periodic doses of unsupported pa er money. That is part of the look to-Washington syndrome. But it is equally impossible for a concerned person to stop trying! In their hearts and out of their own life experience, people know, they really do know, that there is no substitute for value, given and received, in human exchanges. Yet over and over again mankind, of different races and languages, all over the world, have sought eco nomic ease and a societal paradise in high-sounding governmental pro grams aimed at improving the conditions and quality of life. And time after time s:uch programs have failed because, however hope fully they may have been started, they become based ultimately upon the principle of governmental in solvency. And that leads inevita bly to the abandonment of sound money and finally to ruinous in flation.

What can you do? What can I do? We can· first of all consider whether we ourselves have been responsible citizens or importunate mendicants. We can stop looking to Washington for the solution of every problem. We can cease say ing "there ought to be a law" and begin thinking "there must be a basic principle - let's find it." We can realize that the good life is not to be achieved through Fed eral bankruptcy. We can know, and keep saying, that safety for all is grounded in solvency for all. We can study the history of hu man progress to learn how and why the voluntary market mechan ism better serves the ends of so ciety than the methods espoused by the devotees of coercive Big Brotherism. We can learn from the lessons of history that the most fundamental of all market principles and practices is to let 1974 WHAT ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT? 463 the market be free - to let those who exchange goods and services (and that, one way or another, is near ly all of us) choose and use as money the most trustworthy marketable item available. This, over the long course of civiliza tion, happens to have been one of the precious metals, usually gold or silver. That, of course, is be cause the supply of these metals is such that no man or group of men can arbitrarily increase or decrease it to an extent that will materially injure or inconvenience others. The point here is that a government, no less than an in dividual, must have some trust worthy, non-fluctuating, non-flap pable, medi urn of exchange.

That greed and rapacity exist and must be curbed; that there is crime that must be detected and punished; that society should be protected from its enemies, whether within or without - all this goes without saying, since that is the end and aim of govern ment. Hence organization, hence police, hence the military; and hence a certain amount of bureauc racy, and expense . . . and taxes! Such things are the price we pay to avoid barbarism and escape anarchy. But the price, in such terms, should be kept at the mini mum required for the government to do its job. As for us, we can know and constantly proclaim that the bright and cherished ideal of a better society and a richer life for all will not be served in the long run by having more govern ment, but less. Here in this America we still have the best hope of Earth. It is far from perfect, but it shines and glows beside its nearest rivals on the world stage. It has been, and is, the scene of vast achieve ment, growth, invention and so cial progress. But it begins soon its third century of national life and it has already long outlived many nations that were great and powerful when it was born. How we live our lives may determine its fate. Will it continue as a world exemplar, with solvency and free dom as its base, or will it become a kind of terrestrial White Dwarf a collapsed star in the galaxy of nations? ~ IDEAS ON LIBERTY Frighteningly Similar THE WORLD of the Roman Empire in the first two centuries is almost frighteningly similar to modern North America in its ex cesses and in its wealth and, above all, in its devotion to material istic success at the expense of the spiritual and the intellectual.

w. G. HARDY, The Greek and Roman World TheTakingIssue BERNARD H. SIEGAN THERE IS a small clause in the Constitution of the United States which does not frequently claim public attention, yet its impor tance cannot be overestimated. It is part of the Bill of Rights con tained in the Constitution and it is the one that protects the indi vidual against government greed. I refer to that last clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitu tion which reads as follows: "... nor shall private property be taken for public use without just com pensation." This is known as the "taking clause," for it prevents govern ments from taking away or con fiscating the property rights of the individual. There would seem to be nothing extraordinary about a rule in a non-totalitarian society that re quires government to pay for propCopyright 1973 Bernard H. Siegan Mr. Siegan is the author of Land Use Without ZoninA and many articles on the subject. He practiced law for 20 years in Chicago before moving in 1973 to La Jolla, California where he is professor of law at the University of San Diego Law School.