Most Important; V. Jacobson

[293 ] to have electricity or nearly everything would stop. The house would be cold, the refrigerator warm, and the television set would go dead. Think of it! Electric service surely is of paramount importance. In case the service is disrupted, one must call the power plant, by telephone. Perhaps phone service is the most important. Before telephones, delivering a message over muddy roads was slow and tedious. Now, of course, many roads are paved and greatly improved. Our modem highways are most important, particularly those which lead to our most important commuting stations and airports. But what would these improved roads be worth without cars? Think what the automobile factories really mean to usl Individuals Know Best The truth is that many different things are most impor tant, each of us having his own idea of their relative importance, depending upon the time and circumstances. Each of us tends to do what seems most important to him at the moment, and this accounts for all human creativity and production. With our creative and produc tive specialties we come to be important to one another, often in ways which could not be foreseen and which many of us may never clearly understand. This variabil ity in the subjective judgments of the importance of things is the basis of all trade and voluntary cooperation, enabling each productive individual to gain peaceful pos session and use of vastly more than he could ever hope to attain strictly on his own.

[294 ] We also know that personal freedom to judge the importance of things can lead to conflict as well as to voluntary cooperation. There are those who think it most important to gain something for nothing, which leads to conflict, making the power of compulsion seem most important. Hence, we tend to rate national defense, the maintenance of internal law and order, and Ithe admin istration of justice-the force of governmentas most important. But the governmental power to suppress pri vate outbursts of violence, thus protecting life and property, is also a power capable of taking the lives and the property of individuals. And in the name of promot ing their own special interests, groups often advocate compulsory action detrimental to the peaceful and proper interests of others. Therein lies the danger of concluding that anyone thing is most important-so important that force and compulsion seem justified as a means to that end. Coer cive means tend to become ends in themselves, having no logical stopping place until all resistance, all devia tion, all competition, all exchange, all initiative, all individuality is suppressed.

[295 ] THE PRICE OF FREE MEDICINE LAST year the British National Health Service paid one million pounds ($2,800,000) for bottles and other con tainers to be used for drugs and medicine. In contrast, the grant for research in mental health was a mere 27 thousand pounds ($75,600). These figures illustrate the most damaging though least heeded effect of socialized medicine. Floods of money feed the insatiable appetite for pills, while funda mental medical research is largely neglected. Intelligent doctors are fully aware of this threat to the whole future of British medicine, but the British people generally do not sense the danger. Socialized medicine allows popular demand to dictate the use of available resources through political pressure, the consequence being this gross dis tortion of the strategy and tactics of medical develop ment. Not even Mr. Bevan himself denies that the British people are heavily overindulging in nostrums of dubious value. Faith in these nostrums is scarcely more intelligent Mr. Brogan is a British journalist, author, advocate of individual ism, and critic of socialism.