Chicago, IL, Estados Unidos : The University of Chicago Press, 1948, c1934.

iv, 39 p. ; 20 cm.

Public Policy Pamphlet ; 15

Tomado de la introducción: "Laissez faire never was a mere do-nothing policy. Historically, it developed as a vigorous attack upon entrenched social, commercial, and industrial privilege. Economic freedom (any freedom?) can never be absolute freedom. It must always mean freedom within a given social framework of legal standards and regulatory practices. There is no security -as John Stuart Mill's leading pupil said in his inaugural lecture in 1870- "that the economic phenomena of society, as at present constituted, will always arrange themselves spontaneously in the way which es most for the common good." Professor Simons' pamphlet is an original and comprehensive plea for the preservation of economic freedom as the ultimate agency of control. His main purpose is the criticism of current policy by the definition of a vitally different program in which -in his own words- the state would undertake to establish such conditions that it might avoid the necessity of regulating "the heart of the contract," that is to say, the price system itself. This essay also gives the first detailed statement of the only novel proposal concerning banking reform that has come out of our recent disastrous experience. This so-called "Chicago" or "100 Per Cent Reserve" plan is likely to figure prominently in future discussions of monetary reform."