I should like to state to you the effect that this projection of government in business would have upon our system of self government and our economic system. That effect would reach to the daily life of every man and woman. It would impair the very basis of liberty and freedom not only for those left outside the fold of expanded bureaucracy but for those embraced within it. Let us first see the effect upon self-government. When the Federal Government undertakes to go into commercial business it must at once set up the organization and administration of that business, and it immediately finds itself in a labyrinth, every alley of which leads to the destruction of self government.
Commercial business requires a concentration of responsibility.
Self-government requires decentralization and many checks and balances to safeguard liberty. Our Government to succeed in business would need to become in effect a despotism. There at once begins the destruction of self-government. It is a false liberalism that interprets itself into the government operation of commercial business. It is the road not to more liberty, but to less liberty.