the work done. What this social value really means it is hard to say. What is the social value of Mr. Charlie Chaplin as compared with a coal-hewer? And who is to decide the question? If, as seems most likely, it is to be a popularly elected body, their election would be a pretty picture of glib promise-makers competing for the suffrages of those whose power to help themselves out of the general store of wealth they were going to decide. If the deciding body is to be composed of Government officials the results, though less obviously disgusting, would probably be still more unsatisfactory in the end.
This question of the reward of effort is the most difficult problem that one hits one's head against when one tries to grope a practical path through economic theory. If the reward is to be in proportion to the market value of the work done, inequalities that will have bad effects will certainly arise. These bad effects seem on the whole to be preferable to the worse effects on the general output, out of which we all have to live, that are likely to follow from rewarding everybody not for the work that they do but for merely having taken the trouble to be born, like the Marquis in the French farce. The present system can at
