The result, of course, is sabotage; in the sense that this volume of appliances, materials and workmen are not employed to the best advantage for the community.

One effect of the arrangement is an increased necessary cost of the goods and services supplied by these means.

The reason for it is competition for gain to be got from the traffic.

That all this is an untoward state of things is recognised on all hands; but no lively regret is commonly spent on the matter, since it is commonly recognised that under the circumstances there is no help for it except at the cost of a more untoward remedy.
The competitive system having been tried and found good--or at least so it is assumed--it is felt that the system will have to be accepted with the defects of its qualities.

Its characteristic qualities are held to be good, acceptable to the tastes of modern men whose habits of thought have been standardised in its terms; and it would be only reluctantly and by tardy concession that these modern men could bring themselves to give up that scheme of "Natural Liberty" within the framework of which runs this competitive system of business management and its wasteful manifolding of half-idle equipment and nugatory work.