Những người chỉ trích n1ake quan liêu e sai lầm chỉ đạo các cuộc tấn công của họ chống lại một triệu chứng chỉ và không chống lại chỗ ngồi của tà ác. Nó làm cho không có sự khác biệt cho dù vô số các nghị định regimenting mọi khía cạnh của hoạt động kinh tế của công dân được ban hành trực tiếp bởi một luật pháp, | Introduction 7 utmost centralization. The autonomy of the States as guaranteed by the Constitution is realizable only under a system of free enterprise. In voting for government control of business the voters implicitly although unwittingly are voting for more centralization. Those who criticize bureaucracy make the mistake of directing their attacks against a symptom only and not against the seat of the evil. It makes no difference whether the innumerable decrees regimenting every aspect of the citizen s economic activities are issued directly by a law duly passed by Congress or by a commission or government agency to which power has been given by a law and by the allocation of money. What people are really complaining about is the fact that the government has embarked upon such totalitarian policies not the technical procedures applied in their establishment. It would make little difference if Congress had not endowed these agencies with quasi-legislative functions and had reserved to itself the right to issue all decrees required for the conduct of their functions. Once price control is declared a task of government an indefinite number of price ceilings must be fixed and many of them must with changing conditions be altered again and again. This power is vested in the Office of Price Administration. But the sway of its bureaucrats would not be impaired substantially if they were under the necessity of approaching Congress for legislating such ceilings. Congress would be flooded by a multitude of bills the content of which would extend beyond the range of its competence. The members of Congress would lack both the time and the information to examine seriously the proposals elaborated by the various subdivisions of the OP A. No choice would be left to them other than trusting the chief of the office and its employees and voting en bloc for the bills or Repealing the law giving the Administration the power to control prices. It would be out of the question for the
