A great Canadian Bishop once told Louis Even that Social Credit was good, but he feared it could be dangerous in the hands of a tyrant or an oppressive political party that would come to power. Louis Even clarifies this point:
This Bishop was right to say that Social Credit is good, for it is indeed. But if this Bishop knew more about Social Credit, he would have found it even better, and not expressed the fear that Social Credit could become a dangerous tool in the hands of an oppressive government. First of all, Social Credit is not the replacement of the banking monopoly by a State financial monopoly. It is not the government that would issue money according to its whims and only for its own purposes.
A Social Credit system considers that the monetary system is similar to the judicial system in its operations. The Government appoints the judges, but it does not interfere in their decisions. Moreover, the judges and the jury cannot give their verdicts for the sake of profit or other vested interests. They must base their decisions on facts and the law. They did not create these facts or laws, but they must judge according to them. They judge according to testimonies, which are given by other people.
Similarly, for a monetary system in keeping with the Social Credit principles, the Government would appoint the members of the National Credit Office (which, in the case of Canada, could well be the Bank of Canada). These members would be charged with putting the monetary system in conformity with the objectives set to this Office by the law: money must at every moment reflect the facts of production and consumption; a purchasing power guaranteed to each and all through a periodical dividend; a discount applied on all retail prices to adjust them to the actual total purchasing power of the consumers. This discount is determined mathematically, from one term to the next, according to the ratio of total consumption to total production.
Once this discount is determined, the National Credit Office proceeds without any interference from the Government, operating only according to the facts (statistics) of production and consumption. The Office does not dictate nor control these facts (it does not tell producers or consumers what to do); it only observes and records them. The facts are due to free producers and free consumers. The discount would be applied on all prices. Moreover, these prices would not be fixed by the National Credit Office; they would continue to be determined by the producers themselves, according to their costs of production.
Just as justice is dispensed openly and publicly, similarly, the National Credit Office will issue periodical statements of accounts for the nation, on which the amounts of the dividends and discounts are based.
As for the Government, it will continue to get from the elected representatives of the people permission to spend money for public works and services. But instead of taking into consideration the possibility of taxing the incomes of the citizens, governments and parliaments would take into account the country's production capacity, the physical possibility to answer the public needs while continuing to answer private needs adequately. In other words, governments and parliaments would base their decisions on realities: the National Credit Office would simply establish the circulation of credit in accordance with these realities, for public production and consumption as well as for private production and consumption.
It is impossible to find the least possibility of using this mechanism for the benfit of a dictatorship. This is what makes a total difference between Social Credit and State socialism. Socialism sets up plans to which citizens must conform: this is a system of constraint. As for Social Credit, it considers the citizens as shareholders in the production of the nation, and it does not dictate this production in any manner. It simply shows to the citizens a periodical statement of the national accounts, and distributes dividends to them.
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