What we do know is that in each generation the aggregate of human happiness will be in a direct ratio with production per capita, up to the limit of the ability of the earth to produce food.  We also know that the rate of production per capita will increase or decrease in a direct ratio with the amount of human energy devoted to production and not wasted in confiict, whether individual, class or international.

Each generation must work out its own problems in its own way.  As population grows denser, individual freedom must more and more give way to collective restraint and direction.  We in the cities have less freedom than those of the country, and the greater the city the more the individual impulse must be subordinated to collective control.

But we must never attempt to supplant individual selfishness, inspiring individual initiative and energy by any form of community ownership or direction which destroys or lessens opportunity for the more competent and especially the economically exceptional man.  You would create thereby a machine operated by machinists for the accomplishment of machine purposes which are the purposes, good or bad as the case may be, of the individual operators who have never been and are not likely to be the economically competent.

For our generation the problem is, while not restricting either the opportunity or the reward of the economically competent, to compel the predatory and extortionate among them to behave decently, so that others of their class may do so without ruin — to which end, in my judgment, jail sentences and not fines will be most effective.

And likewise, to compel the ill-disposed and violent among the economically ineffective, to obey the laws or suffer the consequences.

To bother our heads much less about Social theories, whose premises it is impossible to establish, and much more about the practical relief of the unfortunate by both individual and collective action and suppression of parasitism among both rich and poor.

To encourage and promote the organization of interests, not for contention, but for cooperation.

To fully recognize, that only by personal exertion according to his ability does any one earn the right to live, but that the reward of exertion will be and should be apportioned, not in the ratio of energy displayed, but in that of its effectiveness and usefulness to Society.

To learn to differentiate between that reasonable discontent which is the mainspring of human progress, and that unreasonable discontent which is the destruction of Society.

And finally, each of us according to his ability and opportunity, to practice and inculcate respect for the law, the maintenance of order, regard for the rights of others, admiration for the successful, sympathy with the unfortunate, charity for all, hope for humanity, joy in the simple life and contentment therewith.

[1] See Note 2.