Heinlein's interpretation of Social Credit Theory was that financial panics and the entire boom and bust cycle are caused by the relationship between production and consumption. Economists recognize that when consumption falls behind production, nothing good can follow. The Great Depression was caused in large part by overproduction in the twenties, followed by layoffs and the resulting decrease in consumption. Farming constantly overproduced, as did other "sick industries" such as textiles and coal mining. FDR's solution was to pay farmers not to produce—which we have continued to do, although the recipients are mostly agricultural corporations these days and not individual farmers. As Heinlein looked around him in the thirties, what he saw were failed attempts to restore consumption. He pointed out, in For Us, The Living, that FDR had attempted to hand out direct relief and to provide public works, but as we now know, only the massive expenditures of World War II ended the Great Depression—by putting everybody back to work, thus allowing them to consume the goods being offered. Direct relief and public works were simply not enough.

For Heinlein, Social Credit seemed a much better solution.

The economist C. H. Douglas had first proposed the idea of Social Credit in the twenties, and with the onslaught of the Depression, his ideas caught fire in Alberta, Canada. The Alberta Social Credit Party took control of Alberta's government in 1935, and Douglas became their economic adviser. Eventually, Alberta's attempts to implement Social Credit were shut down by the courts. But when Heinlein wrote this novel, there were Social Credit factions in the United States as well, including Los Angeles.

Heinlein's version of Social Credit argues that banks constantly used the power of the fractional reserve to profit by manufacturing money out of thin air, by "fiat." Banks were (and are) required by federal law to keep only a fraction of their total loans on reserve at any time; they could thus manipulate the money supply with impunity. By loaning out money that literally does not exist, and gaining in return actual cash, banks gather enormous profits. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If the American people knew tonight exactly how the monetary and banking system worked, there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." If you took away that power from the banks by ending the fractional reserve system, and instead let the government do the exact same thing for the good of the people, you could permanently resolve the disparities between production and consumption. By simply giving people the amount of money necessary to spring over the gap between available production and power to consume, you could end the boom and bust business cycle permanently, and free people to pursue their own interests.

Until a society fully implements Social Credit, who can speak to the truth of this argument?

But Heinlein believed in it, as late as 1942 in Beyond This Horizon. And Lazarus Long uses the power of the fractional reserve when he works as a banker in Time Enough for Love, so Heinlein clearly hadn't changed his mind about the way banks functioned by the early seventies.

Similarly, he never changed his mind as to the importance of an individual's right to freedom and privacy. Throughout his entire canon, he argues extensively for the need of the government to remain out of the private affairs of individuals; it is most explicit in For Us, The Living when he suggests that the cornerstone of his future government is the constitutional recognition of the right to privacy. In this novel, a citizen should be allowed to do whatever he wishes, unless he harms another citizen. What he does in the "private sphere" is simply nobody else's business.

Heinlein's own life was predicated upon this distinction. His marriage to his second wife, Leslyn, was forced to take a dual character. In public, they were the polite couple, genteel, dedicated to public service, "moral" to a fault. In private, they had an open marriage, as Perry and Diana do in this novel, once Perry's jealousy is cured. They also pursued nude photography and actively attended nudist camps, as did several other science fiction writers, including Theodore Sturgeon. Catherine de Camp posed nude for Heinlein, and her picture was shown at a party with the de Camps and Isaac Asimov in attendance. After Heinlein's divorce from Leslyn in 1948, he repeatedly went out of his way to erase their marriage from any public mention. Heinlein's furious insistence on his own privacy, and the shrouding of his past from public inquiry, rests at least in part from a need to protect his public reputation as a political figure and as a writer—and throughout much of the 1950s, his major reputation outside the science fiction community (and most significant income) was that of a writer of children's books.

Yet when he wrote For Us, The Living, he crusaded for this revolution in privacy, sexuality, and economic consistency.

When he couldn't get it published, he took up the fight in the science fiction pulps.

These magazines would never have allowed him to write openly about sexual issues. In fact, Astounding edited out all sexual references, leading some of its contributors to look for ways to evade the puritanical restrictions, as when one writer inserted a reference to a "ball-bearing mouse trap" (a tomcat) and another used alien names that when pronounced correctly were sexual terms in other languages. But while sex was forbidden, Heinlein would still be able to crusade on issues of privacy, politics, religion—and do so while being paid for it.

Now we return to the matter of rejections. Heinlein's first two submissions to John W. Campbell in April and May of 1939 were accepted. Six of his next stories—"Let There Be Light," "Elsewhen," "Pied Piper," "My Object All Sublime," "Beyond Doubt," and "Lost Legacy"—were rejected. How frustrating for a writer who had already made two sales right out of the starting gate! And his novel, his social revolution, was dead in the publishing waters—by itself, the sexual freedom the novel embraces would have sunk it for mainstream publishers in 1939.

Heinlein, perhaps frustrated, but clearly determined, decided to reshape the material in For Us, The Living. The concept of a future history is often cited as Heinlein's greatest contribution to science fiction and remains the core concept of this novel. By lifting, revising, and expanding the most compelling ideas from For Us, The Living and turning them into stories, Heinlein found a way to break the dry spell with Campbell. Once he became dominant in the pulps, he was able to stretch the boundaries farther and farther with each tale.

Heinlein always found a way to open up science fiction to wider possibilities. After the war, he was the first science fiction pulp writer to break into the "slicks" of the mainstream. He was the first science fiction writer since H. G. Wells to write a screenplay for a Hollywood movie, the first American film to realistically depict a moon shot: Destination Moon. He was the first science fiction writer to begin a series of juveniles that would educate entire generations of readers to love science fiction and outer space. His later novels continually challenged the very definition of science fiction, provoking anger and debate—and, as always, a legion of imitators.

Throughout his career, Heinlein mentored other writers, particularly those just starting out. One of his five rules for writing compiled in "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction" stated, "You must keep it on the market until sold." Not having everything published gnawed at him, and as he once wrote to science fiction editor and writer Frederik Pohl in 1940, the stories "sit here and shame me." The six rejected stories were submitted elsewhere until finally sold—although a story-hungry Campbell actually bought one that he had initially turned down, "Elsewhen."