George O. Smith 
Pandora’s Millions and two more stories [EPUB ebook] 

Excerpt: "A lot has been written about mankind starving amid plenty. But never before was a civilization confronted with the prospect of luxury amid bankruptcy-". "Keg Johnson was the executive type. He was the chief executive of Interplanet Transport, a position of no mean height. Keg had become the chief executive by sheer guts, excellent judgment, and the ability to gamble and win. Like any high executive in a culture based on a technical background, Keg was well aware of science. He was no master of the scientific method nor of laboratory technique. He was able to understand most of the long-haired concepts if they were presented in words of less than nine syllables, and he was more than anxious to make use of any scientific discovery that came from the laboratory. He knew that the laboratory paid off in the long run. Keg Johnson was strictly a good business man. He played a good game and usually won, because he could size up any situation at a glance and prepare his next move while his opponent was finishing his preparatory speech. So when Keg Johnson met Don Channing in the hallway of the courtroom in Buffalo, he was dangling an exact duplicate of the judge’s watch-a timepiece no longer a rare collector’s item."