Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/114

 time, there can be very little question that the responsibility of this domination, or taxation, should also vary with land-area, as modified by population and time.

Getting down again to engineering terms, if we saw fit to allow, for purposes of utilization, control of varying proportions of energy, how should we measure it and how should we assess the charge? Not by the use to which a man put it, but by the density (population), the flow per second (time), through a given cross-section (land-area). In a co-operative undertaking such as democracy, the proceeds of this charge should be used for patrolling our ditches (order) and widening, deepening and extending them (facilities). This charge would be the scientific equivalent of just taxation, and is obviously an essential condition of effective value, since it is the basic cost of reducing resistance.

Instead of realizing that having ascertained the time by a clock and the population by a census, all that remains for purposes of equity and economy is to measure the superficial area under individual control, we tax improvements and personal property, thus impairing inducement and losing effective pressure; we tax need through consumption and corporation taxes; we tax activity through licenses; and we tax facilities and equipment through property taxes. At every point we introduce costly friction and then spend public funds in ill-considered relief. As a last inane pleasantry, we stop the flow every year between the first of January and the fifteenth of March. The government says “old family coach,” and we all get up, turn around once, and sit down again. This whole business may be scientific inquisition, but it is as though a hydraulic engineer were to draw out the water ahead of his sluice-gates and hold up the vital flow, while this water was examined bacteriologically and a large amount thrown away. As economic engineers we have no reason to be very proud of our so-called system of measuring pro rata responsibility.

We have looked at this matter from the standpoint of equity or proportion: we have discussed it from the standpoint of practicability, as it would be dealt with by the engineer. Now let us take it into the realms of pure economic science which, as