Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/132

 surplus indispensable to orderly community life is again in a way to be built up. If a dispute arose, as it probably would, in regard to the actual area of the fraction pledged, it might be necessary to call in an engineer as arbitrator. He would advise that to protect them both this area should vary with the population of the district, since the greater the population the smaller would need to be the area, and the smaller the population the greater would need to be the area. If this simple statement of the determination of compound value by the employment of essential reciprocal factors were too much for them they would have to take his word for it or go back to their deadlock.

The most essential function of money is to measure in terms of basic unimpairable value—not of goods—the obligation left unsettled by an unequal or delayed exchange. Money under democracy must then come to be some negotiable lien on land area, valued in terms of population-density and insured by the full prepayment of taxation, or the cost of maintaining value, this lien when necessary being held by the community, as trustee, to guarantee the issue of a valid national currency which will ensure the just redemption of effort in a zone of self-imposed order.

Now let us assemble the propositions which have been put forward in common terms. The sequence is as follows: 1.&ensp;That land-area, population and time, in a region of self-imposed order, are the basic factors, or limits, of economic value. 2.&ensp;That under democracy human effort has been freed from arbitrary control. 3.&ensp;That free human effort varies according to population. 4.&ensp;That the factor of time does not vary. 5.&ensp;That within fixed political boundaries land-area does not vary. 6.&ensp;That control of land-area, if permitted politically, is there fore basic economic power, giving control of effort per hour, and consequently of total value.