Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/176

 The volume-value of a cube is the relationship between its six boundary planes expressed again in similar terms.

The weight-value of a material cube is the relationship of its mass (volume and density) to the total mass of the earth.

Now as soon as we consider the value of motion or effort we are compelled to recognize a further limit and utilize the factor of time. The value stored up in such a cube by raising it to a given height is therefore the modified relationship between its volume and density and those of the earth, measured by its subsequent fall, in terms of the motion of the earth upon its axis, since a second is $1⁄86,400$ths of the total interval between noon and noon.

Startling as it may seem for a moment to the gold-standardist, we measure all these values by using the whole earth as weight, measure and chronometer. Our foot-pound-second is the rolling world in miniature. There would be no science if we had been afraid to make this rational and comprehensive assumption of unity.

From these simple relationships, all of which are ultimately dependent upon the density and volume of the earth and its rate of rotation, we have built up the essentials of scientific measurement. The same elements are involved in measuring steam-power, electric energy and blood-pressure. Even radioactivity has been measured by Rutherford in identical terms—mass and velocity. Only in dealing with the value of human energy are the essentials of measurement ignored: we measure it, forsooth, by gold! No value, however simple, can be measured except in terms of the ultimate limits which define it: and this applies in geometry, physics and dynamics—in every scientific method of measuring value except the method of the political-economist.

Economic value, therefore, cannot be measured in terms of any single commodity of unknown total quantity, as the gold-standard advocates urge. Neither can economic value be stated in terms of all commodities, as some of the more flexible-minded economists contend, since the quantity of all commodities varies from moment to moment and year to year, and