Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/185

 resent any value as intangible as the ability to breathe or drink, let us take a “back-sight” from the so-called “gold” note to the reprieved individual. We know that the Federal Reserve System does not own the gold it holds in custody, any more than a pawnbroker owns a watch held as a pledge. If the depositor withdraws his gold to meet an urgent or profitable foreign demand, we can watch the recoil of our newly created facility—which becomes a trap owing to the fact that privately-owned gold—not measurable value—still dominates the half-impressionistic art of this new school of political economy. Under a "free" gold market, through his bank, the owner obtains and exports his gold. The Federal Reserve Bank necessarily demands the liquidation of the complementary credit. The Member Bank demands settlement from the drug importer, the drug importer from the drug dealer, the drug dealer from the hospital, and the hospital from the man who was enabled to inflate his lungs. All this man possesses is his reëstablished function of breathing; and, being sensitive, he commits suicide. This is our dangerous cycle of inflation and deflation, under the Federal Reserve System: it has some advantages—the man did not die quite as quickly as he might have otherwise. Our escape from the bondage of tradition is not actual, owing to the fact that the volume of our national currency is still tied, to some extent, to internationally owned gold subject to withdrawal. We have, at times, a substantially longer rope, but this is susceptible of erratic and sudden shortening because of an unmeasurable factor which the legitimatists themselves boast is uncontrollable—that is, they say proudly, “the gold market is free.”

All value, then, is created by effort for the sake of freedom, so that effort is the cause of value; and value has no reality unless convertible into freedom in an area of self-imposed order. For this reason a token of value, if it is to be valid, must be redeemable, as the economists contend—but in freedom—not in gold.

Value&thinsp;=&thinsp;$Effort⁄Resistance$&thinsp;=&thinsp;Freedom: this as previously sug-