Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/197

 Rembrandt, Lenine and Jack Johnson were fellow citizens and contemporaries they could do any trading between themselves they pleased without affecting the relative value of our unit—a miniature vessel whose constant basic dimension represents total area and—in this hypothetical case—whose contents represent the combined orderly effort of S + N + R + L + J.J. +…X + Y + Z, until the last individual was included.

The whole business of measuring economic value is extremely simple if we can purge our mind of respectable and misleading conventions and boldly face at the outset the necessity of measuring compound value by a comprehensive and fully representative unit.

If we deal with economic value in basic terms, it seems likely that with the accumulation of valid data we shall be able, at last, to frame economic laws which are mathematically related to one another.

Under the so-called law of supply and demand, which is obviously the law of effective effort or motion—and not a vague excuse for any social confusion otherwise unexplainable—we would find that all pure economic phenomena may be stated in common terms and measured by a common unit.

Economic unity, or total basic value, would be the capitalized value of effort and order as reflected in area and, under democracy, would represent all economic value—gold, goods, services, facilities, culture and order.

Taxation would express in terms of economic unity the cost of overcoming resistance, or vice versa, the value of order and conductivity per hour.

Money, expressed in terms of square feet of area of average population-density, would be some convenient fraction of national economic unity by which all interior or exterior values could be accurately measured.

Rent would express in terms of economic unity the occupancy-value of tax-paid national area per hour.