Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/198

 Wages would express in terms of economic unity the market value of effort per hour.

Hire (as distinguished from rent or wages) would express in terms of economic unity the wasting value of capital goods per hour.

Capital, the stored product of effective effort, being subject to enhancement, duplication and depreciation, would prove to be as entirely remote from money as the contents of a reservoir are from the mass and rotation of the earth. Owing to the wasting nature of capital, in contrast to our insatiable desire of freedom and our unimpairable area, it would survive to occupy the political-economist when he desired to make use of his amazing law of diminishing returns.

Interest, the economic phenomenon that has excited most controversy and yet is most simple, is an expression in terms of economic unity of the net value per hour of our freedom.

Only by expressing economic phenomena in basic terms can be achieved the correlation of law demanded of a science by the scientist.

It is impossible to put forward the actual simplicities of economic value without a growing fear that they may be over-