Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/204

 we have been chiefly engaged in digging up and relaying pipes that lead from a choked spring.

$Effort⁄Resistance$&thinsp;, or, conversely, Effort × Conductivity—this is economic value. Neither effort nor conductivity is value. Value is the mathematical product of the two, and cannot be measured by a single dimension.

The construction of a scientific measure of economic value is probably the greatest possible contribution that can be made to the flow of effective effort, since there is created a vital facility, which does much more than add to value: it multiplies it.

When we speak of a measure of value, then, we are not speaking of a measure of effort, or a measure of conductivity; but we are speaking of a measure of effectiveness which is forever momentarily slaking the human demand for ampler freedom—but forever recreating a supply to validate this demand. At the same time that effective individual effort is creating new inducements for old, joint effort is adding facility to facility. For this reason our total sum of value does not diminish or stand constant. It is continually expanding and submerging the economists with their “wage-funds” and their “laws of diminishing returns.”

Before passing on to the next point to be discussed, let us consider as briefly as possible the result of the acceptance of such a conception of economic value as is now put forward.

If population increases, and if general co-ordination and invention increase, even as much as they have in the past, the holder of a census-area-order unit in 1950 will still have a certificate representing measurable basic economic value. If it is a dollar it will still be the expression of a definite fraction of the effort of total population, as modified by the cost of order, on total acreage for all time. If the population doubles, the holder will have a unit based on half the area but it will represent the same scientific value as the unit he had in 1920. If co-ordination were doubly effective, he would become more aware of its value. If profitable invention (which is nothing more than the elimination of friction) continued the value