Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/205

 would be still more obvious. It would be worth while to save, and very foolish to waste, such a dollar.

Now this would not mean that the unit had increased in relative value: it would be still exactly what it was—let us say one man-acre—an explicit share in basic potentialities. It would mean logically just one thing, namely that friction had been eliminated—the disastrous friction due to ignorance, to disorder, to erratic taxation, to an invalid measure of value and medium of exchange, and to the private or alien ownership of our present measure of value.

On the other hand, if we stick to the gold-standard within our borders, even as modified by the Federal Reserve System, the holders of title to gold (not the gold) will continue to exercise intermediate dominion over the producers of real value, gaining shadowy titles to the real product of enterprises for which they furnish the shadowy means—all of which is perfectly proper under our present practices. But at the back of these are the international-minded controllers of massed gold; and every now and then, as confidence (or credit) expands and exceeds the means of measuring it, these exercise the domination of our standard which we sanction; and producer and trader alike are shaken and ruined and abandon their accumulations. We see this every few years and talk wisely of “cycles of depression.” Imagine “cycles of depression” in a turbine or a [sic]Diessel engine! We should be aware at once that one of two things had happened: either friction had been introduced or the gauge had broken down.

Under our present standard of value, in 1950 our population and real wealth may have increased in spite of friction. Our apparent wealth will undoubtedly have increased. Our credit will have to increase. It is safe to predict that our legal ratio of gold to credit, as a basis for “redeemable” currency will have decreased, owing to political pressure following the crying need, since our stocks of gold will diminish as Europe gains health and as the production of gold dwindles here because of an officially sanctified price, bearing no relation to other prices which have risen at a rate which averages