Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/216

 because some king debased it with alloy, or as though strychnine should be condemned as a beneficient aid to the art of medicine because some fool gave his father a couple of ounces on his porridge, or as though democracy should be condemned because of Benedict Arnold, or Christianity because of its apostle Judas Iscariot.

If the above anticipatory comments upon the historical episode of the issue of assignats are not in the best economic form, it is because they are designed to obviate the annoyance of a contemptuous interruption, which through ignorant repetition has come to have some weight. Apart from any other consideration, to base "dollars" or "francs" upon so-called “land-value,” when this value itself is based on “dollars” or “francs” having no precise economic value, is obviously compounding the original error.

Because of bad-faith the French people at that time became involved in a promise to redeem in land an amount far in excess of the money value of that land: it follows logically, according to our economic ritualists, that land, the only fixed dimension available to us, is an invalid basis of value. If we point out that in the United States today there exist documentary promises to redeem in gold an amount vastly in excess of our available gold, then they should admit that gold is an invalid basis of value. As shown elsewhere, we are just as far from being able to redeem our gold obligations in gold as the French were from being able to redeem their land obligations in land. We may, however, through political power, or through the inducements of continued refunding (which will be reflected in taxation), postpone redemption; but this, again, places our obligations in the irredeemable category.

Such a type of money as is here proposed, being based upon the measurable value of census-area, after deducting the cost of order, instead of upon gold, may also invite that other conventional reproach of the ritualistic economist, to which reference has just been made, namely, that it is “irredeemable.”