Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/221

 is an impairment of the integrity of our token of value, or if it is so arranged that it impedes effort is equivalent to friction, thus checking that vital flow which is admittedly the source of value.

That taxation, or the cost of order, being a pre-requisite of value, must therefore bear a definite ratio to control of value, which can only be determined by the ultimate components of value, namely, land-area, population and time.

These steps indicate that economic value, in an area where there is a condition of self-imposed order, is determined in the end by the area-factor in relation to the constant factor of time and to measurable population. It indicates just as clearly that annual taxation must be measured on the basis of census-area if we are to have any measurable value to deal with, and that currency, as a valid inducement or a just basis for deferred payment, must rest on this comprehensive foundation if we are to avoid the penalizing of need and activity and the intervention of vicious friction before the free flow of effort has been made effective.

It appears to be a comprehensive and alluring picture—the fruits of individual effort are to accumulate within the fixed depository of land-area, and the steadily increasing value is to be accurately gauged. It may be an alluring picture, but the preoccupied private citizen is not the only one who is going to be attracted by it.

What have we seen in the past? Arms controlled by a small coterie of adventurers when arms were the accepted basis of value; superstition controlled by magic-man and priest when that had material value; labor controlled by the slaveowner when human effort was a private preserve; land held by the king and his friends when land was finally realized to be the key to easy wealth; money issued by the king, and his present successors in the art of inflation, as it was comprehended by a few that there was this simple way of milking the system of its accumulating value; and the dominating power of massed gold (our modern superstition), controlled by a small international group, not because of wickedness but because we blindly pin our faith to it. With these overlapping