Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/236

 A straightforward, but painful, method of dealing politically with this situation might be to pay a bounty on the domestic production of any necessary article, the market for which is dominated by countries where economic coercion is practiced: to terminate this bounty as soon as an attempt is made to export these articles from the United States; and to charge the cost of this deliberate protection through rational taxation directly to those who hold basic control of value. If we deal with it scientifically, we shall probably find that the problem does not exist, for given order and facilities, no one can compete with us, as far as most material products are concerned.

By taxation we have tied up the normal exertion of effort—venture, production and exchange—beyond the most crazy experimenting of autocracy; so that in any large city in the United States we have probably well over a hundred distinct taxes (Federal, State and Municipal) in operation, nearly all imposed on need and activity instead of sovereign power. Throughout the country we depute the tax collector to watch eagerly the erection of homes and the planting of orchards so that we may penalize them, and we install hurdles and barriers in the avenues of effort. All these obstructions are impeding the free functioning of the individual.

As to money, which involves the honor of democracy just as much as ever it involved the honor of the autocrat, we continue the same old dishonorable tricks and shifts without any clear realization that money can only maintain its relative integrity if integrally related to the fundamental factors of value. Whenever a monarch, worthy of his position, had some perception of responsibility as well as power, his money, at its very best, was an empirical measure of the effectiveness of sovereignty—of the monarch’s ability to exercise jointly both responsibility and power, and thus maintain the integrity of his tokens of value; and, under democracy, money, our measure of value, should also express that integral relationship of power and responsibility which results in value and lays the foundation for measurement in terms of freedom. Our currency fails because the cost of order is ignored and our factors of value are not comprehensive. This general conception is con-