Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/241

 We have three measurable factors in our hand, and we must employ the one which can be used to dominate or impede the functioning of the other two by demanding tribute without rendering service. This factor is clearly land-area, and it is on this factor in proportion to its sovereignty that we must assess the charge of validating and enriching that sovereignty. Personal sovereignty is what democracy desires, so that at the bottom of our problem lies the necessity of distinguishing between sovereignty coupled with responsibility, which is proper sovereignty and results in order, or sovereignty divorced from responsibility, which is improper sovereignty and results in tyranny. It is not the motion of freemen to dodge these alternatives by delegating the complete control of this basic factor to the State. We have learned to our cost that the State, like fire, is a good servant and a bad master. State control, or State monopoly, or State competition with the citizen, is also potential tyranny, since the State, as yet, appears to have no comprehension of pro rata economic responsibility. As an interesting side-light on instances such as those in which the Federal Government steps in and assumes control of area for the purpose of conserving oil, forest or water, it is exactly as if an individual had stepped in and alienated such an area. The intruder enjoys locally created facilities which enhance the value of the holding but assumes no scientific pro rata of the local burden of cost. Owing to our dullness of vision, this again crystallizes into economic oppression, however gentle.

If the control of land-area is not scrutinized closely, it may be enjoyed by the State or its subdivisions, or by individuals, and actually be modified tyranny in the guise of freedom. In the end, within fixed political boundaries, if a portion of the whole is more free from contingent responsibility than it should be, then the balance is less free than it should be. Owing to our economic confusion this is the case today in every political division of our democracy.

Our failure in developing human effort to the full rests, then, on our failure to assess responsibility scientifically, a consequent failure to measure value scientifically, and a genius