Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/243

 assumed. With a dynamic conception as a mental background for future adjustment it is likely that we shall commence to look to expedience rather than law—to avenues rather than barriers. Lawmaking, under our present theories, is now so illogical that lawlessness is coming to have all the zest of logic.

To establish any practical connection between politics and economics that can be maintained without danger of the political bandages swelling up and engorging their vital contents is plainly a serious problem. Some kind of automatic trap or check for the demagogue must be devised. It would have been rash to venture a suggestion at any time except at the last moment. It is perhaps not too much to hope that ultimately in the United States every worthy citizen will actually attain individual sovereignty through the ownership of land. With proportionate economic responsibility imposed upon the control of area, and arbitrary domination of effort eliminated by the adequate remuneration of available labor by the state in the exercise of its long-neglected functions, there would, at any rate, never be any fear of land monopoly—it could not be afforded. Universal individual ownership of land would thus be first rendered feasible; and, with that provided, land-ownership might well become a just qualification for participation in government. Here would be a check to the demagogue; and every cry for reform would echo “caveat emptor.”

The possibility of such a universal link between individual sovereignty and individual responsibility is the only qualification of a final expression of doubt which is good form in any science save that of economics. The science of economics still has the art of politics linked with it, and the twain are like the unfortunate Siamese brothers. In the last analysis this deplorable union constitutes the cause of most of our confusion. Divergent motives are linked and we are mainly engaged in dusting ourselves off again.

Here at the end of the long argument, after pulling the political-economist’s nose to bring him to grips, his almost unassailable position as the orthodox family mentor must be admitted, and the twins left temporarily in his care until we can call in an economic surgeon and separate them.