Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/249



the theory embodied in the foregoing pages was first put forward publicly in tentative form in March, 1920, and since the foregoing essays were completed, certain friendly and very helpful critics have pointed out that the attempt to substitute realism for tradition in the so-called science of economics was quite bewildering, and that the general conception might be more easily comprehended if the defects of our present system were stated explicitly, and, to deal with these defects, a definite program were laid down, based upon the theory.

This is perhaps necessary for the sake of demonstrating that the generalities already put forward are susceptible of practical application. The argument may well have been clouded by the necessity of having to distinguish at every step between the proposed basis of measurement and the dynamic value which it is designed to measure.

The attempt to measure any type of value arising from effort or motion involves us in what appears to be abstract thinking. The first rudimentary responses to the manifestations of energy—exemplified by Canute and his hastily abandoned throne, Watt with his kettle-cover, or Franklin with his kite—indicate that it is normal to endeavor to appraise energy by some visible consequence, as the political-economists do today. But the scientist, under the obligation of measuring, disregards for the moment both the concrete product and the concrete obstacle. He takes into consideration the ultimate measurable components of the field in which the energy is