Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/25

 dangerous tendency to surrender our freedom of motion to bureaucracy, which is an alarming symptom of our anæmic abandonment of liberty; and, finally,

&ensp;A very regretful admission is made that while economic law is universal there are few nations, if any, that do not elect to remain economic outlaws.

Our conception of economics is so badly complicated by inherited errors, and now so involved in the consequences of short-sighted bureaucratic remedies, that any attempt to disentangle ourselves may appear purely academic. The effort is made, however, with the hope that we may, as a preparatory step, disentangle ourselves mentally. For this reason the assurance of some of the following assertions is the assurance of the theorist who has reason to believe he is right, and puts forward his data for expert examination—not the assurance of the reformer who has neither data nor doubt.

It is not urged at the moment that our economic maladjustment can be straightened out. Layer upon layer of custom have entrapped individuals and communities—each layer embracing its own crystallized inequities and errors, together with their corresponding ameliorations and adjustments. Within this highly stratified politico-economic structure we may possibly maintain a diminishing consciousness of contact and life for a long time to come; but it is interesting to contemplate the likelihood that much of our so-called stability is due to increasing pressure and the multiplication of thoughtlessly erected barriers to free motion. If no intelligent easing of the strain is feasible under democracy, we may, in spite of our hopes, have to face the possibility that social evolution itself is catastrophic.

The tracing and elucidation of the origin of human habits, of shrewd elimination and of invention, may be still left gratefully to the historian, who has a noble and inspiring task of his own, and who has thrown, for the economist, much light upon the gradual disentanglement of the individual by our collective absorption or casting out of interference. The historian has already told us, if we will read imaginatively, the nature