Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/27

 sistance of the area in which it is exerted. Total economic value may consequently be expressed as the ratio between total initial effort and total basic resistance within any given area. If this ratio is to be resolved so as to give us an answer in tangible terms, both effort and the cost of overcoming resistance, or taxation, must be expressed by means of the same common denominator. In this way the national conception of freedom (the sum of all individual conceptions of freedom), which gives rise to effort, and the national conception of order (the compromise arising from all individual conceptions of order), which makes effort effective, together determine what we call economic value. If this is regarded as unity and measured in terms of area and population-density, then any fractional part of this will remain always constant with relation to the whole.

If we attempt to measure economic value in terms of gold we express arbitrary value.

If we measure it in terms of commodities we express momentary and partial value.

If we measure it in terms of effort we express gross potential value.

If we measure it (as the state-socialists propose) in terms of order alone, we are very likely to have no effective effort to measure.

Only then by expressing total economic value as the ratio between total liberated effort and the resistance of the area in which it operates can a resultant be obtained which we are scientifically justified in terming value.

All that is proposed, in the name of science, is that we take into consideration, at the same moment, not only effort, time and area, but also the cost of overcoming resistance. That taxation must be prepaid on the basis of area and population-density, is the vital adjustment for which Henry George was groping in the name of equity. If he had realized that land-value means nothing till we have a scientific measure of value, he would undoubtedly have made good his contention—since all that he urged vaguely, for the sake of justice, was the prime obligation of the scientist to first take into consideration the