Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/293

 importance as factors of economic measurement is still likely to be ignored, even by those who realize most keenly our present confusion and its intolerable cost. The measurable limits of total available energy may seem to be considerations very far removed from the realm of utility, as many an engineer has discovered in discussing with a practical farmer the area which he can wisely plant to rice or alfalfa—crops which require a definite number of acre-feet of water per annum; or even in discussing with him the more obvious problems of the height of his dam or the slope and cross-section of his ditch. If you ask him whether he has measured the average annual width, depth and velocity of the stream which is to supply his reservoir, he will regard you, unless he has been technically educated, with the same contempt that a certain type of banker reserves for the economist who questions the so-called gold standard. Similarly, if you should suggest to the frontiersman that the size of his over-shot wheel and the capacity of his grist-mill should be determined by the average annual cross-section and velocity of his mountain stream, and not by the appetite of his family, or the dimensions of the wheel his father used in the old-country, which he observed with awe as a youngster, he will also grow restive. To the farmer the immediate practical task is the seeding of his levelled acres, the building of an ample dam and the excavation of an ample ditch; and to the frontiersman the task appears to be the fashioning of just such a wheel as his father used. They realize no limitations except their immediate needs, and they go calmly ahead, governed at the outset by tradition, and in the end by the cost of trial and error.

Now, in such cases as are cited above, the cost of trial and error does not gravely affect any one except the individuals concerned, but in the realm of applied economics the situation is much more serious, since in our closely organized society any adjustment we make has possible consequences in personal misery and tragedy which cannot be rectified when the error is discovered. We blunder along blindly with our primitive currency and ruthless taxation, depending upon vague and outworn tradition, or guided, too late, by the cost of our trials and errors.