Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/319

 unit of value. This he calls interest; and he is filled with very proper resentment when the equally blind reformer calls it usury. They are both wrong because the one imagines that a “thing” can beget value, and the other assumes that value is a “thing”—and is quite sure that “things” are sterile.

It is painfully slow trying to make progress through a morass of tradition, and it may be better to abandon further caution and propose, as a basis for discussion, a definite procedure for the establishment of a scientific measure of national economic value in a measurable area of freedom and order occupied by a measurable population. The steps suggested are as follows:

&ensp;Capitalize the present annual net occupancy-value of area—the measurable and unimpairable basis of economic value.

&ensp;Capitalize the value of order upon the basis of present total annual taxation—the basic condition of value.

&ensp;Add these two basic components of value (as expressed in terms of present currency) and award the total amount—power and responsibility—to the present owner of area in proportion to local population-density.

(These three steps determine total basic value in terms of existing currency, and enable us to place these two essential components of value in the hands of very sensitive and very competent trustees—the present owners of land.)

Determine present average population-density.

Divide total national area by the sum arrived at in to determine the size of the new basic dollar in terms of square feet of an average population-density.

While it may be a little disconcerting to the ritualist to think of a dollar in terms of a varying number of square feet bearing an inverse ratio to population, instead of a fixed number of grains of gold, it is much more scientific since we are dealing