Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/332

 new dollar, bearing the same relation that the kilowatt-hour bears to hydraulic head, will be roughly $100 cents × 6⁄8760 x 100$&thinsp;=&thinsp;$1⁄1460$ cents per hour. Some such sum as this, paltry as it may seem, is what we set out to find, and, philosophical as the statement may appear, this concrete sum is simply an expression of the net value of effort per hour, expressed in terms of unity in a definite region of freedom and order, under the law of effective flow, or what the economists call the law of supply and demand.

Summarizing all this for the sake of emphasis, it should be apparent, after taking into consideration population-density, area and the cost of overcoming basic resistance, that time is the final determining factor of value. We now recognize this instinctively by measuring the value of money in terms of interest per annum, and the value of order in terms of taxation per annum, even though the value of our so-called “gold” money fluctuates disastrously, and our taxation is imposed on effort, thus diminishing the very value we are trying to measure. Today we either jockey ourselves or, rather paternally, think it best to jockey others, into the belief that value rests most safely on gold. We should realize that what we now call economic value is thwarted freedom due to partial order; and unless we further delude ourselves, we must realize that such order as we have is largely paid for by those who benefit least, owing to the fact that we concern ourselves politically only with the most loudly protested symptoms of disorder; and still resent, most regally, any attempt to question the scientific bases of our archaic economic structure.

If, as contended, interest is a measure of the net current value of freedom per unit of time, then in the long run (if we do not grow weary of freedom), the rate of interest is bound to rise. Interest, today, is scientifically meaningless except as a measure of the arbitrary domination of a convention. The first effect of a full disclosure and certification of value would probably be a reduction in the rate of interest: