Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/356

 devising a scientific unit of value, there is not much need to consider the real producer. As for the parasites described by Mr. Miles, they could not exist if it were not for our politically retarded circulation.

If, unfortunately, protection is involved while we effect the adjustment proposed, it will probably be only for a very short period, or until the American farmer, released from improper taxation on the basis of his capital, his effort and his need, can rearrange his program. It is also probable that even if protection is provided it will not prove necessary; for transportation and interest charges are protective factors in themselves. The liberation of the farmer from our present vicious taxation upon his facilities, equipment and improvements, thus leaving him to face only a tax in proportion to the local population-density of his district, opens up a possibility of efficient and varied agricultural production such as we have not dreamed of heretofore. It is a logical contention that such a change in method would result in a richer supply of goods even if it were not a greater supply. If in addition to this we deliberately inaugurate a campaign against natural obstacles we would intensify demand to a pitch which we now only know in warfare. With supply enriched and demand intensified there is scientific sanction for predicting an increase in value. The enormous surplus of wheat which we now proudly throw on the world’s markets in competition with the Argentine may appear desirable to a certain type of economist who thinks in terms of a favorable balance of trade, settled by the transfer of gold; but a richer table at home represents scientifically a greater net economic value. One hundred thousand watts fully utilized in a ten-mile transmission system is of greater value than the same number of watts fully utilized in a two-hundred-mile transmission system. There is less loss in transmission.