Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/362

 they play this costly game, first, because it is great fun (for them), and, second, because we sanction it; and it is not fair to make them the scapegoats unless they employ their power to block discussion.

It is we who are to blame; for it is we who permit this factor of havoc, which we call the gold-standard, to remain in our circulating flow of services, since politically we are our own masters.

We have, under that form of orderly self-government we call democracy, made available for profitable use a far greater stream than Niagara; and yet, because of the insistence of our economic elders, we still acquiesce in a system of measurement by check rather than flow. We attempt to force the whole stream through a very old-fashioned, privately-owned and privately-manipulated meter; because, forsooth, hundreds of years prior to the time that we consolidated the flow of individual effort, some moral idiot called an autocrat befooled his subjects by misappropriating from the stream what he could take in a bucket, an act which is a minor injury compared to the invisible subtractions made since from our hard-earned savings, or the ruin of our humble ventures arising from the use of an unscientific unit of value, which to this moment we are taught to regard with deep veneration even though it takes no cognisance of taxation, the cost of order, and no cognisance of total value.

Revolution will de us no good, unless we can believe that we shall see more clearly by standing upon our heads. Economic order, not political revolution, is our best way out; for there is little choice as to stability between the extreme right swing or the extreme left swing of the political pendulum. The recreant tyrants with whom we have to deal should be very reasonable if we care to discuss the matter frankly with them—for they are ourselves!

If we really believe that the institution of democracy marked an attempt to conserve and amplify individual liberty, then it is obvious that our conception of economic measurement by privately exercised check instead of free flow is an obstacle in the path of our ideals. Actually, we are little more democratic,