Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/365

 We have failed—and failed most tragically—in one respect only, and that is to think; for only a comprehension of the essentials of measurable national economic value can make us economically (or actually) free.

With a scientific conception of economic value we can create, within the borders of any self-governed state, a valid national unit of measurement redeemable in freedom, provided that we first undertake the urgent task of establishing the missing nexus between economic value and the cost of order which is essentially a pre-requisite of value.

Without a scientific unit of value there is no such thing as freedom: in any protracted action we are under the domination of hazard, of doubt and of falsehood.

We worship Freedom in the abstract; and yet we still bow down to the restriction of hazard. There is no freedom under uncertainty such as we endure. In the name of Freedom it might well be said to us, as was said in the escape from bondage of the Children of Israel, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me, Thou shalt not make to thee any graven image. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them.”

So rooted is our idolatry that even our reformers think always in terms of penalty instead of inducement—in terms of restriction instead of in terms of free flow. Our legislation is incidental and arbitrary, while our measuring of responsibility, which we call taxation, and our medium of exchange, which we call money, both halt instead of speeding us.

We have made our exodus from political bondage, but are still wandering mentally in an economic wilderness: and the voice we need is one such as that of the great emancipator, Moses, who in laying down his rigid code of order,—moral, hygienic, agricultural and economic,—was fighting fiercely the degradation which his complacent followers hardly recognized; for it had eaten into their very conventions. They had been led away from the old days of visible bondage, the days when their task-masters had infuriated Moses by saying, “Get you unto your burdens…Behold, the people of the land now are many…Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for