Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/50

 Our prime political ailment, then, is a deep-seated and dangerous delusion that freedom is a self-perpetuating heritage, like royalty, instead of being the direct effect of orderly effort; and the economic reflex is that we conceive value apart from the cost of order! Because of these flamboyant delusions, we have failed to make any attempt at measurement, and consequently have failed to perceive that there are menacing aggregations of power within our borders upon which we impose no pro rata responsibility. We have suffered this economic power to coalesce and carve out its baronies, and to perpetuate itself through competent or incompetent succession, as chance may dictate. Our other ailments are secondary and are annoying symptoms which we attempt to alleviate by the use of specifics. It needs only experience with this type of major delusion to predict that in our cumulative discomfort we are likely to hand over all power to state-bureaus, in spite of the fact that they are eminently capable of interfering with our personal liberty. This development is similar to the progress of megalomania, or irrational self-esteem, which, if it does not result in emasculation, may finally with disillusionment culminate in suicide.

The difficulty of dealing with the matter is this: we imagine that we are a free people. Potentially or politically, we are both free and equal. Actually, or economically, we are not, being still subject to the ancient tyranny of power divorced from responsibility.

In favor of democracy, in spite of our flamboyant idealism, is youth and exceptional vitality, together with the hope of the old lesion of special privilege being healed and its resultant clots absorbed by the whole system. The present condition of democracy is not a fatal one; but the tendency toward emasculation and suicide must be watched, for the history of recent years with our surrender of individual rights has some ominous indications. The old political dose taken at intervals of four years can do little harm, but it is quite useless as a cure.

Politically, we are a democracy in the simple noncontroversial sense that the ultimate power lies in the hands of the people. Practically we are in grave danger of becoming a plutocratic oligarchy with marked imperialistic tendencies; and unless this