Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/58

 of land, on the basis of personally-appraised value, in the name of reform, as it is to persuade a solvent merchant to go joint account with a potential bankrupt, for the sake of activity. It may conceivably be done, in the name of democracy, by a forward-looking reformer; but if no definite limitations are agreed upon and if no proper allowance is made for the upward-striving individual, the reformer’s forward motion, ignoring trajectory, is likely to be of short duration.

There are also certain primary community considerations which, again without reproach, are of vital importance to all of us jointly; and it should not be difficult to realize that they are logically divergent from these equally proper individual considerations already enumerated.

Just as the desire for ample personal security sometimes develops, by sheer momentum, the opportunity of coercive power, and the exercise of this power has the effect of a taste of blood upon a predatory animal, so the exercise of delegated control may overreach itself and develop into an equally blind lust for bureaucratic coercion in the name of “progress.” In the hands of such self-seeking leaders as democracy is bound to develop while it awaits experience and is still a ferment, the thirst of the demagogue and his henchmen for personal power vitiates all the simple calculations of the idealist.

Under our present economic system—a logical evolution in which the growth has been from the tap-root of self-interest and the pruning from the hastily erected scaffolding of community-interest—there has been a steady curtailment of individual power as this has overshadowed and thus threatened the security of the community. Owing to the necessity of haste and to lack of experience, these limitations have occasionally had unexpected results; but by this process of pruning, the private maintenance of armed forces and the economic domination of the church have passed into the hands of the com-