Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/60

 haphazard and ill-considered precaution, the irresponsible control of land-area is not necessarily broken, so that there are as yet no very happy or logical results to be recorded of a new effort to disperse menacing aggregations of individual power which exist through direct or indirect control of area. If the proceeds of such taxation are employed mainly to fatten the stirring political leeches and initiate destructive competition by the state with the less powerful individual, there is nothing gained. All that can be expected of this very unscientific method of pruning is that it will compel a partial and costly redistribution of basic economic control into other irresponsible hands; for unless we see that economic responsibility is also redistributed at the same time, we have not accomplished much except to convert massed friction into scattered friction.

In this discussion the community is not regarded as an aggregation of individuals enjoying in common the benefits of all individual effort, but as a trustee through which necessary authority is brought to focus to guarantee order. The community—sentimentalists to the contrary notwithstanding—while it has obvious interests, has no inalienable rights. A community may be an aggregation of hobos whose joint and several ideal of happiness is the appropriation of pies from back porches. The method of approach and the division of the spoils may be jointly settled upon in advance, but no kind providence guarantees the pie; and this applies also to more respectable communities.

The following are put forward, then, as normal community motives:

First.&emsp;The major interest of the community is continuity of order or the maintenance of conditions which will ensure a maximum flow of effective effort.

Second.&emsp;A maximum flow of effective effort in a self-governing community can only be obtained by utilizing the pressure of necessity and the inducement of unimpairable reward.

Third.&emsp;In utilizing the guarantee of reward to encourage individual initiative to make its maximum effort, the community must deliberately sanction specific and irrevocable inducements.