Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/62

 net resultant, a maximum measure of individual freedom, or, in other words, a maximum flow of value. To the zealot (or to the reformer who feels that his personal fortunes are best served by acting as a special-agent for the state), compromise between state interests and the interests of the individual may be abhorrent. It is compromise, however, that determines the unfaltering motion of the earth—the basis of all dynamic science. With growing experience, the community may come to realize that economic value arises from the just balancing of effort and order. It has failed to recognize this, owing to the fact that sovereign responsibility for the cost of order has been dispersed together with sovereign power, but has not been justly apportioned. It is passed on steadily down the line, until it reaches the most helpless and most involved.

The economic problem, then, which as stated earlier, is to develop, measure and distribute human energy, resolves itself primarily into the preservation of the community as a trustee of order, purely for the sake of the free movement of the individual. The community can only be preserved by the adequate production of current wealth, so that the initial and final task is the devising of ways and means for ensuring production, without destroying the personal freedom which has been our lode-star through all the struggle. The integrity of the functioning-power of the unit is at the bottom of all energy, and, lacking energy, control becomes an empty office.

As stated by Gilbert, who had sufficient sense of proportion to make a sound economist, the first step is “to make the punishment fit the crime,” or, conversely, to make the recompense fit the work; and the striking of a just balance here will tend gradually to eliminate the hobos of our upper, middle and lower classes. How, without infinite supervision, can this be done by the state? It cannot be done by sudden attempts at drastic levelling which disregard all joint-undertakings entered into with those who worked in the past. This, for democracy particularly, would be a fatal betrayal of trust and there would result a lowering of morale, which would have an evil effect for years to come. Annoying as the idea may be to the re-