Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/72

 evitably modifying pressure. What, then, are the logical factors, not subject to hazard or manipulation, by which the total pressure of the economic field may be measured?

It should be emphasized that this qualification of scientific factors of value is vital: they must be factors which are not subject to hazard or manipulation.

Now let us see what the political-economists have put forward as so-called basic factors of value to support their theories, and see how they were arrived at.

When the systematic study of economic data was commenced the whole weight of circumstances tended to make it a study of consequences rather than causes, since the arbitrary political factors were so inescapable, and so over-weighed the fundamental and scientific factors, that the nearest approach to approximation of the most important factor of all, at that time, was the king’s obituary. This appraisement was not only post-mortem, making scrutiny rather charitable, but was also subject to censure if exactness were too closely reached. We must remember that the unfortunate investigators of that day had alleged “majesty,” “power,” “grace” and “virtue” (supported by adequate armed forces) all as barriers between economic factors and political factors, so that the latter—the political factors—were all that it was safe to use if the political-economist desired to pursue his researches in the bosom of his family. Now to the engineer, the autocrat who meddles with fundamental factors is no better than a drowned rat in a drain pipe, as far as the measurement of flow is concerned. To avoid any unfairness it is only reasonable to add that democracy has many obstructions in its system today in the form of bureaucrats; but individually these are easier to dislodge. Our chief disadvantage is their number, which tends constantly to increase.

What was there to measure in those days? As a basic economic factor Land-area was hardly worth measuring, so few were the freeholds and so close was the possibility of acquiring new territory by appropriation and conquest: Land-value could be no better measured then than now—there was nothing to measure it with that would stay still. Commerce worked deviously under royal charters, with the king’s mistress as a