Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/85

 shall have the right to appear at all points and not be relegated to special uses in argument. Curiously enough, while the three eminent economists mentioned above, with their quantitative aspirations, are all eager to discuss the factor of Time at one point or another, they appear to regard it, not as co-important with Land and Labor, but more as a special factor to be used in gauging the rights of capital in terms of interest. We have no concern at the moment with capital, which is one partial resultant of the interactions of Labor, Land and Time.

Jevons is distinctly encouraging, and there is good reason to gather confidence from the following pregnant sentences which invite the unconventional approach of the engineer: “But I believe that dynamical branches of the science of economy may remain to be developed, on the consideration of which I have not at all entered.” And further: “The notion of value is to our science what that of energy is to mechanics.”

Now the justifiable contention of the engineer is that with the advent of democracy, or self-imposed order, and the liberation of effort within fixed political boundaries, economic value became obviously dynamic, and we must rearrange all our conceptions. At that stage in economic history newly freed forces came into play within specific limits, and all the factors of dynamics are necessarily involved thenceforward.

The laws of dynamics deal with forces and motion, and cover both statics and kinetics. What in the last analysis must scientific economics deal with if not the value of liberated human effort confined within the orderly limits of democracies? How can we measure the duration or effectiveness of liberated human effort within such an area without the use of time? How shall specific value be measured except by the free expression of effort, just as potential difference is measured? In the very simplest terms the value of a slice of bread can only be measured by the orderly effort free men will expend to reach it after being galvanized by time in terms of desire.

The comparative values of slices of bread and gold-outcrop-