Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/95

 fining factor of the area within which that labor must operate, or the true land factor; but what he meant by intensity was effectiveness, which is not measurable until we have some stationary unit of value.

As one of the three basic factors by which to measure value, what is now put forward is human effort, whether mental or physical. Human effort is the phase of energy which lies at the core of our whole economic problem. It is what we want to measure and utilize, exactly as the problem of the scientist is the measurement and utilization of electricity or radio-activity.

Extra-effort, beyond that required for the immediate sustenance of the individual, goes into an intermediate reservoir and becomes capital, an advantageous product; and this is a very important consequence of effort, since much of the remainder, being expended to satisfy immediate need, is similar to that physical energy known to the engineer as “lost work,” which, while vital, is apparently consumed in overcoming resistance. The major problem in the art of good government is to have the surplus which is gained from individual extra-effort, and is deposited in the reserve fund of capital, justly measured and promptly handed to the individual upon demand—not, as in the old fairy tales, left sticking to the measure, or diluted, as it is today, by the issue of countless additional tokens of value, with nothing behind them except political optimism and a system of taxation that was devised long before economic justice was dreamed of.

Labor, or human effort, is clearly limited by population. If there is no population there is no effort, so that the zero point of effort and population is common to each; and, but for our errors in economic adjustment and our attempts to rectify these politically, it is safe to say that human effort is