Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/166

112 justice and go farther in the solution of our industrial, commercial, and financial problems than almost any other reform proposed in the world to-day; and this it would do without the exertion of any repressive police force, but as simply and silently as setting our watches.

Uncertainty is a mark of an undeveloped civilization, and its demolition (through applied science, insurance, safeguards, and standardization) is one of the chief characteristics of a highly developed civilization. Our uncertain dollar is simply a relic of the Stone Age. It is an anomaly to-day.

7. No Claim to Theoretical Perfection

Perfection, of course, is not claimed for the proposed goods-dollar. It is not an "absolute" standard of value. An absolute standard of value is as unattainable as an absolute measure of length. A change in relative value may, theoretically, indicate a change in the "absolute" value either of goods or of money; but it is not possible for us to know, except in a general way, how much of the absolute change is in the goods and how much is in the dollar. We are in much the same situation as the astronomers. Our economical "fixed stars" are fixed only in a relative sense. We cannot measure the distances between them in terms of absolute value, but only in terms of visible goods, the general average of which, like the general average of the stars, is the nearest approach to absolute invariability we can, in practice, reach and measure.

The present proposal, therefore, is simply to do for the most important unit in all commerce—the dollar—what we have already done for every other unit.