definite orderly limits. The scientist thinks of dynamic value in terms of harnessed motion or flow; but the ritualistic economist, to his own confusion and ours, tries to express such value in terms of one privately controlled commodity of unknown total quantity. He may seem more precise for the moment: but it is only for the moment. That has always been his difficulty, in spite of the fact that he lays down such a praiseworthy moral code for his wayward unit.
The economic “law of supply and demand” has been employed to cover a multitude of sins. It is obviously not a law but a travesty of law unless the demand is in orderly contact with the supply. If this is carefully considered it becomes more clearly apparent that taxation, the cost of providing order, is an integral component of value, and must also be an integral component of any scientific measure of value.
In other words, there is no such thing as measurable economic value where we have either autocracy or anarchy. Boundless effort is not measurable: boundless freedom is not measurable; but with the metamorphosis of effort into freedom, in a definite area of self-imposed order, value becomes a measurable reality. There would be no science of any kind if the mass and velocity of the earth were controlled even by as well-meaning and conscientious a body as the Federal Reserve Board. Science depends upon that equilibrium which we call order—not upon discretion!
Specific economic value, then, can only be measured in terms of total basic value if we are really interested in just measurement. Without much fear of serious contradiction, it may, therefore, be stated less diffidently that the conception of any relation between gold and economic value is a pitiful delusion, first, because the total available supply of gold is subject to arbitrary alteration; second, because the demand for gold is not constant, but spasmodic; and, third, because demand and supply are often disconnected. For these reasons the value of its projections into space—our so-called “redeemable” currency—and our credit instruments, “payable in gold” whether of government or citizen—cannot be measured since we know neither the value, the quantity, nor the location of the gold