Du Bois offers an accountant's argument disguised as a moral one—he's not merely saying freedom is virtuous, but that tyranny is expensive in ways we tend to ignore. The price of repression includes the vast machinery required to enforce it: surveillance systems, police forces, prisons, and the constant vigilance needed to keep people compliant. When South Africa maintained apartheid, it required an entire bureaucratic apparatus and security apparatus that drained resources that might have built schools or hospitals instead. By measuring both in economic terms, Du Bois shifts the conversation from abstract values to something harder to dismiss—that oppressive systems, for all their appearance of control, ultimately squander more of a nation's wealth than the freedom they suppress.