 How interesting to see this article arrive in my email box, as I had just published some thoughts on exactly the same topic at http://blog.bacq2bacq.com/?p=558. Gold is money.
Peter, while you point out correctly barter's problem of simultaneous need, there is something just as important, maybe even moreso in today's complex economies, namely the triangular rate of growth of the number of exchange rates in a barter-exchange system. When we have a market of N goods, we only need N "prices" if we have money. Without money, we need N*(N-1)/2 different exchange rates.
In "Debt, the First 5000 Years", David Graeber points out that the canonical barter economy we all use to explain "what existed before money" never in fact existed. We developed debt as a way to think about money before we bartered. Currency, on the other hand, was indeed our invention, but came after debt and bookkeeping.
On my blog, I argue that we did not "invent" money any more than Newton invented "position" or "velocity". The concepts existed in our brains long before Newton gave us a language to understand it all. We did not suddenly develop an ability to throw and catch objects once Newton's rules were published, our minds were already doing the math based on mass, position, velocity, and acceleration. Newton just gave us language to express what we were already doing.
The same is true of money and currency. The concept of money was in our minds before we invented currency to represent it. For our governments to both force us to use a specific currency, and further, one of widely varying and rapidly declining value, and, worst of all, further forcing us to pay interest to private bankers, just for the "privilege" of using it, well, it is like forcing us to pay bankers to use their proprietary elastic bands to measure position, when we have perfectly good, solid yardsticks instead, that are rent-free.
Is it any wonder, with measures of value so distorted, that society is confused?
Thank you for helping to get the message out, Peter.
Ben. Commented 4335 days ago |
