How To Fix Our Depreciating Money

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:36:54 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Lew Rockwell at LewRockwell.com - Austrian economics, of course. Commodity-backed, free-market money. [lew]

Currently the government has in place severe restrictions on what currency you can use as legal tender. The courts do not enforce other kinds of monetary contracts. Anyone who comes up with alternative currency is going to face possible prosecution. For this reason, the dollar is mandatory. We will be stuck with it even if the feds are destroying it. There is no way out.

All these restrictions need to be repealed as a step toward monetary reform. People should be free to use any money they want. More than that, people should be free to introduce new monies based on gold or silver or any other commodity, and develop payment systems based on this, whether that means paper signifiers or digital goods. The market is capable of policing this system the same way it does retail trade.

Money originated in a market competition long before the age of the nation state. It is a product of the market, not of state edict or some mythical "social compact." Nor is there a reason to put a stop to the competitive process once it has decided upon a single money. Money can and does fail, especially once it is nationalized and given over to a central bank to manage. Permitting freedom in money production and use amounts to permitting market forces to continue to select among a variety of choices.

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