Hmm...
The property value is determined by the currency and the currency value is determined by the property value?
What would keep them from debasing the currency by inflating the property value to ensure 'price stability'?
Jon Irenicus: The US is a bad example. Its current system was originally linked to a commodity system, whence it evolved. And anyway, why should I suspend "disbelief"? There has been no good argument so far to the effect that a fiat system can simply arise de novo. Whether or not demand for tribute or its sheer marketability made gold the chosen commodity, Mises's arguments apply.
The US is a bad example. Its current system was originally linked to a commodity system, whence it evolved. And anyway, why should I suspend "disbelief"? There has been no good argument so far to the effect that a fiat system can simply arise de novo. Whether or not demand for tribute or its sheer marketability made gold the chosen commodity, Mises's arguments apply.
It's perfectly reasonable for an economist (and this would quite possibly have been von Mises's reaction, who always argued that economics should be radically indifferent to the past) to shrug, and say: Money simply evolves from a commodity of value. And who cares where this value comes from?
But this is a forum about political theory. There is a common assumption that free markets depend on monetary systems that evolve from systems of free exchange. And this assumption of freedom has implications for political theory and practice. I'm interested in the implications if we start to question these assumptions of freedom, and I'd like to discuss them here.
If you're not interested, or don't see the point, that's fine.
Yes how does society regulate value? In theory or in practice? Is value base on time spent in creation? Or is it based on energy? Or is it truly a fiat-whatever value I put on soemthing that I want/need becomes the standard and so forth the next person in the exchange?
Are not some things just valuable because we love them,,or for other intrinsic reasons. So for ie the Rainforest has x value because of it's beauty/uniqueness or attributes to our Environment.
Depend on them? No. The monetary systems depend on the markets to even arise to begin with. A state can only then latch itself on to the whole process. The causality is the reverse. Markets expand in proportion to how widely the medium of exchange is used, but with no real account of money arising by fiat, there is no reason to assume it did not or cannot arise out of barter free market economies. If your argument is that money's birth (or existence) requires a state (itself false), and that markets can only arise because of this, then I see no reason to accept it at all. People will trade, state or no state, to fulfill their wants, and insofar as it is convenient, they will adopt a medium of exchange. All a state can do, should it intervene, is bias the choice of the commodity. There are many sources on the LVMI website documenting the history of private banking and money creation.
-Jon
To darkness I condemn you...
My answer would be, how can society determine value in the first place? The whole point that austrian theory makes, starting with Menger, is that value is a totally individual, hence subjective evaluation. Value at its core is based on what an individual values at a specific time.
Society is, at best, a convenientent category for individuals that, at best, might hold some common goals. Society is not an entity that exists outside of our minds. Thus it is a pure convenience of human rationalistation. Value on the other hand is based on real humans. Real individuals that, at any given time make decisions that show what they value most, at the time they make the decision. Groups can not decide, they are categories, individual human beings decide. And, they decide on what they value most, at the time the decission is made.
If there was a thing, as the german state philosophers (Hegel, Fichte, Schelling et. al) claimed, called Volksseele or Zeitgeist, than it would contradict the freedom of the individual. - which was exactly what those frederician philosophers tried to prove-. Yet, no one has been able to show the existens of such phenomena, so they do not exist if you have an empirical understanding about sciene, and they do not exist as well,if you tend toward the logical understanding of science too, because they can not be logically derived fraom any know axiom to date.
Values what a single human being thinks it is valuable. If a bunch of folks believe that certain tings are valuable for all of them, so be it. But value is never derived from a group think approach. Value is subjectiv.
After all, that is my humble opinion
In the begining there was nothing, and it exploded.
Terry Pratchett (on the big bang theory)
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