Value and Exchange

From “Choice in Currency: A Path to Sound Money”; the Mises Circle in Vancouver. Recorded 13 September 2008.

From “Choice in Currency: A Path to Sound Money”; the Mises Circle in Vancouver. Recorded 13 September 2008.

This completes the study of money and of the effects of changes in monetary relations on the economic system. Like all commodities, money has its own supply and demand and price: purchasing power. Everyone deals in money.

Direct exchange was limited. The pattern of indirect exchange led to the common medium of exchange: money. Maximization of psychic income always leads the seller of a good to seek the highest money price for it, and the buyer of a good to seek the lowest money price.

Exchange is the foundation of the division of labor. Each party to an exchange must expect greater psychic benefit than what he is giving up. Thus, trades are not equal, they are win-win activities. Property and ownership are value-free and a pre-condition of a free market.

Recorded at Mises University 2008.

Recorded at Mises University 2008.

From Economic Calculation In The Socialist Commonwealth. Pages 3-10 in the text, as narrated by Gennady Stolyarov II.

The only real answer here is to let the free market rule, which is another way of saying that people should be free to come to their own negotiations about the prices they are willing to pay or accept for this and that.

Chris Anderson, a well-known business guru in the world of online commerce, imagines a world in which all internet services are free.