Money
Where does money come from? Sandy Klein walks through the Mengerian answer: not from a king’s decree or a social contract, but spontaneously, as traders gravitated to the most saleable good until one commodity became universally accepted. Along the way she shows why barter can’t sustain a real economy, why gold and silver kept winning out, and why—following Rothbard—there’s no such thing as an “optimal” money supply.
Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 20, 2025.
Mises University is the world’s leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.