At 06:17 AM 12/8/01 +1100, mattd wrote:
jamesd... "Money in the US was largely privately issued until 1915. Capitalism long predates government monopolies of money. The word dollar comes from thaler, which a government stamped ounce of silver -- but stamped by a minor government very far away, one of many such stamping authorities."
Very interesting,relevant, not much,but fascinating.Can we talk of e-money replacing the present shared hallucination now?
God DAMN but you are obtuse. First people swapped chickens for goats. Then they used more portable forms of exact trade, where the portable forms were still of equal value, but easier to pocket. Eventually this got (partially) symbolic, but was private. With reps and all that. Then the govt discovered they could fund wars (etc) by asserting their paper was good ---after all, they could confiscate by force whatever actual value they needed to back it up. If you don't see the implications for future history, you may find many threads here confusing.