: Re: Real capitalism falling down drunk

[David Honig]

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.