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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PiMac who wrote (12605)	5/20/1999 2:53:00 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13994

PiMac, I will come back and address the post more fully later, but for the time being I am posting some stuff I wrote on the Libertarian thread awhile back: In the Middle Ages, the traders who ended up forming the Hanseatic League were hampered by the dearth of coinage, and came up with chits that were widely honored among them. In some sense, that was a non- governmental currency. In almost all instances, however, currencies are floated by governments. If most people won't accept it as legal tender, it isn't currency. Currencies function within geographic limits, sure, but within those (reasonable) limits they must be generally accepted, which is why corporate chits, good only in company owned stores, are not taken seriously as currency. The traders started with promissory notes, as a form of time- delayed barter, but there came to be a common agreement as to the relative weight of the various notes, and they were soon exchanged as if they were cash, backed up by the goods on their face, or equivalents. Thus, the ultimate convertibility was to goods, not gold. Easily tradable items often function as quasi- currencies in extreme situations. Your example of cigarettes is excellent, because it so often has that function in prisons, prisoner of war camps, and during bouts of hyper- inflation. But if it could not easily be traded for goods, if it were not easily transportable, and if relative values were not fairly easy to calculate, it would be rejected in favor of straight barter. And in normal situations, people prefer legal tender, because of greater convenience, or less destructibility, or the ability to convert to other currencies, or just because they feel safer that it is legal, that is, backed by the state. The main point, as you say, is to show the irrelevancy of gold. But currency fluctuations are just a substitute for other sorts of market fluctuations. You may trade two baskets of corn for a ham, and then decide you would like the corn back. Not only might the other party not be willing to cancel the trade, but you might find that your other neighbor will only pay one basket for a ham. Thus, between transactions, the price of ham fell, when you were stuck with it. Anyway, barter is not the same, but as it becomes more sophisticated, it can begin to verge on a currency system, and there may be no bright line.... Yes, and I liked your point about consumption. The supply of a genuine currency is relatively more stable, unless the government is trying to undermine creditors.

To: PiMac who wrote (12605)	5/21/1999 4:02:00 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13994

PiMac--- Okay, returning to your theorizing: There is an intermediate kind of calculation, one that is beyond exchange- value, but requires practical action, where one acknowledges various trade- offs in the expenditure of resources on some good. Since resources are finite, there is always competition among various worthwhile potentialities for them. For example, I have a good singing voice, acting talent, and good looks. Many people thought I would go into show business. But my true interests are intellectual, and there is only so much time and energy, so I pursued a different path...In a society, such choices can be decentralized, as when various charitable organizations compete for support, or centralized in a government, as when lobbyists compete for votes. Since there is a rough hierarchy of goods, there are guidelines in our thinking about what is important, and the relative trade- offs. Since there are always contingent conditions, there is an irreducible degree of indeterminacy and/or controversiality to the allocation of social resources....