Alexander W. Salter
Discretionary Central Banking Is Incentive Incompatible
Central banking is the institutionalization of irresponsibility in monetary policy.
Modern Central Banking as Technocracy
The chief problem with modern central banking is that it’s discretionary.
Coinage and Fiscal Finagling
Coinage provided an easy-to-assess standard. It also presented a significant temptation for the fiscal authority.
Ancient Human Activity and the Necessary Conditions for Indirect Exchange
Chartalists are right: debt preceded money. But that fact doesn’t do the work they think it does.
Do the Origins of Money Matter?
A whirlwind tour through alternative theories would seem to suggest one fits much more comfortably with a pro-liberty worldview than another.
Money in Illiberalism
A liberal society is governed by the principles of private property and freedom of contract, under the aegis of a nondiscriminatory rule of law. In such a society, money enables […]
Money in Liberalism
One feature of a liberal society is that its institutions, and especially its formal institutions with coercive backing, are bound by a nondiscriminatory rule of law, and work to protect […]
The Institutional Character of Money
On the one hand, money is the language of commerce; money prices are the very medium of economic experience. On the other hand, there seems to be a deeper reality […]
Is Money Really a Veil?
My previous post was a crash course on the role of prices in a market economy. Importantly, prices are money prices. The vast majority of the time, producers accept the […]
Let’s get back to basics. What is a price?
A price is an exchange ratio: you must give up a certain amount of one good in order to get another good. Barter economies have prices, which are expressed as […]
