In any other field of study, all these old sources would be reviewed in the first day or week?
How is it that the teaching of finance, economics, fiscal policy & political economy has been perverted to the current whims of transient lobbies, instead of to enduring principles. The very process of education in these fields has been diverted to the cause of making the students and electorate susceptible to propaganda, not public purpose. This is a complete and utter travesty.
THE SCIENCE OF MONEY.
..by ALEXANDER DEL MAR, C.E., M.E.
Formerly Director of the Bureau of Statistics of the United States;
Member of the United States Monetary Commission of 1876;
Author of a "History of the Precious Metals,"
GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1885.
(hat tip to Matt Franko, Baltimore; from comments on this blog; yet this is worth calling attention to)
e.g., pp 35-39
"The principal kinds of actual moneys have now been described and classified according to the importance of their several characteristics and legal attributes. It is not from these characteristics and attributes, considered separately and with respect to their various influences upon the expression of value, that the received principles of money are derived; but from the consideration of a portion of them lumped together.
No analysis has hitherto been made of money; and that which, as it stands, is a most heterogeneous and complex object, has been treated as though it were homogeneous and simple. The principles of money have heretofore not been deduced from an orderly arrangement of the facts concerning it, but from disorder, from chaos, from the aspect of things endless in number and indeterminable in form, from the attributes of such things not in a simple condition, but when merged incongruously with other things equally numerous and indeterminate; and from relations which were both intricate, involved, and indefinable. Within this maze, where Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Newton, Locke, and Humboldt, feared to venture, the financial pedants and quacks of all ages have made themselves a paradise.
It need scarcely be said that the principles they have established are utterly impracticable; that so far as man's intellect has been exerted in affairs relating to exchanges and money, books have been of little service to him; that the prizes of commercial life have too commonly fallen to the lot of the reckless and undeserving; and that those modern nations, whom nature, history, and opportunity, intended to be great, have been dragged down to the limits of littleness by monetary systems which were based on feudal infirmities, and a conservatism which hesitates to rise above them."
It need scarcely be said that the principles they have established are utterly impracticable; that so far as man's intellect has been exerted in affairs relating to exchanges and money, books have been of little service to him; that the prizes of commercial life have too commonly fallen to the lot of the reckless and undeserving; and that those modern nations, whom nature, history, and opportunity, intended to be great, have been dragged down to the limits of littleness by monetary systems which were based on feudal infirmities, and a conservatism which hesitates to rise above them."
It's not about the gold or silver, it's all about the prerogative:
ReplyDelete"The language of Pliny, where he condemns those who introduced gold and silver into the money of Rome, of having committed a Crime against Mankind, was not justified by any circumstances relating to the money of his own time; it must have been
copied from some chronicler of an earlier period, probably from Timseus, who wrote about B.C. 290, a period when the retreating tide of
metallic money left the wreck of the neglected Prerogative exposed to
view. If applied to that period the condemnation was essentially just
yet the Crime was not so much in substituting gold and silver tokens
for bronze tokens, as in substituting gold and silver metal for bronze
money; in substituting Commodities, which could be coined up and
melted down by their individual owners at pleasure and with little or
no loss, in the place of Money, which could not thus be treated with-
out great and irreparable loss; in supplementing the bronze nummi,
which under State regulation formed a fixed and known proportion
of the whole currency, with gold and silver pieces, the latter being
amenable to private control and bearing no fixed or known proportion to the Volume of money employed in the exchanges. The Crime
against Mankind was in depriving the state of its Prerogative of
Money, to bestow it upon a favoured class of the population. It was
the same crime that in 1666 Charles II. committed in England and in
1790 Alexander Hamilton committed in the United States by recommending his government to adopt the system of Charles II.
Nations may grow rich with a Barter system; (and let it be under-
stood that the gratuitous or nearly gratuitous and unlimited coinage
of money, when coupled with free meltage and export, whether the
coins are of gold, silver, copper, or any other metal, and when unsupported by fiduciary issues, must result in simple Barter for the
metal thus coined ;) but such wealth cannot become equitably diffused
among the productive classes. It will inevitably become congested;
and for the most part it will gravitate not towards merit and indus-
try, but towards combination, conspiracy and idleness. The Messiah
declared that the rich could not hope to enter the Kingdom of heaven,
not merely because they were rich, but evidently because, as the laws
then stood, and it may be added, as they now again stand, wealth was
too often gained unworthily. "
Alexander del Mar
Ancient Britain In the Light of Modern Archaeological Discoveries
pp.119-120
David
ReplyDeleteThe archeo record has almost no small denomination coins from about 200 bc to 17 ad.
This was from Sulla thru Augustus.
Then the As (copper) shows up.
The other thing that I am thinking is that Greece and Rome used these metals TO SPITE THEM, and they never weighed them.
They struck a HUMAN image in them to impart any utility function.
Again thanks for turning me on to del Mar I am working thru his books this summer.
Rsp
Ps
ReplyDeleteUnder the Mosaic law no one could be much ' richer' than another. Everything was to be allotted equitably.
the Lord is not defining 'rich' in absolute terms but rather relative terms. This goes to 'class'.
The law forbid class establishment.
Hence the camel thru the needle analogy that follows.
Rsp
Matt,
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt that the Christ had a meaning that may not be easily grasped by a superficial reading when he referred to money and/or riches. Much of his beef with the Jews of his time was that they weren't even living up to the religion of their fathers, let alone being prepared for the gnosis he wanted to give them.
Much has been learned by archaeology since del Mar's time, and it would be great if someone could integrate those new facts with the complex understanding he had of the money systems involved. I doubt if there is anyone working today who has the combination of scholarly skills that del Mar had. I think he really was a Titan who stood out from his century.
D,
ReplyDeleteI see the same thing going on today that del Mar pointed out in antiquity.
You have the Austrian types advocating for use of weights of metals and folks like myself advocating for purely what Warren calls ffnc, or what is termed 'nomisma' in the ancient Greek.
Seems like an epic battle that has been raging for 1000's of years within humanity.
Rsp