(DRAFT: it’s getting too late to finish, and I’ve been sick for the past few days, so Ill finish this – as promised – later or tomorrow)
The main functions of money are distinguished as:
– A Store of Time.
… If I could educate people on just one idea, it would bet that our only existential commodity is time, and we are no wealthier than cave men, but through a continuously expanding division of labor due to property, money, prices, and contract, we produce more per moment of working life than ever before. So we are not wealthier than in the past, we have merley made everything vastly cheaper.
Hard money is the result of saved time. Credit money is the result of anticipated savings of time. Fiat money is the result of gambling that in the aggregate will will save time.
And so credit, and fiat money are only so valuable as there is opportunity to save time. This single idea is the basis of all of economics. Yet it is virtually unknown, and ever more rarely understood.
– A Store of Value (Purchasing power) – with stability of value (Purchasing power) within dependent production cycles.
– A Medium of Exchange – thereby satisfying the problem of “coincidence of wants”, and increasing the velocity of trade, by decreasing the friction (cost) of finding opportunities for trade, and performing that trade. Mediums of exchange save time.
– A Source of Liquidity – A commodity of continuous demand.
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– A Provisioner of Prices.
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– A Unit of Account;
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– A Standard of Deferred Payment – debt, credit, interest,
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– A Scope of Utility – “Range” – A commodity of demand sufficient for imputation for production cycles
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To fulfill those functions, money must possess the following properties:
– Cognizable: its value must be easily identified.
…. Stamping ‘coins’ serves as a ‘trademark’.
…. Protecting that trademark serves to protect its value
…. Trademarking is … increasingly inordinately expensive.
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– Unitary (‘countable’) by object, weight, volume – (and now index.)
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– Fungible: its individual units must be capable of mutual substitution (i.e., interchangeability).
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– Durable: able to withstand repeated use.
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– Portable: easily carried and transported in relation to their purchasing power.
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MONEY AND IT’S SUBSTITUTES (DEPENDENCIES)
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