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Ideas for an Alternative Monetary Future

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Ideas for an Alternative Monetary Future

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coinage

Where have all the coins gone?
Commodity Money, Economic History, Fiat Money, Money & Politics, News

Where Have All the Coins Gone?

Will Luther/July 10, 2020June 19, 2022

“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert,” the economist Milton Friedman once quipped, “in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” The U.S. Mint, to its credit, had a much longer run. The Federal Reserve, which purchases coins from the Mint…

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Chinese monetary history, monetary history, China, private money, coinage
Economic History, Fiat Money, Recommended Reading

Monetary Freedom: Lessons from the Western Han Dynasty

James Dorn/October 17, 2017June 19, 2022

During the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – A.D. 9), the question of monetary freedom was vigorously debated. There were as yet no banks or paper money in China — money consisted solely of coin.  Private mints competed with government mints, either in the shadow market or…

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lydian, stater, electrum, white, selgin, coinage, origins of money
Commodity Money, Economic History, Financial Innovation

"Lord Keynes" Contra White on the Beginnings of Coinage

George Selgin/August 30, 2017July 27, 2022

I fully expected Larry White's recent post challenging the state theory of money, and particularly that theory's understanding of the origins of metallic coinage, to generate some critical feedback. In particular, I expected it to raise the hackles of "Lord Keynes" (henceforth LK), the otherwise anonymous author…

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Cartalist, Chartalist, Menger, origins of money, debasement, lawrence h. white, mints, coinage
Commodity Money, Economic History, Fiat Money

Why the “State Theory of Money” Doesn’t Explain the Coinage of Precious Metals

Larry White/August 24, 2017June 19, 2022

I’ve begun working on a new book on the gold standard. In the first chapter I plan to discuss the origin of money, as a preliminary to discussing how silver and gold became the world’s dominant commodity monies. The topic of the origin of money has become…

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Welcome to Alt-M, a community devoted to exploring and promoting ideas for an alternative monetary future. Our goal is to reveal the shortcomings of today’s centralized, bureaucratic, and discretionary monetary arrangements, and to bring serious consideration of real alternatives to the center stage of current monetary and financial reform debates.

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