Silvio Gesell - The NATURAL ECONOMIC ORDER
La Provincia de Buenos-Aires reconoce este Billete por un peso moneda corriente, 10 Enera de 1869. Translation: The province of Buenos-Aires recognises this piece of paper as a peso (dollar) of national money. I have never been able to discover whether this inscription was the result of insight, or of embarrassment, like the wording of the present Argentine paper-money, which promises to pay the bearer at sight so many pesos - in paper-money ! "La Nacion pagarรก al portador y รก la vista y por medio del Banco de la Nacion 100 Pesos moneda nacional." Clearly nonsense, since a peso mon. nac. is nothing else than the same paper peso. The bank promises to hand back the piece of paper handed in for conversion. The following proposal has been made repeatedly and even in quite recent times: The State prints enough paper-money to buy up the whole land of the nation and thus at once solves the greatest of all social problems, the problem of how to return rents to the people. The land is then security for the paper-money, but in accordance with the aim of the proposal, is not given in exchange for the notes. The holder of the paper-money has to be satisfied with the security of the land, just as the holder of a banknote is supposed to be satisfied with the security of the gold in the cellars of the bank (which is certainly not the case, for the holder of the banknotes satisfies himself with the services performed by them as the medium of exchange. If it were otherwise, he would, like the goldsmith in need of raw material, go and fetch away the gold at once). From the standpoint of monetary technique this is a crazy proposal. Here again it is overlooked that to mediate the exchange of wares is a sufficient service for paper-money, and that if this service is guaranteed (for which it is only necessary that no other form of money should be issued), every other kind of service is superfluous. The difficulty of grasping the notion of money lies in the fact that the service we expect from it is so completely independent of the money-material. The material is necessary only in order that money may be visible and palpable, so that we can assure ourselves of its existence and transfer it; by no means because we expect something of its material part as such. Otherwise it would be impossible for a coin to remain 1, 10 or 100 years in circulation, or for a banknote to remain 24 hours outstanding. The quantity of money alone is of importance, for upon it, partly, depends the magnitude of the supply of money and the amount of commodities that we cay buy for it. Money considered as a material has no properties, or at least no active, working properties, no properties that would be missed even if entirely absent. Why, the Germans chose gold instead of silver for their money simply because they had to yield sixteen times more commodities for one kilogram of gold than for one kilogram of silver ! They got sixteen times less money-material - that it why they preferred gold to silver ! Of every kind of goods for use, without exception, the buyer says "the more the better", but of the money-material, on the contrary, "the less the better". Money only needs to be countable: the rest is mere ballast. We buy honey because it tastes sweet, beer because it intoxicates, lead because it is heavy, a footrule because it measures a certain length, a quart measure because it has a certain cubic capacity. But with money we do not ask for taste, weight, cubic capacity, or any material characteristic, or anything for the direct satisfaction of our personal wants. We buy money as a ware in order-to pass in on again as a ware. A proof of the general indifference to the physical characteristics of money is the fact that not one person in a thousand is able to state how much fine gold he is legally entitled to demand for a dollar, a mark, a franc, or a five-pound note. The incredulous can easily test the truth of this statement. For this reason we ask of money only that it should possess the fewest possible physical properties; for this reason mankind has gradually and unconsciously adopted as money-material a natural substance, gold, which of all substances has been most niggardly endowed with properties. How poor in properties is gold in comparison with any other product say a hammer, a book or a canary-bird ! Not for its colour, weight, bulk, ring, smell, taste or chemical affinities has gold been chosen as money. Gold neither rusts nor rots, neither grows nor decays, neither scratches, nor burns, nor cuts. Gold is without life, it is the archetype of death.
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