Dan Fabulich wrote:
> Well, the usual argument here is that what's getting cheaper is the
> computation. At that point, the cost of simply having, distributing and
> dealing with money is more expensive than doing that more complicated
> calculation.
But the cost of using money declines just as fast. Look at the labor
savings of web transactions vs cash sales, for instance - and this doesn't
even take e-cash into account.
Besides, there is also an information problem involved. Right now you can
determine how many screws a potato should cost by comparing prices. If the
money prices weren't available it would suddenly become very difficult for
any individual to judge the value of anything other than his own work
products. To deal with this problem you'd have to create some other
information-transfer system to take the place of price signals, and if
you're going to do that you might as well just use money.
Billy Brown
bbrown@transcient.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:30 MDT