[p2p-research] The difference between anarchism and libertarianism

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/16/09, Stefan Merten <smerten at oekonux.de> wrote:

>  >> What I never understood: When I can create as much money as I want -
>  >> which above is already impossible by the merit thing - for what do I
>  >> need money then at all?
>  >>
>  >> Money is either scarce or it makes no sense. It follows that if you
>  >> want to overcome scarcity money makes no sense.
>  >
>  > Again, wrong. Money encodes value, trust or merit.

>  If you are claiming that everyone can create as much money as s/he
>  wants then everyone can pay the price infinite for every good. It is
>  pretty obvious that money stops making sense then.

I think you're combating a strawman here.  I've seen Austrian
followers of Mises and Rothbard do the same:  if money isn't simply a
commodity store of past value, then it must be be worthless fiat
money.  But that's a false dichotomy:  money can be finite and scarce,
and still be replicated by a variety of possible rules depending on
its function in a given system.

The central issue is the function of money:  is it a store of past
value, or is it an accounting system for measuring the exchange of
present and future labor?  The difference is between what Schumpeter
called "money theories of credit" and "credit theories of money."  In
the latter kind of system, goods may be scarce and require labor to
produce and acquire; but rather than finding someone who already has a
pile of money in his possession and the purchasing power to buy your
labor, you can incur credit from the barter network against your
future labor.  Rather than the money having to pre-exist to fund
transactions, it is created by the transactions.

It is still finite, but there are many kinds of finitude.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html