Lawrence Kramer, author
Money ”works” because it is accepted by people with something to sell. There are lots of things that someone offered ”money” may want to know about it, but one of those things has always been whether it is scarce, i.e., whether a flood of it may appear and compete for what the offeree may seek to buy with it. What the offeree of money needs, then, is information about the scarcity of the money. Gold, in its day, provided that information.
If the money is specie, the money is its own information, so long as the offeree knows that specie itself is rare. Enou ...
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