In his 1942 book, This Age of Fable, German free-market economist Gustav Stolper pointed out:
Hardly ever do the advocates of free capitalism realize how utterly their ideal was frustrated at the moment the state assumed control of the monetary system. . . . A “free” capitalism with government responsibility for money and credit has lost its innocence. From that point on it is no longer a matter of principle but one of expediency how far one wishes or permits governmental interference to go. Money control is the supreme and most comprehensive of all government controls short of expropriation.
Even in the high-water mark of classical liberalism in the 19th century, practically all advocates of the free market and free trade believed that money was the one exception to the principle of private enterprise. The international monetary order of the 19th century, of which Wilhelm Roepke spoke in such glowing terms, was nonetheless the creation of a planning mentality. The decision to “go on” the gold standard in each of the major Western nations was a matter of state policy.
A central-banking structure for the management and control of a gold-backed currency was established in each country by its respective government, either by giving a private bank the monopoly control over gold reserves and issuing banknotes or by establishing a state institution assigned the task of managing the monetary system within the borders of a nation. The United States was the last of the major Western nations to establish a central bank, but it finally did so in 1913.
That even the gold standard was a government-managed monetary system was succinctly explained by economist Michael A. Heilperin in his book Aspects of the Pathology of Money (1968).
—Richard M. Ebeling, “The Gold Standard as Government-Managed Money,” in Monetary Central Planning and the State (Fairfax, VA: Future of Freedom Foundation, 2015), Kindle e-book.
No comments:
Post a Comment