Over on Cherokee Gothic yesterday, I wrote about a factory in Russia that was paying its workers in bricks.
I claimed that bricks were not a very good medium of exchange.
It was pointed out to me on social media by Alex Tabarrok and Larry White that James Buchanan had mooted exactly a brick standard for money!
As Larry put it, "Bank reserves wouldn't be in the vault, they would BE the vault."
There's a discussion of Buchananian monetary musings in Chapter 2 of a recent book put out by Cato. The chapter is written by Hugh Rockoff.
Buchanan also discussed a labor standard, where you could pedal a stationary bike to get cash from an ATM.
In both cases he wanted the monetary system to be "the employer of last resort".
3 comments:
One time my friend and I crushed up a brick and tried to sell it as a street drug called "Brick". We failed to sell any, though.
That was you!
That was you!
Post a Comment