Money

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  • #16935
    bbinder
    Participant

    Got it. Thanks!

    #16936
    jmherbener
    Participant

    You haven’t specified the proximity of the item used as money to the attainment of your end. That is the key to classifying an item as a consumer good, producer good, or medium of exchange.

    The condition that “without it, it would not be possible to attain my end” applies to all goods chosen by a person in his action. Without a car, I cannot attain my end of commuting to work. Without labor, steel, rubber, and so on a car cannot be produced and my end cannot be attained. Without money, I cannot buy a car and my end cannot be attained. Consumer goods, producer goods, and money all contribute to the attainment of an end and therefore, all of them have psychic value to a person, not just the consumer good.

    The item used as money is a consumer good to a person when he attains his end directly in one action with the item. Let’s say gold coins are money, and I hold a particular gold coin for its sentimental or historical value. When I do this, the coin is not a medium of exchange to me. I have classified it as a consumer good because it gives me psychic value directly. Then let’s say I give the coin to my son who classifies it as money. As a medium of exchange, the gold coin cannot directly satisfy my son’s end. The only function of a medium of exchange is to facilitate trade. He must eventually spend it to acquire a consumer good that directly satisfies his end.

    #16937
    sentilopis
    Participant

    I can grasp media of exchange not being a consumer good, but very blurry about it not being a production good.

    Money does not lose its physical integrity after use, but the same can also be argued for a hammer which stays more or less intact after hammering in a few nails.

    I’m trying to find a strict dichotomy between capital goods and media of exchange, but having no luck just yet.

    Then I found this paper by Dr. Barnett and Dr. Block, and now I’m totally confused.(is there any formal rebuttal to this?)

    http://mises.org/pdf/asc/2003/asc9barnett.pdf

    #16938
    jmherbener
    Participant

    The hammer is used up in production as are all tools, equipment, and so on. Entrepreneurs depreciate the market value of their plant and equipment to reflect this fact. They do not depreciate the monetary value of their cash holdings.

    Perhaps Mises’s discussion of these matters in his book, Theory of Money and Credit, will help clarify things,

    http://library.mises.org/books/Ludwig%20von%20Mises/The%20Theory%20of%20Money%20and%20Credit.pdf

    #16939
    sentilopis
    Participant

    I’ll pore through it, thanks.

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