Larry White on the Origin of Money

Via David Henderson of EconLog. 

"This [Cartalist] account fails to explain, however, why governments chose bits of gold or silver as the material for these tokens, rather than something cheaper, say bits of iron or copper or paper impressed with sovereign emblems. In the market-evolutionary account, preciousness is advantageous in a medium of exchange by lowering the costs of transporting any given value. In a Cartalist pay-token account, preciousness is disadvantageous -- it raises the costs of the fiscal operation -- and therefore baffling. Issuing tokens made of something cheaper would accomplish the same end at lower cost to the sovereign. (By the way, note also Graeber's equivocation "invented or." Proposing that governments enlarged the acceptance of coins, after the market economy had already begun using them, is categorically different from proposing that governments invented coinage. Menger himself had no problem with the former proposition, but he rejected the latter as an unfounded prejudice.) (italics in original)

This is a key paragraph from Larry White, "Why the 'State Theory of Money"'Doesn't Explain the Coinage of Precious Metals," Alt-M.org, August 24, 2017. 

 

The whole thing is well worth reading."