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From: tdh@frog.UUCP (T. Dave Hudson)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: understanding money
Message-ID: <342@frog.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 31-Jan-86 22:29:55 EST
Article-I.D.: frog.342
Posted: Fri Jan 31 22:29:55 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 21:58:43 EST
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Organization: Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA
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>> Money, which is simply a common medium of exchange, is not a
>> measure of value.  It is used as a measure because
>> calculation is easy and because the expectations of future
>> trade that are based on past trade are fairly reliable.

> If money is used as a measure of value, it is a measure of value.  What
> else would it mean for something to be a measure of value?

It is used as a measure of values, not of value.  What money
"measures" is constrained by individual valuation, but is
not a measure of that valuation.  Individual valuation is
preferential; it is a choice among alternatives.  Money
measures what may be expected in future trade.  The things
for which money is traded have value.  Thus what money does
(when it is reliable) is provide a means of assessing what
values must be given up in order to have other values, *only
insofar as values may be obtained by means of a market*.
Money simplifies the complex process of assessing what is
possible.  (Incidentally, money is a fallout of property
rights.  It loses its magic where ownership and trade of the
means of production are completely forbidden.  Its
objectivity is the consequence of the objectivity of
property rights.)

>> To fully understand money, you must understand the basics of
>> exchange.  To say that understanding exchange gives no
>> understanding of money is to say that understanding money
>> gives no understanding of money.  (And the implicit is even
>> more eloquent.)

> The claim is that understanding the exchange of money solely for other
> money does not give an understanding of money.

Understanding the exchange of one kind of money for another
kind of money requires understanding what an exchange is,
and furthermore requires knowing what indirect exchange is.
An understanding of indirect exchange implies an
understanding of money.  Only if you qualify the
understanding by its incompleteness can you support the
absurdity that is your claim.

				David Hudson