In a message dated 6/16/03 10:20:52 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> Americans don't like to support something called "socialism," but >> they often support socialism by some other name. >> David > >All but a very few Americans, including economists, are in favor of >socialized money. That is the most pervasive socialist program in the >USA. > >Fred Foldvary
Not me! :) Socialized money has a long pedagree--arguably at least centuries older than socialism itself. During the Middle Ages merchants in some cities started to coin their own money, earning income off converting silver and sometimes gold into coins of guaranteed weights. When princes and kings grew sufficiently powerful, they seized the coinage business from private merchants and tried to monopolize it. The notion that the prince, or seignior, has the right to coin money has become so ingrained in western thinking that we even refer to the process as "seigniorage." In the ancient world, of course, kings and emperors often coined money, and the Imperial Chinese beaucracy even printed paper money. One might argue, therefore, that socialized money merely represents a continuation of pre-modern lack of liberty, long predating something formally called socialism. It's not for nought that Alexis d'Toqueville, speaking in the French Chamber of Deputies in 1848, denounced socialism as the road back to serfdom. David Levenstam
