Philosophical musings on economics and money with no concrete allegations

of a logical context for those. Too darned much was being taken for granted. What do we really want from economics? As we gradually figure that out, we can figure out the most efficient vocabulary for description and prediction. That’s was what Newton did. | didn’t like the lazy assumption that those problems had already been solved. Newton lucked out in that old words like mass, force and energy would mostly do if he gave them exact definitions within their usual ranges of meanings. Brand new terms would have made tougher reading, and his Principia Mathematica was tough enough in 1687.1 had the same luck in the end. But | didn’t know that until I had collected textbooks and economic dictionaries, along with most books on economic history I could find, and meanwhile worked out what | thought the right vocabulary ought to be. We pretty well have to solve every section of the jigsaw puzzle at the same time. I’m my father’s son, by the way, and balked at the three-figures prices of some of those textbooks, even though | might fork up as much for a bottle of wine. My ideas on growth theory and capital theory (explaining rates of interest and return) will get plenty of coverage later. It happens | have also taken a lifelong interest in banks and money theory. This book isn’t about that directly. But banks and money are part of the story of growth and interest, and anyhow are worth attention in themselves. Money has been defined elegantly in terms of what we want from it. We want a measure of value and a medium of exchange. The qualities to give those things are “moneyness”. Money should be “transportable”, for one, in that we don’t really want to lug bags of wampum around. It should be stable in value, so that we can contract over the future with least uncertainty. It should have the same value in different places as well as at different times, to minimize the nuisance of conversion. There should be enough of it that shortage doesn’t drive us to the clumsiness of barter. It should be “divisible” into tiny units, as hundred-dollar bills into tens and ones and pennies, for exact payment with nothing owed back. It should be fungible in that one Chapter 1: Recollections 1/06/16 18 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_010934