Re: two currencies and Korean war

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Harry,
      Why is this?  Taxes are generally just some
percentage of something anyway, sales prices
or income.  So, why would taxes provide more
substance to price information?
      Things get used as media of exchange
("money" in most peoples' books) because other
people believe that other people will accept them
in payment for things.  How they get to be accepted
is ultimately rather arbitrary.  Sometimes, most of
the time in our modern fiat money economy, it is
assertions by governments (generally accompanied
by payment of taxes) that determines this acceptability.
But, we have now seen a bunch of examples of things
from war scrip in Korea (that could not be used for
paying taxes in the US or Korea), to Maria Theresa silver
dollars in the eastern Med 100 years ago, to cowrie
shells, that have been media of exchange without any
backing by governments or payment of taxes foundation.
As noted in cases such as tobacco receipts in colonial
Virginia, sometimes the ability to pay taxes has FOLLOWED
the emergence of this general acceptability.
Barkley Rosser
----- Original Message -----
From: "Harry Veeder" <eo200@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2002 7:09 AM
Subject: Re: two currencies and Korean war


>
> ----------
> >From: "John O'Donnell" <jackodonnell@xxxxxxxx>
> >To: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
> >Subject: Re: two currencies and Korean war
> >Date: Sat, Jan 12, 2002, 12:33 AM
> >
>
> >"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote:
> >>
> >>      Well, there really are all kinds of examples
> >> of monies issued by states that end up getting
> >> used in other places and even long after the
> >> original issuer has stopped doing so.  One of
> >> my favorites are Maria Theresa silver dollars,
> >> originally issued by the Austro-Hungarian
> >> empire in the 1770s when Maria Theresa was
> >> the empress.  Of course these were perfectly
> >> good chartalist money, accepted by the Hapsburgs
> >> for paying taxes, etc.
> >
> >Does it need saying that payment of taxes is not necessary
> >to give value to substance used in standardized barter?
>
>
> Taxes are necessary to affix _real number_ values to substance.
> Without taxation, price information is too fuzzy for investment
> decisions.
>
> Harry Veeder
>
>
>
>