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<p>[QUOTE="kaparthy, post: 4292466, member: 57463"]<font face="Georgia">I don't know where people here are getting their histories from. We all read a lot of it. But we also know that assertions get repeated from author to author without being validated or verified. Moreover, numismatics provides the tangible evidence of economics which is a human action; and people are more complicated than mere physical objects, so theories of human action seldom explain or predict everything. Just for two examples of what I mean:</font></p><p>(1) According to anthropoligist David Graeber, <b>there has never been recorded a culture that went from barter to cash.</b> Rather, barter is what cash economies devolve to when money fails. For most of human history, exchange was mutual gift-giving for social status. Even today, across the counter, both parties say "Thank you."</p><p>(2) Psychologists from the University of British Columbia published a paper "The weirdest people in the world?" (Henrich, Heine, Norenzayan; <i>Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2010;33)</i> that compared and contrasted standard economic games played by university undergraduates around the world with results from playing these games (Ultimatum; Dictator) with non-industrialized peoples. Individuals who have no contact with market economies often cannot conceptualize that a smaller coin can be worth more than a larger one. We take it as "natural" what it took us centuries of cultural inheritance to accept as "normal."</p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Georgia">It is true that coins have shown their value. The Roman ealy republican bronzes on the uncial standard have two pellets to show six uncia: 2 x 6=12. The first Roman denarii carried an X to show their new weight standard. The X was soon dropped once it became commonly understood. Generally, however, in most times and places coinage in precious metals (and bronze) carried no statement of "value" because the coin was the value. </font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Georgia">The idea of "money of account" was invented in by bankers of the Middle Ages. Dealing in a plethora of local coinages of various and varying weights and finenesses, they invented Pounds-Shillings-Pence. Pay up in any kinds of money you want--Hall hellers, English pennies, Florentine grossi, even bars of silver weighed in German "marks"-- but you owed so many "pounds-shillings-pence." (“Champagne: The Athens of the Middle Ages,” </font><i><font face="Georgia">The Celator</font></i><font face="Georgia">, Vol. 25. No. 11, November 2009.)</font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Georgia">Kings did not agree. </font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Georgia">The Austrian economists of our time - von Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, and others - pointed out that when coins could be revalued by changing their names, they were devalued by central authorities whose wars were bankrupting their nations. </font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Georgia">When Sir Isaac Newton worked with Sir Christopher Wren among others to rescue England's coinage from complete collapse - barter becoming common again - the law defined the silver pound sterling by count (by tale). Regardless of how worn a shilling or penny was, it was by law a shilling or a penny. Gold coins traded by weight. ("Sir Isaac Newton: Master & Warden of the Mint," <i>The Numismatist</i>, November 2001.)</font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><br /></p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Georgia">Again, on the fact that value was important and not everyone knew every coin, coins did have 1/3 or 1/4 or 8R on them. But that was a convenience as much for the authority who used the coinage as a primary consumer.</font></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Georgia">Actually, the gold dollar was not a popular coin. Its best use was as jewelry for women. The gold coin we find worn to VF or below is the $5 half eagle. For much of US Mint history, their effort was devoted to production of the $5 and the 50-cent silver coin. For much of the early 19th century, 50 cents silver was a day's wages. After the Civil War, inflation pushed to "an honest day's work for an honest dollar." A cowboy would get $20 per month because he had the bunkhouse and chuckwagon. That was why the US did not mint silver dollars after 1803. Banks often held their reserves in bags of half dollars.</font></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><font face="Georgia">Until 1857 when the law changed, people from Massachusetts to Illinois were used to banknotes promising "dollars" and paying in "reales." See "Spanish Coins on American Banknotes" here: <a href="https://scoan.oldnote.org" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://scoan.oldnote.org" rel="nofollow">https://scoan.oldnote.org</a>. Just to say that we project ourselves on the past. We think that base-10 is "natural" but German coins in the mid-19th century were denominated in 12ths of a thaler with one-third and one-fourth thaler coins. In fact, Fred Flintstone did not count past 3. The numbers 4, 5, 6.... were invented only about 4000 BCE and their names came from "one more than three" and so on. Every Indo-European language borrowed the word for "seven" from their Semitic neighbors.</font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Georgia">Merchants along the East Coast kept their books in pounds-shillings-pence into the 1830s. Also into the 1830s, counterfeit colonial copper circulated well in Appalachia. (Both of those claims from papers delivered to the ANS "Coinage of the Americas" conferences.)</font></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Georgia">Ahh... well... that gets into the interminable discussion of what is meant by "legal tender." Cash on the barrelhead is one thing. Paying a debt is something else. You can insist on selling your horse for beans and inspect and weigh each one if you want just as the buyer can count its teeth. But if the contract said that you sold the horse for $10 due on the 1st of next month and the buyer handed you a (Choice VF) US of A Ten Dollar Gold Eagle, there it was, paid in full.</font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Georgia">It is kind of funny (ha ha) but I had book of clean jokes you could tell at a business dinner in 1900. Many aspects of business were different then than we imagine it to have been.</font>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="kaparthy, post: 4292466, member: 57463"][FONT=Georgia]I don't know where people here are getting their histories from. We all read a lot of it. But we also know that assertions get repeated from author to author without being validated or verified. Moreover, numismatics provides the tangible evidence of economics which is a human action; and people are more complicated than mere physical objects, so theories of human action seldom explain or predict everything. Just for two examples of what I mean:[/FONT] (1) According to anthropoligist David Graeber, [B]there has never been recorded a culture that went from barter to cash.[/B] Rather, barter is what cash economies devolve to when money fails. For most of human history, exchange was mutual gift-giving for social status. Even today, across the counter, both parties say "Thank you." (2) Psychologists from the University of British Columbia published a paper "The weirdest people in the world?" (Henrich, Heine, Norenzayan; [I]Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2010;33)[/I] that compared and contrasted standard economic games played by university undergraduates around the world with results from playing these games (Ultimatum; Dictator) with non-industrialized peoples. Individuals who have no contact with market economies often cannot conceptualize that a smaller coin can be worth more than a larger one. We take it as "natural" what it took us centuries of cultural inheritance to accept as "normal." [FONT=Georgia] It is true that coins have shown their value. The Roman ealy republican bronzes on the uncial standard have two pellets to show six uncia: 2 x 6=12. The first Roman denarii carried an X to show their new weight standard. The X was soon dropped once it became commonly understood. Generally, however, in most times and places coinage in precious metals (and bronze) carried no statement of "value" because the coin was the value. The idea of "money of account" was invented in by bankers of the Middle Ages. Dealing in a plethora of local coinages of various and varying weights and finenesses, they invented Pounds-Shillings-Pence. Pay up in any kinds of money you want--Hall hellers, English pennies, Florentine grossi, even bars of silver weighed in German "marks"-- but you owed so many "pounds-shillings-pence." (“Champagne: The Athens of the Middle Ages,” [/FONT][I][FONT=Georgia]The Celator[/FONT][/I][FONT=Georgia], Vol. 25. No. 11, November 2009.) Kings did not agree. The Austrian economists of our time - von Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, and others - pointed out that when coins could be revalued by changing their names, they were devalued by central authorities whose wars were bankrupting their nations. When Sir Isaac Newton worked with Sir Christopher Wren among others to rescue England's coinage from complete collapse - barter becoming common again - the law defined the silver pound sterling by count (by tale). Regardless of how worn a shilling or penny was, it was by law a shilling or a penny. Gold coins traded by weight. ("Sir Isaac Newton: Master & Warden of the Mint," [I]The Numismatist[/I], November 2001.) [/FONT] [FONT=Georgia] Again, on the fact that value was important and not everyone knew every coin, coins did have 1/3 or 1/4 or 8R on them. But that was a convenience as much for the authority who used the coinage as a primary consumer.[/FONT] [FONT=Georgia] Actually, the gold dollar was not a popular coin. Its best use was as jewelry for women. The gold coin we find worn to VF or below is the $5 half eagle. For much of US Mint history, their effort was devoted to production of the $5 and the 50-cent silver coin. For much of the early 19th century, 50 cents silver was a day's wages. After the Civil War, inflation pushed to "an honest day's work for an honest dollar." A cowboy would get $20 per month because he had the bunkhouse and chuckwagon. That was why the US did not mint silver dollars after 1803. Banks often held their reserves in bags of half dollars.[/FONT] [FONT=Georgia]Until 1857 when the law changed, people from Massachusetts to Illinois were used to banknotes promising "dollars" and paying in "reales." See "Spanish Coins on American Banknotes" here: [URL]https://scoan.oldnote.org[/URL]. Just to say that we project ourselves on the past. We think that base-10 is "natural" but German coins in the mid-19th century were denominated in 12ths of a thaler with one-third and one-fourth thaler coins. In fact, Fred Flintstone did not count past 3. The numbers 4, 5, 6.... were invented only about 4000 BCE and their names came from "one more than three" and so on. Every Indo-European language borrowed the word for "seven" from their Semitic neighbors. Merchants along the East Coast kept their books in pounds-shillings-pence into the 1830s. Also into the 1830s, counterfeit colonial copper circulated well in Appalachia. (Both of those claims from papers delivered to the ANS "Coinage of the Americas" conferences.)[/FONT] [FONT=Georgia] Ahh... well... that gets into the interminable discussion of what is meant by "legal tender." Cash on the barrelhead is one thing. Paying a debt is something else. You can insist on selling your horse for beans and inspect and weigh each one if you want just as the buyer can count its teeth. But if the contract said that you sold the horse for $10 due on the 1st of next month and the buyer handed you a (Choice VF) US of A Ten Dollar Gold Eagle, there it was, paid in full. It is kind of funny (ha ha) but I had book of clean jokes you could tell at a business dinner in 1900. Many aspects of business were different then than we imagine it to have been.[/FONT][/QUOTE]
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