Economics Questions

Re: Is there monetary policy on the free market?

xahrx — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:37:58 GMT

Monetary policy in a free market would be the laws governing property ownership and transfer, and contracts. Because in the end, that's what money is: property you hold that's extremely salable and generally accepted in exchange for other property. As such the 'monetary policy' would be to enforce the contracts between buyers and sellers and any intermediaries, like banks.

Re: Is there monetary policy on the free market?

Bogart — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:13:01 GMT

My opinion is that a truely free market would have complete and open freedom for individuals to produce money in any form by any means in any quantity they wish. The forms that satisfy consumers will be rewarded with profits and those that do not will fail out of the business. So any central monetary policy that sets out to regulate the form or quantity of money would be anti-freedom and not part of the market place. Any bank or other money producer would be completely free to set their own policies and run their business as they see fit.

Understand that counterfeiting is fraud (You are indirectly stealing value by creating money from current holders of money.) and should be a crime under a social organization of absolute freedom. So would money producers be able to create or destroy money? Sure, BUT they would be limited in their behavior by their customers like any other business. Contrast to this with the current system which prohibits counterfeiting EXCEPT by a cartel of banks and then uses the violence of government to force people to use their constantly devaluing money.

Re: Is there monetary policy on the free market?

Phi est aureum — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:10:35 GMT

I don't see why not, although we would probably just call it an individual bank's business practices, rather than monetary policy. Is this actually what you are asking?

Re: Is there monetary policy on the free market?

grant.w.underwood — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:09:53 GMT

ppls ideas of free market is different and what do you consider monetary policy?

creating money out of thin air would be illegal so that can be monetary policy. edit* counterfeiting (i agree with bogart), banks wouldnt be able to give a customer a dollar, claim it is worth a dollar, then dilute the worth of the dollar by counterfeiting more bills. If they were giving out 'shares' or something similar as currency with the shareholder knowing that shares can be diluted to expand currency then that it is legal.

banks will have business stucures that will regulate disbursements.

I dont think there would be monetary policy in the modern sense. If individuals dont have control of their money it wouldnt be a free market.

What do you have in mind in terms of monetary policy? There would probably be businesses (or be apart of a bank/other large companies) that give their economic opinions on the state of the economy similar to what the fed does, but they will just be a business and have not ability to act on it.

Is there monetary policy on the free market?

Austen — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 19:51:41 GMT

Given a free market in banking and no fractional reserve bank, is there still monetary policy for banking? Do the banks themselves have their own monetary policies?