Quote from: dinofelis on January 17, 2015, 08:32:12 AM

Quote from: twiifm on January 16, 2015, 08:57:42 PM

Like I said money, comes from the authority of the state not the metal used to make coins. There's only been brief periods in History like the Free Banking Period where we had wide spread use of private money. Most of the time money has been a creature of law

Money doesn't come from the authority of the state, but the state wants to limit the use of money on its territory to the legally allowed tender in order to be able to control and profit from it (mainly through seigniorage).

The authority of the state was "used" some times to "certify" the metallic contents of the coins (as were some *private* certifications like the Joachimsthaler). It turns out that states often scammed people with fake certifications, while private certifications were usually more trustworthy.

The best proof of the error in your proposition is that most state fiat money has been (fakely because the states scam people) backed by metallic amounts for a long time. If it were true that it was the state's authority that was solely sufficient to give value to state-controlled money, then non-backed fiat money would have been the norm. After all, the state's authority wouldn't need any backing-up by any metallic or whatever commodity according to your claims. Pieces of paper with a stamp from the state would do.

It took more than a century to get loose from metal-backed fiat money (and from the moment it did, fiat money plummeted in value like a stone).

Fiat money has been possible because of a century-long scam, where people were made to believe that they were *actually* handling a state-certified amount of metal with the fiat. When the habit of not handling the physical value carrier which was the metal was so generalized, and people got used to pay with pieces of state-stamped paper (believing it was worth metal), only then the state scam of fiat money could be carried through.

So much for "state authority gives value".

The historical dollar was the Spanish dollar which was nothing else but a calibrated piece of silver, to be identical to the very trustworthy Joachimsthaler pieces of silver:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar

The first US dollar was supposed to be a state-issued equivalent of the Spanish piece of silver.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_dollar

The continental currency, which was an attempt at "fiat" which was not backed but "declared equivalent" to a piece of silver (which is by itself ridiculous) failed miserably.

The US money was saved for a while with the Contract Clause, allowing only gold and silver as legal tender.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_Clause

Quote

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

I could go on...

Nothing you wrote supports the argument opposing the charts list view of money. Furthermore, your arguments are childish and emotional so it's not worth my time to debate you. If you think you've been scammed or whatever conspiracy theory the your mind is already lost.

Many commodities or materials have been used as money such as rice, stones, shells, etc. The common link is that the state decreed these things to be money not the market. Money has always been a credit system. But only the state can make something officially the money of the land