The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part IV

The Dam Gives Way The first three installments of this series (Part I, Part II, Part III) traced the multi-millennial competition among monetary media, in which more integral monetary forms reliably defeated less integral ones with the impersonal regularity of water finding its level; examined how the gold standard was dismantled by political force rather … Continue reading The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part IV

The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part II

Fingers in the Dam In Part I, we traced the multi-millennial competition among monetary media — cowrie shells, glass beads, salt, silver, and finally gold — and argued that the progressive victory of more integral over less integral monetary forms was not a series of historical accidents but something closer to a natural law: as … Continue reading The Monetary Lens: The Past, Present and Future of Humanity Through the Architecture of Money, Part II