A useful definition of inflation is the disassociation of demand from supply- the rise of the belief that one’s buying power can long exceed one’s supplying power, that one can get something for nothing, that one can continually take from others without giving. Particularly if the central bank funds these demands, all too soon the value of money, the instrument of demand, approaches nothing, which as Voltarire observed, is the natural worth of such scraps of paper.  Even if the government insures the scraps by making them convertible into gold, they will be worth very little if the moral fabric of production and exchange dissolves.  In a collapsed economy, where trust everywhere fails, a man might trade an ounce of gold for a pound of corn.  In a thriving economy, his ounce of gold might buy him a half a ton of corn.

From the new edition of Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder

HKO

Wealth only has value if it can be used.  Cars only have value if there are roads to drive them on.  All the money the Fed can print can only have value if the laws do not circumvent the effective deployment of the capital by free entrepreneurs.

Sound money is important, but sound money alone does not create a prosperous or a productive society.  The obsession from the some on the right for a gold standard, a balanced budget, or a dissolved Fed does not address the real problem- a regulatory state that neuters economic growth by stripping wealth from knowledge, a state that measures political success by the increase in dependency, and the idea that the future can be determined by those with PhDs in studying the past.

print