The Money Puzzle

Despite contentions that simplistic utopias have reached the end of their rope, the search for a simplistic rule by which to revolutionize the currency is very much alive, with the accent on some vague concept of “stability,” or a stabilized rate of progress—as if “progress” or “growth” could be put into the straitjacket of a monetary formula. In the introduction to this provocative and very instructive symposium, the editor points out the “almost perplexing diversity” of monetary nostrums which, admittedly, can be varied and combined at the whim of the social engineers. “Why is it,” Mr. Yeager asks, “that even men with broadly similar conceptions of the good (libertarian) society can disagree so profoundly on particular policies?” His answer evades the issue. Actually, utopias may be constructed in an infinite number of ways, one as “legitimate” as the other—if the implicit assumptions are granted: that the public accepts as money any ivory-tower concoction; that the volume of money can be wisely manipulated either arbitrarily or in accordance with some autocratically imposed rule; and that such manipulations would bring about the desirable “stability.”

In Search of a Monetary Constitution, edited by Leland B. Yeager. Harvard, $7.50

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Melchior Palyi

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Despite contentions that simplistic utopias have reached the end of their rope, the search for a simplistic rule by which to revolutionize the currency is very much alive, with the accent on some vague concept of “stability,” or a stabilized rate of progress—as if “progress” or “growth” could be put into the straitjacket of a monetary formula. In the introduction to this provocative and very instructive symposium, the editor points out the “almost perplexing diversity” of monetary nostrums which, admittedly, can be varied and combined at the whim of the social engineers. “Why is it,” Mr. Yeager asks, “that even men with broadly similar conceptions of the good (libertarian) society can disagree so profoundly on particular policies?” His answer evades the issue. Actually, utopias may be constructed in an infinite number of ways, one as “legitimate” as the other—if the implicit assumptions are granted: that the public accepts as money any ivory-tower concoction; that the volume of money can be wisely manipulated either arbitrarily or in accordance with some autocratically imposed rule; and that such manipulations would bring about the desirable “stability.”

In Search of a Monetary Constitution, edited by Leland B. Yeager. Harvard, $7.50