Yes, You Can Sell What You Do Not Own
To remain consistent, opponents of so-called fractional-reserve banking have to denounce overbooking practices among airlines as well as the entire business of insurance.
READ MOREThe Rise of Cashless Banks (And What To Do About It)
Bankers have been steadily introducing cashless banks over the last few years in response to falling customer demand for cash. With fewer people wanting to withdraw or deposit cash, the cost of offering these services gets harder to justify to shareholders.
READ MOREFinancial Discrimination Is Better Tackled by Markets
Complaining about injustice is cheap; bona fide progressives put their money where their ideals are, and reap as they sow.
READ MORELet There Be Light!
Light, as we know it today, is a commodity. That would not have been possible without the institutional prerequisites — freedom to create, own, and exchange — that built the modernity we too often take for granted.
READ MOREBreaking the Banks: Central Banking Problems and Free Banking Solutions
Economic Education Bulletin Vol. XXX, no. 6 | April, 1990 by Richard Salsman
READ MORETowards Lawful Money
Discretionary central banking has had its day. It’s time to insist on lawful money.
READ MOREBig Data, Monetary Calculation, and Monetary Authorities
The knowledge required to maintain monetary equilibrium is tacit and dispersed. No centralized monetary system, no matter how smart or well-intentioned its leaders, has access to that knowledge.
READ MOREAdopt or Die: Financiers Embrace Crypto Transition
Fintech solutions are here to stay, whether banks want them or not. They shouldn’t forget that while banking is necessary, banks are not.
READ MOREIs There Something Public About Banking?
A purely private banking system is impossible today. It is worth considering for tomorrow.
READ MOREFractional-Reserve Banking and the Sharing Economy
The future has a lot of potential awe-inspiring inventions coming down the pipeline. But while daydreaming about these, we shouldn’t forget to be in awe of the invention of fractional-reserve banking. Long before fancy apps, and indeed long before the internet even, it was solving our problems and making our lives better.
READ MOREThe Digital Denationalisation of Money
Cryptocurrencies are still quite new and seem to just be scratching the surface of their potential. If they are to succeed — not only as a fringe medium of exchange or speculative investment, but as real competitors with government currencies — some new programmers are going to have to come along and make currencies whose digital coins are created in a much different manner than the current ones. Perhaps digital coins whose supply is determined by demand will lower volatility enough to cut the future uncertainty of prices. Those may be adopted as true media of exchange. Until that time, Hayek’s vision of private currencies will not be quite realized.
READ MORESuppression of State Banknotes
There were many problems with the state bank era. But that does not mean the suppression of state banknotes improved matters.
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