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Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

3 Responses to “The Ascent of Money”

1. rnspiess Says:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 9:54 am

   I wish for Mr. Ferguson to begin with a definition of money. It has been my long time observation that economists postulate their theories without a verified, universally accepted definition of money. It’s like deriving a hypothesis without axioms. Try: money is an exchange for value, is proportional to value. Then define value. Value is anything of demand. Creators of money promise to retain its value. Thus creators of value can store the fruits of their labors by receiving money for value created. The money can thus be put to work through investments, etc.

   The more value that is created, the more money available for investments. As investment quality is inversely proportional to the money available for investment, value backed by investments become weaker as prosperity i.e. value creation increases. Eventually the weak investments implode and value is destroyed. What is destroyed must be recreated.

   When starting with such a definition of money, it becomes apparent that when investments go sour, so does value.

2. What’s on the Tivo, DVR, DVD | The Big Picture Says:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 5:30 pm

   [...] • The Ascent of Money: Niall Ferguson, 4 parts PBS/DVD (see this clip) [...]

3. flipspiceland Says:
   July 4th, 2009 at 8:04 am

   For an economy to begin, an idea must move from a mental construct to a physical manifestation in the real world. Demand first? The necessity (demand) for a knife by a knifethrower must first occur, before a knife can be had.

   How is the ‘first dollar’ then created? In order to buy the knife, that knife thrower must have to generate income from some other source or be extended credit by the knife maker. That is what I find difficult to get my mind around. Or is it a moot point?

   The ‘first dollar’ definition is better backed into by thinking of the second, third, fourth, etc….dollar.

   As an accountant in a manufacturing firm, I am paid with with the second dollar. As an accountant for the accounting firm that does the tax return or audit of the mfg company, I am paid with the third dollar. As we get further and further away from the first creation of the dollar, the value provided diminishes substantially and can be secured from a greater variety of sources and competition.

   But without that first dollar, there are no other dollars needed since there is no enterprise.

   It seems that what is needed before any other is the conception of a business. An attorney has no work unless there is company with a need for his services. Like wise with all the other ‘parasites’ living off the host including all suppliers, employees, stockholders, etc.

   Is there a better model of an economy by thinking of it as an ever-expanding (or contracting) circle, a flow of global money that is nipped at along the trajectory of the arc by any and all able to finagle a claim on it?