The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
The quantity theory conflicts with the capitalization theory. The
quantity theory as presented by Fisher conflicts with the capitalization
theory as presented by Fisher. Which theory is true? Would prices rise
thus, or would they be held down in some way by the limitations on the
quantity of money? I hold that I have already proved, in the reasoning
given in connection with my hypothetical island, and in the case of the
South with its cotton, that the capitalization theory tendency would
prevail. The prices of products rise, and then the prices of the labor,
land, and other capital goods which have produced them, rise, the rise
in the prices of the capital goods behaving in accordance with the laws
of the capitalization theory, and all of the rises after the initial
rise in products being in accordance with the imputation theory of the
Austrians.
This conflict suggests an interesting point. Various elements in our
economic theory, added from time to time by different writers, have
necessarily come from different philosophical and sociological
view-points, and have behind them different philosophical,
psychological, and sociological assumptions. The quantity theory,
developing, as shown in the chapter on "Supply and Demand and the Value
of Money," largely in isolation from the general body of economic
theory, has a background of psychological and sociological assumptions
quite different from that of many other doctrines. In the chapter on
"Dodo-Bones," I stated these assumptions. The quantity theory rests in a
psychology of blind habit. It assumes a rigidity in the social system
such that it might be likened to a machine, with a hopper into which
money is poured, which grinds out prices at the other end. I set this in
contrast with the psychological assumptions underlying the commodity
theory of money. That theory rests on the "banker's psychology." It
assumes a highly reflective and calculating attitude on the part of
economic men, with the disposition to look behind appearances for the
security, to test things out, to get to bedrock in business affairs. Now
the capitalization theory likewise assumes this banker's psychology. In
its refinements, as represented by the mathematical formulae in the
appendices of Fisher's _Rate of Interest_, it assumes a degree of
precision in business calculation which few experts in bond departments
apply, and which the highly fluid and alert dealers in Wall Street
certainly have not time for, even if they had that degree of
mathematical knowledge! In practice, it need not be said, particularly
in the case of the prices of lands, the capitalization theory finds its
predictions very imperfectly realized! But the two theories, resting in
such divergent psychological assumptions, may be expected, _a priori_,
to conflict. That they do conflict is not remarkable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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