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RE: Knowledge of History + Economics = Disbelief in Government
Government only creates "fiat," forced money.
Historical "money" is that which is most commonly traded among a demographic.
This is why gold and silver were historical monies - they arose naturally through market exchange.
Government can create a money by force, but it isn't ethical and it is not the most natural.
Gold and silver were historical moneys because those are the materials the state decided to demand for taxes. The archaeological evidence points to no evidence of these things ever "arising naturally" through market exchange. Saying gold or silver is money because coins were made of gold and silver is like saying inches are wood because rulers are made of wood.
The history of money is that it's all been fiat, as the ability to create money is jealously guarded by the state. It's only with the recent evolution of cryptocurrency that we're really seeing a non-state money, mostly because there is no one to shoot and no doors to kick down to stop it.
Of course government creates money by force, but that's the money we have to work with right now (crypto is too early to know what the hell is going on). If we want to create a better solution, we need to understand how it works properly. Modern Monetary Theory is the only economic theory out there right now offering an accurate description of money.
Gold and silver arose naturally through barter. You're confusing "coinage" with gold and silver dust and nuggets that were first traded in markets, especially in Africa, as money.
"Gold and silver arose naturally through barter." Did you mean to have the word money in there? Because if not, gold and silver arose naturally through a super nova.
Barter isn't the same thing as money and there is no archaeological evidence of an economy, even a small one, operating on barter. If gold and silver were intrinsically valuable for barter, why was it not valued by the entire societies on the American continents before the Spaniards arrived?
The reason gold and silver were used as money is because the state demanded it in taxes. There is evidence that this may have had religious reasons--gold may have been hoarded by temples and brought by worshipers, and thus may have had a divine nature attached to it.
People gathered gold and salt across the Sahara before it was collected as taxes. The barter system arose to a monetary level over time.
It was never contingent on taxes.
Taxes were only a mechanism for furtherance of what was already subjectively valued and used to trade among people across the Arabian peninsula and into Africa.