Well...not quite, but the title is not completely misleading. The Libertarian Party is the only party (to my knowledge) that is taking a truly free market approach to money and banking by introducing competition and allowing the people to decide. Hayek would be proud, after all his “Denationalisation of Money” theory should be largely credited with our approach.
Most of us here know some basic Austrian Economic laws and theories, but what about the people of...say.... Dunster? Well, it looks like they are acting on Hayek’s theory whether they know it or not.
I was very surprised and intrigued to find this article on the BBC today, but it seems that increasingly people around the UK are starting to accept Euros as payment (not my currency of choice, but it’s a start). Although most of these people are accepting Euros purely to assist tourism, perhaps it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing transactions amongst one another is Euros.
Traders there believe it has been a boost to the economy, so much so that they are looking to develop a banking system of their own.
Why is this so important? What does it mean? Well imagine it: the Bank of England announces “quantitative easing” tomorrow to “stimulate the economy”, inflating the money supply and taxing you (yes inflation is a tax!) for simply using their monopolised money...what do you do? Use Euros, or Yen, or Dollars, or whatever takes you think most stable and Mr. King can be left alone to bathe in his freshly printed pounds for all we care, whilst the rest of us could use them to heat our fireplaces.
Now I don’t know the ins and outs of legal tender laws, but I would have thought that accepting anything other than sterling would be against the law. Perhaps you can explain this to me.
Either way, it seems that the people are starting to see the benefits of competing currencies...imagine when we tell them it’s in our Party Manifesto.
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