It Never Occured to Me!

That von Misses, Hayek, Marx and Ron Paul all share the same delusional value proposition never crossed my mind before.  Thanks Brad!

The point of view underlying von Mises's--and von Hayek, and Marx, and Ron Paul--complaint against fiat money in general and monetary management of the business cycle in particular is this: that value comes from human sweat and toil, not from being clever. Thus it is fine for money to have value if it is 100% backed by gold dug from the earth by sweat and machines and muscles (even if there is no state of the possible future world in which people actually want to exchange their pieces of paper for the gold that supposedly backs it). But it is not fine for money to have value simply because it is useful for buying things. There is, von Mises--and Marx, and von Hayek, and Ron Paul--think, something profoundly wrong on an economic and on a moral level with procedures that create value that is not backed by, in Marx's case, human labor, and in von Mises's and von Hayek's case human entrepreneurial ingenuity. And in its scarier moments this train of thought slides over to: "good German engineers (and workers); bad Jewish financiers".