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Here’s George Selgin in prime form: responding to the NY Times’s Eduardo Porter on gold, paper, and thinking seriously about money [2]. And here’s an especially entertaining slice:
But why harp on inflation? After all, fiat money at least has the virtue of hardly ever being in short supply, so that economies need not fear being unable to grow for want of it. In contrast under a gold standard, Mr. Porter assures us, “the economy couldn’t grow faster than the supply of gold.” Evidently Mr. Porter here overlooks another relevant episode in economic history. This episode is known as “the 19th century.”