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"Law, language, money. The three paradigms of spontaneous government institutions.
Now fortunately, law and language have been allowed to develop. Money has originated, in its original form, but as soon as it was there in it's most primitive form it was frozen!
After two or three hundred years of coins, all governments put their hands and stopped any further development. Governments said it must not develop any further.
We were not allowed to experiment on it, money hasn't been improved, money has rather become worse over the course of time, and what we have had since in development, matters of government inventions, mostly wrong, mostly abuses of money, and I have come to the position of asking, has monetary policy ever done any good?
I don't think it has. I think it has done only harm. That's why I'm now pleading, for what I've called 'Denationalization of Money.'
While governments can stop people from issuing money, they can hardly stop them from opening accounts in something. After all, in the modern world, hand to hand money, coins, and paper, is no longer the most important. Credits and credit cards are substitutes.
So I think we can forget about existing money, and existing banks, and open a system of accounts which will displace money" --F.A. Hayek.
  1. "Law, language, money. The three paradigms of spontaneous government institutions.
Now fortunately, law and language have been allowed to develop. Money has originated, in its original form, but as soon as it was there in it's most primitive form it was frozen!"
The first thing I would ask that audience is if a return to gold coins, sounds like the development of money. It is not a development, it would be a return and thus a return to the mistakes that lead us out of it in the first place.
  1. "So I think we can forget about existing money, and existing banks, and open a system of accounts which will displace money."
I would then explain that this is exactly what Bitcoin is. I'd be sorry to disappoint the interviewer and perhaps F.A. Hayek, that the unit is not known as the Hayek, but rather the Bitcoin, an unfortunate oversight.
Speaking of unfortunate oversights, failing to bring up Hayek's system of accounts at the Mises institute, is very much an unfortunate oversight!
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