IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/22488_6.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Exchange gone wrong

In: Aristotle’s Economics

Author

Listed:
  • .

Abstract

The introduction of token money facilitates exchange for use but makes possible divisive profit-seeking, accumulation, acquisition and speculation. It is an invitation to the greedy to play a zero-sum game against their fellows which, similar to Simmel on money, undermines social solidarity and substitutes anonymity for cohesion. Money turns loose the worst in innate human nature. Aristotle, minimising the harm, restricts money to the precious metals which are easily recognised and in limited supply. He does not propose a monetary constitution to defend the currency against untrustworthy tyrants or short-horizoned democrats. He is (as Aquinas and others saw) clearly uncomfortable with lending at interest but does not explicitly demand its suppression.

Suggested Citation

  • ., 2024. "Exchange gone wrong," Chapters, in: Aristotle’s Economics, chapter 6, pages 72-84, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:22488_6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035315444.00009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:22488_6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Darrel McCalla (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.e-elgar.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.