Moral squeamishness isn’t a market failure.

Dr. Sandy Klein walks through the origins and essential functions of money, showing how barter’s pitfalls led to the spontaneous emergence of money as a medium of exchange.

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

"We would not expect money to be paper, national, or under the control of any entity."
Download the slides from this lecture at Mises.org/MU22_PPT_07.
Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 24 July 2023.

Money | Sandra Klein

Video of Money | Sandra Klein