a lot. They invented all kinds of clever arguments against it. They hired that French bishop to show why it was wrong. But none of it did much good.”
“Because there was no realistic alternative—so they had no way of forcing the sovereign’s hand.”
“Until, that is, some bright spark rediscovered banking, and with it a viable means of issuing private money on a monster scale.”
“Exactly. Turned out to be quite a profitable invention for everybody—but especially for the bankers. The sort of thing I bet you wish you’d thought of.”
“Touché. Anyway: once bankers had rediscovered the trick of issuing private money, the boot was on the other foot. Now it was the sovereigns and their seigniorage that were under pressure. This was an unstable situation—monetary insurrection, to use your metaphor. But with the foundation of the Bank of England, a way to secure a permanent peace was found—at least until recently.”
“The Great Monetary Settlement. You’ve got it. But forgive me for interrupting. Only, where’s the murder?”
“I can see you don’t read many detective stories. It’s just about to happen, of course—just when everyone is least expecting it. You see, up until now, everyone might have been arguing over whether the sovereign should manipulate the standard to raise seigniorage, and whether the bankers should be allowed to issue private money, and so on—but at least they all understood what money was. In terms of your ‘unconventional’ account of money, in other words, common sense still reigned. But just as your Great Monetary Settlementwas being struck, somebody murdered monetary common sense. What’s worse, having done away with the correct understanding of money, the wicked criminal buried the evidence and put in its place a seductive imposter—a view of money and economic value that looks and sounds awfully persuasive to ignoramuses like me, but one which according to you actually blinds our moral faculties, blunts our economic policies, and—much the most terrible of all—even gave us the banksters currently lording it over Wall Street and the City of London. And in true Hercule Poirot style, you revealed that the culprit was the very last person one would have suspected: none other than the most respected thinker in the land, John Locke.”
“Ah, I see.”
“And to cap it all, it was what aficionados of the genre call a perfect crime. Nobody noticed that the correct view of money had been swapped for the wrong one—so nobody accused Locke of murder. Quite the opposite, in fact—he seems to have gone down in history as a bit of a hero.”
“Absolutely. He did provide the intellectual basis of modern Liberal democracy, after all.”
“Right. But it’s at this point, I’m afraid to say, that your plot has a hole in it. You see, I’ll grant that John Locke might have been able to murder monetary common sense in the course of that particular debate about the recoinage—and even that the imposter he substituted was quite persuasive as a replacement. But given the rule of common sense up to that point—all those thinkers that you mentioned—how on earth did Locke manage to change everyone’s mind? I mean, I don’t care how influential John Locke was, how can he possibly have managed to fool everyone? Why didn’t people notice that his view of money was just wrong? No, I’m afraid your theory just doesn’t add up, Mr. Holmes.”
“Hang on a minute—you’re the detective here. I never said that this was a murder mystery—and I don’t think it is.
“John Locke was no murderer—he was the greatest philosopher of his age, one of the greatest of any age, and there can hardly beany doubt that he was motivated by his sincere belief in the rightness of political Liberalism and constitutional government. But in trying to achieve this, he made a mistake. He was a doctor and a don—not a banker or a businessman—he wasn’t familiar with the world of finance.
“Because there was no realistic alternative—so they had no way of forcing the sovereign’s hand.”
“Until, that is, some bright spark rediscovered banking, and with it a viable means of issuing private money on a monster scale.”
“Exactly. Turned out to be quite a profitable invention for everybody—but especially for the bankers. The sort of thing I bet you wish you’d thought of.”
“Touché. Anyway: once bankers had rediscovered the trick of issuing private money, the boot was on the other foot. Now it was the sovereigns and their seigniorage that were under pressure. This was an unstable situation—monetary insurrection, to use your metaphor. But with the foundation of the Bank of England, a way to secure a permanent peace was found—at least until recently.”
“The Great Monetary Settlement. You’ve got it. But forgive me for interrupting. Only, where’s the murder?”
“I can see you don’t read many detective stories. It’s just about to happen, of course—just when everyone is least expecting it. You see, up until now, everyone might have been arguing over whether the sovereign should manipulate the standard to raise seigniorage, and whether the bankers should be allowed to issue private money, and so on—but at least they all understood what money was. In terms of your ‘unconventional’ account of money, in other words, common sense still reigned. But just as your Great Monetary Settlementwas being struck, somebody murdered monetary common sense. What’s worse, having done away with the correct understanding of money, the wicked criminal buried the evidence and put in its place a seductive imposter—a view of money and economic value that looks and sounds awfully persuasive to ignoramuses like me, but one which according to you actually blinds our moral faculties, blunts our economic policies, and—much the most terrible of all—even gave us the banksters currently lording it over Wall Street and the City of London. And in true Hercule Poirot style, you revealed that the culprit was the very last person one would have suspected: none other than the most respected thinker in the land, John Locke.”
“Ah, I see.”
“And to cap it all, it was what aficionados of the genre call a perfect crime. Nobody noticed that the correct view of money had been swapped for the wrong one—so nobody accused Locke of murder. Quite the opposite, in fact—he seems to have gone down in history as a bit of a hero.”
“Absolutely. He did provide the intellectual basis of modern Liberal democracy, after all.”
“Right. But it’s at this point, I’m afraid to say, that your plot has a hole in it. You see, I’ll grant that John Locke might have been able to murder monetary common sense in the course of that particular debate about the recoinage—and even that the imposter he substituted was quite persuasive as a replacement. But given the rule of common sense up to that point—all those thinkers that you mentioned—how on earth did Locke manage to change everyone’s mind? I mean, I don’t care how influential John Locke was, how can he possibly have managed to fool everyone? Why didn’t people notice that his view of money was just wrong? No, I’m afraid your theory just doesn’t add up, Mr. Holmes.”
“Hang on a minute—you’re the detective here. I never said that this was a murder mystery—and I don’t think it is.
“John Locke was no murderer—he was the greatest philosopher of his age, one of the greatest of any age, and there can hardly beany doubt that he was motivated by his sincere belief in the rightness of political Liberalism and constitutional government. But in trying to achieve this, he made a mistake. He was a doctor and a don—not a banker or a businessman—he wasn’t familiar with the world of finance.
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