Toby Baxendale was recently interviewed by Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion. The interview talks about both the goals of the Cobden Centre and Hayek’s beliefs about competing private currencies as a pathway towards honest money and how this might be achieved via digital technology.
We thought you might like to hear this 26-minute interview, on Cobden Centre Radio:
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A very interesting program, I recently came across bitcoin and followed the concept on the Internet to find there is quite an industry in alternative currencies. The Cobden Center is obviously run by people with an acute sense that there will be a need for a real currency or perhaps real money instead of a mere currency or a paper token system.
For more than a year now when I blog or add comments to economic articles on the Internet I had a paragraph or two on the subject of private money. The idea is to seed the germ of an idea that the state should not be in charge of money or currency any longer. I live in New Hampshire, here in the United States it is highly probable that money will be one thing and dollars as currency quite another thing. I believe it is only a question of time when the Zimbabwean moment will arrive. I inherited from my grandfather a blocked embargoed bank account in Zimbabwe, as you might imagine the account became valueless, so much so, the bank meaning the standard Bank no longer could afford the postage to send me statements with regard to money that no longer existed. This experience, makes be very sensitive to arguments about money and most of all to the dishonest expansion of fiat cash.
Your program makes them very valuable positions with regard to tackling monetary dishonesty, by taking the gambling component out of banking, unless consented to, there may be a chance of changing relationships between bankers and those of us who need to use their services. One thing that I do believe may be possible is to raise enough noise about and government dishonesty with respect to money is that such noise may induce a change in the legal tender laws to permit alternatives to state denominated currency. Assume, as might well be the case, that the dollar suddenly in a mere singularity ceases to be acceptable anywhere, then what? This could be the moment when alternative money becomes vital, not just cigarettes but a true viable alternative to the state currency. It behooves those who are in the process of promulgating alternatives to state currency to begin to advocate for this to be done as soon as possible ahead of any major Weimar moment in the dollar for example.
Alternatives to the dollar may well be needed way sooner than many of us might have expected. I have had one Zimbabwean moment I don’t want another!
Thank you for your program it added to my knowledge and I look forward to more from you and will be visiting your site regularly.
Regards Howard R. Gray