[1010RD]

Why we need currency competition. Let everybody print currency. The market will quickly sort out the inflationists.

[abb]

You have described the most simple of transactions, barter. The problem is getting the folks on the other side of the trade to accept your currency.

For something to meet the description of “money,” it must meet several tests: A medium of exchange, a common measure of value (or unit of account), a standard of value (or standard of deferred payment), and a store of value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money

[expat_panama]

...we need currency competition. Let everybody print currency...

We already tried that:

For America’s first 70 years, private entities, and not the federal government, issued paper money. Notes printed by state-chartered banks, which could be exchanged for gold and silver, were the most common form of paper currency in circulation. From the founding of the United States to the passage of the National Banking Act, some 8,000 different entities issued currency, which created an unwieldy money supply and facilitated rampant counterfeiting. By establishing a single national currency, the National Banking Act eliminated the overwhelming variety of paper money circulating throughout the country and created a system of banks chartered by the federal government rather than by the states. The law also assisted the federal government in financing the Civil War.