
Money
The Unauthorized Biography
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Narrated by:
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Nicholas Guy Smith
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By:
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Felix Martin
About this listen
From ancient currency to Adam Smith, from the gold standard to shadow banking and the Great Recession: a sweeping historical epic that traces the development and evolution of one of humankind’s greatest inventions.
What is money, and how does it work? In this tour de force of political, cultural and economic history, Felix Martin challenges nothing less than our conventional understanding of money. He describes how the Western idea of money emerged from interactions between Mesopotamia and ancient Greece and was shaped over the centuries by tensions between sovereigns and the emerging middle classes. He explores the extraordinary diversity of the world’s monetary systems, from the Pacific island of Yap, where value was once measured by immovable stones, to the currency of today that exists solely on globally connected computer screens. Martin shows that money has always been a deeply political instrument, and that it is our failure to remember this that led to the crisis in our financial system and so to the Great Recession. He concludes with practical solutions to our current pressing, money-based problems.
Money skips nimbly among such far-ranging topics as John Locke’s disastrous excursion into economic policy, Montesquieu’s faith in finance to discipline the power of kings, the social organization of ancient Sparta and the Soviet Union’s ill-fated attempt to abolish money and banking altogether. Throughout, Martin makes vivid sense of a chaotic and sometimes incoherent system - the everyday currency that we all share - in the clearest and most stimulating terms. This is a magisterial work of history and economics, with profound implications for the world today.
©2014 Felix Martin (P)2014 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Kind of dry towards the end
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A thoughtful journey with big flashes of insight
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THE best book on monry
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Probably the Best audiobook I've heard on popular Econ
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A good listen
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Wonderful book must be read
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End was annoying
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It certainly isn't a biography of those who amassed large sums of money, but more on the ideas, development, adoption and evolution of money.
Maryin will push how you see money and where it came from; he will challenge your conceptions using other disciplines -- like history, anthropology, political science, philosophy and even science to name a few -- as opposed to the usual vantage point of business, commerce and economics.
The book is very accessible in the way it's written, and moreover, it does employ interesting writing styles by way of analogies, narrating and story telling to dialogue pieces.
It also has a fair bit of misdirection -- so you may feel convinced until you read/listen on to the next part or chapter where you are equally convinced of the other side of the argument (and the arguments aren't necessarily simple or two sides, you find yourself juggling more multidimensional ideas at times). That kept me on edge at times but helps give a fairer picture.
Overall I loved the book and I would recommend it to anyone with a sense of curiosity and definitely to anyone who gets into conversations about money, politics, economics, "the debt", gold, the meaning of money and desires and their philosophy and other such lively topics.
A book that will make you think and contemplate
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He brought economic history to life and shone light on money in novel ways.
The work is almost philosophical.
Some Background:
- Prior to reading this work I struggled through "The Theory of Money and Credit" by Ludwig Von Mises. It was like bitter medicine: You know you have to take it to remedy your ignorance about money, but it just won't go down easily.
- I also finished Ray Dalio's "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order" which discusses debt cycles (i.e. macromoney) a great deal, but doesn't go sufficiently into the nature of credit to give you an intuition for why debt cycles alter global realities.
Afterwards:
- Von Mises' work now makes a lot more sense. I can understand quite a great deal more of the arguments made.
- Changing world orders are more fundamentally grasped: If you mess up your credit, you (as a nation) are doomed.
- I'm inspired to learn much more!
What did I find weird?
- He mentioned Rai/Fei stones and Yap at the onset of the work. Having been to Guam, where some of the stones were quarried, this really engaged me. However, as the work progressed, there was a magical Euro-centric shift. He does say that it was for scientific reasons (to study where there's more recent information). But the same concluding arguments would be valid if he stuck with Micronesia. If you skipped the start of his biography of money, you should be forgiven for thinking that Greek society was the first to use money. Maybe the author's overwhelming love for Homer leads him to that conclusion? Or may because he thought the Yapese economy was too simple? Either way, it makes you feel like working through the (tedious) middle of the work is an inefficient use of time.
What could be more clearly covered?
- It's never explicitly stated that gold is money when trust in the state is low. It's not that hard to say. That said, Midas detour was golden.
What could have been shortened?
- Oresme and medieval France seemed like a huge detour. Alfred Mitchell-Innes' essay on "What is Money?" also spent time on the issues of that period before wisely ditching it. Spending an inordinate amount of time on seignorage doesn't give you a much crisper grasp on the nature of money. I found that section introduced tedium when it wasn't required.
What made it so exciting?
- His grasp/use of literature and the metaphorical detours that punctuate his learnings. Dude's a master of metaphor.
What did I like the most?
- The critic! I'm so glad he was challenging his conclusions out aloud. I also loved the suggestion to implement narrow banking. It seems like a simple change that would make human existence less painful.
What should you read next?
- Hajoon Chang's "Economics"
If you are short on time, just focus on the first couple of chapters and the conclusion. It's still worth every penny!
This should be your first book on economics...
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A lot of good ideas and insights about money
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