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Dawn of Gold
Different schools of economics have pushed their theories on the origins and functions of money with the fevered eagerness of religious fanatics. To the average person, not much of what any of them say makes sense. That is because it doesn't. All schools of money have based their theories on flawed perceptions, best guesses and an academic casualness that makes tea-leaf reading look like a disciplined science. 'Dawn of Gold' unravels the confused tangle of knotted theories and produces for the first time the radically different, but real story of money. 'Dawn of Gold' is Money 101. It needs to be bought, read and understood by every student of not just money, but life.
246 pages, Hardcover
Published January 20, 2015
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August 6, 2020
It saddens me to give this one a lower rating than what I gave to Rickards, but I just can't give 4 stars to a book with these flaws, as I shall explain:
It is well written (there's a lot of literary gems to be found) and has some interesting insights:
1 - Although some gold supporters nowadays correctly focus on its high stock/flow ratio, no serious attempt has been made to explain why people started to accumulate gold in the first place.
Barton's explanation is that gold has always been related to the Sun in the imagination of the primitive civilizations and the Sun was the main God for most of them - so gold was accumulated because of its religious symbolism.
2 - Barton controversially asserts that money did not originate in the marketplace. For him, gold is money and if it wasn't for that incredible coincidence (or superior design?) of its religious feature, we would still be hunting and gathering stuff with our bare hands... Gold was accumulated long before the markets were developed and it was gold's descent into exchange by the low peoples that brought about the explosion in human development, circa 1500 BC.
3 - Thus, for him, money is above all a store of stable value, and not a medium of exchange. This latter feature is just a bonus. Nowadays, gold is still money, is still the best store of stable value, but is far from being used as a medium of exchange, and so humans lack the best measure of value in the marketplace. They are running blind and it's going to end badly.
However, even though this is all very interesting, there's some real problems with the book:
1 - It lacks bibliographical references. For a book of this kind and for someone to take such a controversial position, he MUST have references for his assertions. This way, he will only convince those already convinced...
2 - What it lacks in bibliographical references, it makes up in repetition and in a somewhat sermonical tone. For such a complex and mysterious topic, one would like some more graphs and technical proofs and less metaphors and moral admonitions...
3 - The best chapter is a guest chapter, by Rudy Fritsch, on real bills and paper money
So in the end it's a good book on gold as money, with some food for thought but which could have been shortened and better referenced - it would annoy most people outside the gold bug territory...
It is well written (there's a lot of literary gems to be found) and has some interesting insights:
1 - Although some gold supporters nowadays correctly focus on its high stock/flow ratio, no serious attempt has been made to explain why people started to accumulate gold in the first place.
Barton's explanation is that gold has always been related to the Sun in the imagination of the primitive civilizations and the Sun was the main God for most of them - so gold was accumulated because of its religious symbolism.
2 - Barton controversially asserts that money did not originate in the marketplace. For him, gold is money and if it wasn't for that incredible coincidence (or superior design?) of its religious feature, we would still be hunting and gathering stuff with our bare hands... Gold was accumulated long before the markets were developed and it was gold's descent into exchange by the low peoples that brought about the explosion in human development, circa 1500 BC.
3 - Thus, for him, money is above all a store of stable value, and not a medium of exchange. This latter feature is just a bonus. Nowadays, gold is still money, is still the best store of stable value, but is far from being used as a medium of exchange, and so humans lack the best measure of value in the marketplace. They are running blind and it's going to end badly.
However, even though this is all very interesting, there's some real problems with the book:
1 - It lacks bibliographical references. For a book of this kind and for someone to take such a controversial position, he MUST have references for his assertions. This way, he will only convince those already convinced...
2 - What it lacks in bibliographical references, it makes up in repetition and in a somewhat sermonical tone. For such a complex and mysterious topic, one would like some more graphs and technical proofs and less metaphors and moral admonitions...
3 - The best chapter is a guest chapter, by Rudy Fritsch, on real bills and paper money
So in the end it's a good book on gold as money, with some food for thought but which could have been shortened and better referenced - it would annoy most people outside the gold bug territory...
Displaying 1 of 1 review