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James Turk: Defining money
By James Turk
Free Gold Money Report
Monday, November 10, 2025
Many modern economists struggle to define money. Often beginning with an historical overview of the concept of moneyness, they generally end by describing the functions of money. But what money "does" is not a definition of what money is.
Another way they strive to define money is with the use of adjectives. A common example is "sound money," which is like saying "wet water." The adjective is superfluous because the noun is intuitively understood, or at least should be, as it was to the pioneers of the Austrian School.
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Although I obviously cannot speak for Menger and Mises, their intuitive understanding of money is different from that of modern writers. It had to be because the environmental factors when they were writing a century or more ago were so very different from today given the then-prevailing everyday use of gold and silver.
To test this point, a scan of the online version of "On the Origins of Money" reveals Menger never used the term "sound money," though it was used twice in the introduction to his monograph written in 2009. When Menger was writing in 1892, fiat currency was more a theoretical concept, not the everyday reality within which modern economists try to fit their new definitions in an attempt to explain -- let alone define -- "modern money." ...
... For the remainder of the analysis:
https://www.fgmr.com/defining-money/
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