Mistä raha syntyy?

Jo vuonna 1892, Carl Menger, itävaltalaisen taloustieteen perustaja ja rajahyötyteorian kehittäjä, pystyi selittämään loogisesti ja ymmärrettävästi, miten ja miksi raha syntyy teoksessaan The Origins of Money. Raha on ihmisten luoma vaihdon väline. Ihmisten toiminnassa tietty hyödyke tai tietyt hyödykkeet tulevat muita hyödykkeitä helpommin vaihdettaviksi ja tämän kehityksen lopputuloksena syntyy laajasti hyväksytty vaihdon väline eli raha. 

Carl Menger, 1892, The Origins of Money

Käytännössä tämä tarkoittaa yksinkertaistetusti sitä, että jos A tuottaa viljaa, B lihaa ja C on kalastaja, pystytään vaihdantaa toteuttamaan suoran vaihdannan (kalasta lihaan) lisäksi myös siten, että kalastaja C vaihtaa kalat viljaan ja hankkii viljalla lihaa, jos lihan tuottaja B ei halua ottaa kalaa vaihdossa. Tällöin viljasta on muodostunut vaihdon väline, koska se hyväksytään vastikkeena laajasti ja koska sen vaihtaminen on helppoa. Viljaa voidaan myös jakaa pienempiin yksiköihin kuin kalaa tai lihaa. Siispä viljasta muodostuu käytettävän hyödykkeen lisäksi vaihdon väline eli raha. 

Jotta hyödyke voi saavuttaa rahan aseman, on sillä oltava tiettyjä ominaisuuksia, joita tarkastelemalla Menger päätyi selittämään rahan synnyn. Tällaisia ominaisuuksia on kuvattu kappaleessa "Concerning the Causes of the Different Degrees of Saleableness in Commodies", joka on Mengerin teoksen ydinkappale ja löytyy kokonaisuudessaan alta. Menger päätyy johtopäätöksissän siihen, että kulta ja metallit ovat luonnollisia vaihdon välineitä eli rahoja, koska ne täyttävät hyvän vaihdettavuuden kriteerit eli hyvän rahan ominaisuudet. Vastakohta Mengerin "luonnolliselle rahalle" on valtion luomat paperirahat, jotka eivät ole hyödykkeitä itsessään, ja joilla ei siten ole arvoa itsessään. Koska paperirahaa voidaan painaa rajattomasti, niiden arvo ei määräydy markkinoilla ihmisten vaihtaessa hyödykkeitä toisiin vapaaehtoisessa vaihdannassa vaan niiden arvo määräytyy rahan kokonaismäärän kehityksen ja siitä, kuinka uskottavana ja hyväksyttävänä kyseinen paperiraha toimii vaihdon välineenä. 

Mengerin teos on siinä mielessä legendaarinen, että se innoitti Ludwig von Misesin kehittämään oman teoriansa rahasta ja luotosta (Theory of Money and Credit). Mises viittaa useasti Mengeriin oppi-isänään ja Itävaltalaisen koulukunnan perustajana. Mengerin kirja on hyvin lyhyt, 52 sivua, ja sen voi ladata PDF:nä luettavaksi ilmaiseksi täältä. Mengerin lukemisen arvoinen laajempi biografia löytyy täältä. Hyvä analyysi Mengerin rahateorian ja Cartalistin rahateorian väliltä löytyy täältä. 

Concerning the Causes of the Different Degrees of Saleableness in Commodities

The degree to which a commodity is found by experience to command a sale, at a given market, at any time, at prices corresponding to the economic situation (economic prices), depends upon the following circumstances.

1.  Upon the number of persons who are still in want of the commodity in question, and upon the extent and intensity of that want, which is unsupplied, or is constantly recurring.

2.  Upon the purchasing power of those persons.

3.  Upon the available quantity of the commodity in relation to the yet unsupplied (total) want of it.

4.  Upon the divisibility of the commodity, and any other ways in which it may be adjusted to the needs of individual customers.

5.  Upon the development of the market, and of speculation in particular. And finally.

6.  Upon the number and nature of the limitations imposed politically and socially

upon exchange and consumption with respect to the commodity in question.

We may proceed, in the same way in which we considered the degree of the saleableness in commodities at definite markets and definite points of time, to set out the spatial and temporal limits of their saleableness. In these respects also we observe in our markets some commodities, the saleableness of which is almost unlimited by place or time, and others the sale of which is more or less limited.

The spatial limits of the saleableness of commodities are mainly conditioned—

1.  By the degree to which the want of the commodities is disturbed in space.

2.  By the degree to which the goods lend themselves to transport, and the cost of transport incurred in proportion to their value.

3.  By the extent to which the  means of transport and of commerce generally are developed with respect to different classes of commodities.

4.  By the local extension of organised markets and their inter-communication by “arbitrage.”

5.  By the differences in the restrictions imposed upon commercial inter-communication with respect to different goods, to interlocal and, in particular, in international trade.

The time limits to the saleableness of commodities are mainly conditioned—

1.  By permanence in the need of them (their independence of fluctuation in the same).

2.  Their durability, i.e., their suitableness for preservation.

3.  The cost of preserving and storing them.

4.  The rate of interest.

5.  The periodicity of a market for the same.

6.  The development of speculation and in particular of time-bargains in connection with the same.

7.  The restrictions imposed politically and socially on their being transferred from one period of time to another.

All these circumstances, on which depend the different degrees of, and the different local and temporal limits to, the saleableness of commodities, explain why it is that certain commodities can be disposed of with ease and certainty in definite markets, i.e., within local and temporal limits, at any time and in practically any quantities, at prices corresponding to the general economic situation, while the saleableness of other commodities is confined within narrow spatial, and again, temporal, limits: and even within these the disposal of the commodities in question is difficult, and, in so far as the demand cannot be waited for, is not to be brought about without a more or less sensible diminution in price.

Poiminnot

• Individuals decide what the most marketable good is for use as a medium of exchange. 
• The theory of money necessarily presupposes a theory of the saleableness of goods.
• It is an error in economics, as prevalent as it is patent, that all commodities, at a definite point of time and in a given market, may be assumed to stand to each other in a definite relation of exchange, in other words, may be mutually exchanged in definite quantities at will. The truth is, that even in the best organized markets, while we may be able to purchase when and what we like at a definite price, viz.: the purchasing price, we can only dispose of it again when and as we like at a loss, viz.: at the selling price.
• A high rate of saleableness in a commodity consists in the fact that it may at every moment be easily and surely disposed of at a price corresponding to, or at least not discrepant from, the general economic situation—at an economic, or approximately economic, price.
• Men have been led, with increasing knowledge of their individual interests, each by his own economic interests, without convention, without legal compulsion, nay, even without any regard to the common interest, to exchange goods destined for exchange (their “wares”) for other goods equally destined for exchange, but more saleable.
• It lies in the economic interest of each trafficking individual to exchange less saleable for more saleable commodities.
• When the relatively most saleable commodities have become “money,” the great event has in the first place the effect of substantially increasing their originally high saleableness.
• The less saleable are the goods brought by an economic subject to market, the more unfavourably, for his own purposes, will his economic position compare with the position of those who bring money to market.
• The practice of every-day life, as well as jurisprudence, which closely adheres for the most part to the notions prevalent in every-day life, distinguish two categories in the wherewithal of traffic— goods which have become money and goods which have not. And the ground of this distinction, we find, lies essentially in that difference in the saleableness of commodities set forth above.
• Money has not been generated by law. In its origin it is a social, and not a state institution. sanction by the authority of the state is a notion alien to it. On the other hand, however, by state recognition and state regulation, this social institution of money has been perfected and adjusted to the manifold and varying needs of an evolving commerce, just as customary rights have been perfected and adjusted by statute law.