Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2192

Random taping of Heath by Spencer MacCallum at a seminar at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), Irvington, New York

June 23, 1957

 

 

 

 

Just one word on fixing the standard, fixing whether it is 1/448^th part of an ounce or whatever it is, we have an institution that fixes standards for us. We have the free market, and everything that we consign to the free market by relinquishing our personal, separate jurisdiction over it and leaving it to the disposition of the market, the market fixes the standard for that thing because it determines the ratios which it bears to everything else that is relinquished to the market, in terms of the respective exchange ability of these different things. It fixes the ratios — it is a rational institution. And when you put gold in the market, the market will tell you how many potatoes are good for an ounce of gold and so on, things like that; the market will fix the ratios. And the standard isn’t anything but a unit in a ratio. In all of our troubles, let’s consider the salvation of the market.