What Has Government Done to Our Money? What Has Government Done to Our Money? What Has Government Done to Our Money? is a 1963 book by Murray N. Rothbard that details the history of money, from early barter systems, to the gold standard, to present day systems of paper money. Rothbard explains how money was originally developed, and why gold was chosen as the preferred commodity to use as money. The essay, "What Has Government Done to Our Money?" was written by Rothbard as an objective historical account with a provocative title. In contrast, "The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar" was an essay with an
Commodity (Marxism) of socially necessary labor have the same exchange value. By contrast, prices are normally measured in money-units. For practical purposes, prices are, however, usually preferable to labour-hours, as units of account, although in capitalist work processes the two are related to each other (see labor power). The seven basic forms of commodity trade can be summarised as follows: The hyphens ("-") here refer to a transaction applying to an exchange involving goods or money; the dots in the last-mentioned circuit ("...") indicate that a value-forming process ("P") occurs "in between" purchase of commodities and the sales of different commodities. Thus,