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 pathway diversion seen as a commodity by one person and something else by another. Such shifts and differences in whether and when a thing is a commodity reveal a moral economy that stands behind the objective economy of visible transactions. In his discussion of commoditization, he also presents the idea of singularization which occurs because "there are things that are publicly precluded from being commoditized…[and are] sometimes extended to things that are normally commodities—in effect, commodities are singularized by being pulled out of their commodity sphere." Kopytoff goes on to describe ways in which commodities can be singularized, for example, through restricted