"But for each pound sterling used, there was not a coresponding lump of gold."

True, due to the practice of holding only a fractional reserve. Market mechanisms would prevent over-expansion, if governments didn't intervene to enable banks to inflate. such money is commodity money. The paper attached is accepted as a substitute for money. Where there is doubt that such paper can be converted into gold, then the paper loses value.

"the value of ancient coinage wasn't determined by metallic content, but by symbols written upon them"

No way. When coins were debased, i.e. their precious metal content was reduced, the coins lost their purchasing power as soon as it was realised. Also, when old, clipped coins were legally valued as equal to newly-minted coins, which perhaps weighed 5-10% more, then (à la Gresham's Law), the newly minted coins disappeared from circulation. As governments were constantly committing such frauds upon the people, they needed draconian laws to attempt to avoid the otherwise inevitable consequences of debasement and inflation, such as in revolutionary France, when it was made a capital offence to refuse payment in Assignats.

You wrote all that just to take the piss out of a supportive comment - nice.

We - honest lovers of liberty - have squirmed for too long under the oppressive jack-boot of the state. The state - an ignorant behemoth driven forward by the inertial force of society's stupidity and greed - must be reduced, it must be shackled.
How can we do this, brothers?
I want the state reduced to the role of servant - a servant whose primary duty is to enable our ability to choose.
"What!?" I hear you cry "We must destroy this evil state, you stupid STATIST!"
Hear me out!
I hate that evil state just the same as you - after all, Gordon Brown.
But if we want to establish a legal system which protects our right to property - property created with our own hands, with the noble sweat of our brows - we must have something very similar to a "state" ("hoooch chhuu" *spits*).
This is a sad fact - but we must at the least have a "state" (hoooch chhuu) which upholds the law and (in a similar way) protects our land from foreign invasion. So the question is always which rules should govern the state, not whether such a body should exist.
But yes, you are right. To me, the state is an evil, parasitic body, stealing the productive work of ordinary people and frittering it away on frivolous and pointless projects. For this reason I propose we rename *our* governing body "the freedom force" - to clearly distinguish it from what came before.
So, which rules should govern the freedom force? Firstly, I fear that we stuck in a vicious circle in which corrupt big business controls the state to reduce the power of competition - while at the *same time* due to this link between government and private business, socialists must steal money from private business in order to use the state for their purposes.
And sterling taxation on transactions denominated in other currencies (or even on barter) means that there is no escape - we must have access to go government money to do business, an unnacceptable concentration of government power... at the same time the government requires private money in order to do business, pushing fool socialists to equate the reduction of private activity with an improvement in public welfare....
Is that better?

"It is certainly news that you are trying to appeal to us."

I believe Mark's right in that if he'd written the article differently, he'd be getting more supportive comments.

His suggestions - abolishment of the government money monopoly, and replacing all existing taxes with LVT - are steps toward freedom, not away.

"When was commodity money the norm?"

From the earliest times that money emerged. It emerged when a pre-existing commodity became adopted for indirect exchange. Gold and silver were especially suited for this. At other times, goods such as tobacco or cattle have been used as money. With regard to tobacco, farmers paid their taxes with tobacco in early America. Also in prisons and POW camps, tobacco has often been adopted as money.

"World trade prior to the First World War wasn't based on private credit networks - it was based on central bank money"

I think this is totally wrong. The currency used for world trade in the period we are talking about was gold. One pound sterling was a fixed weight of gold, along with all the other currencies on the Gold Standard. The City of London as a financial centre was not run or controlled by the Bank of England, but by private networks. The reason that London was such a financial centre was due to the fact that it was the most trusted place to do business. Banks, including central banks were well known to 'suspend' specie payment (i.e. default from payment of their debts) at certain times, but it was deemed far less likely that this would happen in London. It is due to the confidence that Sterling enjoyed, that the Bank of England had enough gold in its vaults, that Sterling became such an important currency.

The ghost of the Gold Standard lasted until 1971. Until that time, the US dollar was fixed at $35= 1 Oz. This was not available to the individual, but it was to the central banks. This was the unstable Bretton Woods system, which collapsed due to America succumbing to the moral hazard of exploiting the position of the dollar.

Do you think my "only land taxes, freedom to create private money, don't have to pay tax at all if you choose not to" policies would go down well over there?

Maybe I should have put a few more "Oooooh government is really bad"s in this piece to appeal to the libertarian market...

World trade prior to the First World War wasn't based on private credit networks - it was based on central bank money most importantly that o the Bank of England.

When was commodity money the norm?

Mark who?? shouldn't you be writing on the grauniad?

"Libertarians would generally seek to solve these problems by eliminating the government.."

This! Oh, he's not finished.

"... from money creation. There are a number of problems with this approach. Firstly, credit networks without government support tend to be either small and personal, or entirely unstable."

World trade prior to the First World War under the Gold Standard was neither small nor unstable. It may not have been perfect but it worked very well. Its destruction and the various governments' failure to reinstate it is one of the many tragedies resulting from that terrible war the centenary of which we shall soon be marking.

"Secondly, there is no evidence that pure "commodity money" has ever existed or that barter can be used to run a large scale economy. "

I don't know if you are using the word 'pure' here in order to provide an escape route, but commodity money was the norm for thousands of years, and will always assert itself whenever it is more useful than paper money or other forms of money substitutes. As for barter, i.e. direct exchange, naturally this is not adequate for an advanced economy - hence the emergence of indirect exchange.

BTW I suspect the writer holds various statist beliefs, indicated in talk of 'running the economy' and such like. I'd sooner the government run off a cliff with rocks in its pockets.