Diversification and evolution of post-modern money as “ideational money”: from MMT to PMMT

Abstract

The current post-modern private currencies including cryptocurrencies and community currencies are becoming extremely diverse. We need a clear-cut framework to put our present situation in perspective to understand the diversity and evolution of money in human history and consider the status quo and the future of money. The purpose of this paper is to place such diversified post-modern currencies as well as previous forms of money in the evolutionary tree diagram of money, grasp the essential nature of post-modern money represented by the fiat central banknotes as “ideational money” or “symbolic money”, neither material money nor credit money, and analyze the dynamics of stability and instability of the value of such ideational money as “legal tender” or “cash currency”, and gain a clear vision on how the money will evolve in the future, so that we can finally make a critical evaluation on Modern Money Theory (hereinafter MMT) from the viewpoint of our money theory, Post-modern Money Theory (hereinafter PMMT), as an alternative to it.