How Freer Banking Affects Price
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A freer economy is one in which government has no longer exerted significant control over the economy. It is a society where the social structure and the economic actions of individuals are left to their own volition. Such a society would seem to contradict the notion that a free market is controlled by the state. A freer society does not mean that individual economic action is necessarily voluntary; however, a society where economic activity is largely left up to the individuals themselves does not necessarily ensure that such action is wholly voluntary. This is because an economy in which people are allowed to make choices about how they earn a living usually leaves individuals with more choice about how they spend their earnings.
This means that if you look at history, the kind of economy you have today probably corresponds to the kind of society you would likely live if you were a freer economy. One such example of a society that was without excessive risk taking or coercion comes to us via the history of ancient Rome. As Roman citizens, the norm among them was that no man should hold office beyond his means. The means to this end came in the form of a system of landed property that was held by those who had accumulated it through their ownership of land and other assets.
If you look at the current situation in Rome today, you find the exact opposite of the system that was in place centuries ago. Instead of families being able to accumulate vast amounts of wealth through the use of land and other assets, people are instead struggling just to scrape by. They are not able to take advantage of the highly regulated and controlled credit sector that existed in previous eras because they are unable to pay for credit. As a result, the credit crisis sweeping across the entire European continent is directly correlated to the way in which excessive risk taking and coercion have been removed from the economic structure of Europe. As a result, credit scores have become nearly irrelevant, instead they have become a measurement of how well the Roman citizens managed their investments and their savings during the time that the economy was free of these constraints.
