Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Debt-based monetary system (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. with a refactoring to Debt theory of money. It can be moved there then built from ground up, if whomever takes the task up wishes. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:18, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Debt-based monetary system
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This was nominated for deletion in December 2007. While the result of that discussion was keep, this was premised on the article that actual references would be added and there'd be some evidence that this is anything but original research. In the five years since then, this hasn't happened, probably because it is original research. It's not a known concept, it's not notable, it's OR. Volunteer Marek 01:20, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Support as nom obviously. Volunteer Marek  01:20, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2012 June 29.  Snotbot   t &bull; c &raquo;  01:37, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 02:09, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 02:10, 29 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Note that the current article *is not* strictly that which went to AFD in 2007. That particular article is currently at Criticism of fractional reserve banking. The article under discussion was restarted as a topic at 11:21, 2 February 2012‎ by 122.162.74.201. -- KTC (talk) 04:18, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete It appears this is a WP:POV take on the concept of a Money economy. I can't quite call it a POV fork, since that article doesn't exist, but Merriam Webster suggests that's the term for it. I'm not sure how fruitful it would be to possibly move this article there. Note that Criticism of fractional reserve banking says, "Critics of fractional reserve banking and the related fiat paper monetary system may use the term debt-based monetary system or credit-based monetary system to emphasize the role that credit plays in the current monetary system. These terms are not in general use..." This suggests WP:N concerns for this topic. If it remains, it should be retooled to describe the phrase, as one used to criticize money economies. --BDD (talk) 15:06, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * "obnoxious template removed" — Preceding unsigned comment added by DBigXray  (talk • contribs) 21:43, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Original text of template removed by DBigXray: Substantial text was removed from this article prior to or during AfD. This notice is added to prevent misrepresentation of the potential of the article under discussion, compromise of the relevance of contributions to the discussion, and complication of the discussion's conduct and closure. This is not an official WP notice Anarchangel (talk) 00:16, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Uh can you say the same thing without that obnoxious template? Volunteer Marek 22:01, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Seemed like a good idea at the time. I do not think I will use it in the future. Anarchangel (talk) 08:31, 2 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment - actually, this smacks the system of Ancient Egyptian trade. Bearian (talk) 23:38, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, BusterD (talk) 00:14, 7 July 2012 (UTC)




 * Keep The concept is not original. There is a significant school of thought that money developed from the concept of debt rather than from barter.  Debt as a basis for monetary systems is therefore quite fundamental.  I have expanded the article, providing a reference and more content. Warden (talk) 10:16, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete—I skimmed the book cited in this article, and read the section that seems relevant (the article doesn't help here, as the citation is to a full section in the book, instead of a particular page). I come away with the belief that this article is, indeed, WP:OR, and even beyond that, it's a case of WP:SNTH. The book does suggest that coinage came about as a result of a debt/credit economy, but to link that idea to the naming and definition of a "monetary system" is further that the book goes (that I could find).  The final sentence in the first paragraph of the article, seems to be making a link (synth) that is not articulated in the source material.  I'm sure the "concept is not original" (per User:Warden, but at the same time, it's not supported by the source offered, and as we've yet to find further sources in 5 years, I think it's time we pull the plug on this article.  Liv it ⇑ Eh?/What? 15:22, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Im astonished that you can say that. As a rule, if ever you feel a source added by an ARS member doesnt support an article, you just need to read it more attentively. The Graeber source was added by the Colonel himself, easilly one of the top 10 most meticulous and scholary editors in all of Wikipedia.  It absolutely supports the concept - one of the main themes of the book is that monetary systems are debt based, and have been since the very begining, apart from regions and  periods where money was backed by bulion. If youre not interested enough in the book to read it closely, you can verify this by reading its many reviews. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:44, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, whenever I see "a source added by an ARS" member I... sigh really loudly. This is a gross over generalization on my part but in many of those cases the adding of the usually related but irrelevant source is just a desperate attempt to "rescue" yet another pointless piece of synth and or. So far I still think this needs to be deleted and I agree with Livitup. Graeber is about a different idea (feel free to start an article on it), not this one. I'm still looking at Innes source. Volunteer Marek 19:01, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I've actually read the Graeber book (if you checked my editing history I added it as a reference to another article on 4th of July, several days before the Colonel added it)  and it is indeed largely about the concept that both current and historical monetary systems are debt based.  FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:40, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - I initially thought this was a POV fork in the making of money or some such, but I now believe this to be a valid article about an alternative theory of the origin of money. Whether the sourcing available is sufficient to sustain a piece is perhaps arguable, but I believe the general topic is encyclopedic. Perhaps needs a name change after close of the AfD, if kept, to something like Theory of the debt-based origin of money or some such. The "book" on money is that it originated as a store of value and a means of accounting in lieu of barter for transactions. The alternative argument here is that money also started in some instances as a mechanism for tallying debt. Carrite (talk) 15:27, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * What kind of sources do you have in mind to support the notability of "Theory of the debt-based origin of money"? Do these exist? Volunteer Marek  16:01, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * See Credit and State Theories of Money for Innes' papers with subsequent commentary and development. Warden (talk) 14:11, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm still thinking about it but if the article, in its present state is renamed to "Credit Theory of Money" or something along those lines, that might work. The thing is, it might be just more "legit" to create such an article separately and move the text from here there. That way the histories of the two articles, which are about two different concepts, won't get mingled and mangled. Also, it will hopefully prevent some joker from "restoring previous stable version" - i.e. restoring the OR/SYNTH version from before this AfD. Volunteer Marek 19:07, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment Note that today's FA is about a monetary topic.  Perhaps inspection of the linked articles may be helpful. Warden (talk) 16:14, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Its true the concept doesnt have much currency among mainstream economists. (Although the Innes papers were highly regarded by Lord Keynes himself and have recently been populated by good professor Randy Wray.) But the concept is better known to other academics like anthropologists, sociologists and economic historians. Also its fairly well known by Austrian school types and by investors and other actors in the financial sector. There's hundreds of RSs available that address this, so the article has the potential to join the Cross of Gold speech as an FA. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:44, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Can you point me to these hundreds of RSs that address *this*? As in 'this particular concept' rather than a related one, like the relation between money and credit, which can be easily put into the History of Money article (god, that one is horrible, rather than wasting time on this dead end one, why not try and bring that one up to ... not even FA, just NCA ("non crappy article")). Specifically these hundreds of sources that use the term "debt-based monetary system"? This is a good faith question, I'm perfectly willing to change my mind, it's just that an assertion like that ("there's hundreds of RSs available...") without proof is completely meaningless. I could say that at every AfD. Volunteer Marek 18:54, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes I could, but even with my special attention it would take allmost two hours to compile a list of two hundred sources and Im not sure it would be a wise use of time. I see good Laura Hale was recently kind enough to create a massive and well refernced table of sources, but the the AfD in question was still closed as delete, due to the deletionist hoards.  Id normally like to point you at fruitful top tier locations as Id did when we talked a few years back, but in this case I cant recommend anything better than google scholar / google books, due to the way the best sources are dispered among the different social sciences.  You might want to add the following names to your searches to help you find some of the best ones. The sublime Karl Polanyi who Ive just been extensively citing on our Embedded Liberalism artticle.  Marcel Mauss who's book The Gift was one of the main inspirations for Graeber. And also Keith Hart. So there you have some of the leading lights from the 2oth century for the three disciplines mentioned.  Of course, the 3 sources already in the article would be a good place to start - if read attentively.  FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:40, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Claiming you *could* do something, but are not going bother doesn't exactly establish your credibility here. Also raving about 'deletionist hordes' (as opposed to folks who proudly claim to have never voted 'delete' in *any* AfD discussion?)
 * I also have trouble understanding what it is you're going on about. Where did Laura Hale compile a massive and well reference table of sources? For this article? Where? I wanna see it? Or do you just mean that at one point one person compiled some list of sources for one, completely different, article up for deletion and it was deleted anyway so now THIS article MUST be kept? Huh? I mean... huh?
 * Huh? (sorry I'm still scratching my head over that one)
 * I have no idea what "Id normally like to point you at fruitful top tier locations as Id did when we talked a few years back" actually means.
 * I also have no idea what Polanyi, or gift economies have to do with any of this.
 * I'm sorry but I find your comment to be simply a desperate attempt at saving a crappy article (why not create a new one?) by derailing the discussion with red herrings and irrelevancies. I can't take it in good faith. Volunteer Marek 01:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * You can view Laura's tables in the AfD I linked to above (you'd need to expand the hats). If you read the responses she got for her effort, you can probably see why Im reluctant to go to the same lengths here.


 * Mauss was one of the first to prominently challenge the classical liberal view about the prevalence of barter in early society. In gift economies, they still have the concept of debt but, it doesnt tend to be quantified. (ie., they'd recognise the concept of me being in the Colonel's debt for his previous help saving a food bank article from destruction, but they wouldnt recognise the idea of owing someone 20 dollars)  Mauss contrasts gift societies with debt based monetary systems, where money serves to quantify debt.


 * Polanyi introduced the "fictitious commoditiy" concept; he said the three great ones were land, labor and money. He discusses how after the dissolution of the gold standard, money ceased to backed by a real commodity and instead became "token money" - tokens representing debt, though admittedly Polyani says by far the dominant view was that they were tokens of Purchasing power.


 * When you last challenged me after I summed up hundreds of sources,  I was able to point you at specific locations like the FT and Vox from where youd be able to verify my claims with some quick searches.  I mentioned this to indicate that within reason  Im trying to be as helpful and specific as I can - its just this is a difficult topic, where its hard to get to grips with  except by wide ranging reasearch. Adding to the difficulty, its rare for the sources to actually use the term "debt-based monetary system".   Again the Graeber book would be a great starting place – he extensively cites previous scholarship on the links between money and debt, going back at least as far as Aristotle.  FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:49, 11 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Again, this is all nice, but 100% irrelevant to this AfD. Please stop wasting my (and other people's) time. The statement "its rare for the sources to actually use the term "debt-based monetary system"" is pretty much as close of an admission from you as we're likely to get that *this* particular article is in fact a piece of OR. Volunteer Marek 17:35, 11 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Other phrases with a similar meaning such as credit money or debt-based money are used by numerous sources. The exact phrasing of the article's title does not seem significant because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary.  Warden (talk) 18:01, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * @ Volunteer Marek. Its never a waste of time when ARS members contribute to these discussions. As the Colonel demonstrates, our scholarly contributions can be educational for others, and they exemplify collegial conduct. I see my friend Lawrencekhoo, a highly regarded academic economist, has posted on your talk suggesting you withdraw the AfD due to the article's notability and NPOV. If you're concerned about avoiding the waste of further community time, please follow his advice. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:12, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Just a wee note on sources added to the article. In addition to those discussed above, it has a book by Philip Coggan, a senior commentator for both the FT and The Economist. Also a source by Lord Sinclair which has the phrase "debt based monetary system" in the title. All told we have four RSs entirely or at least mostly about the topic in question.

Compare this to the featured article mentioned by the Colonel. Not one of 16 sources for Cross of Gold speech is entirely or even mostly about said speech; they're much broader, covering topics like the Life of Bryan, the presidential campaign or US coinage in general. This was a reasonable nom at the time, as per my first statement many professional economists might initially feel this is an excessively fringe topic. But after the recent improvements by the Rescue squad and good Lawrencekhoo, demonstrating the topic is fact an area of research for leading academics and commentators, objections on OR and notability grounds are surely not sustainable? FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:32, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem with both those sources is that neither is really about what this article is presumably about. In fact, what exactly is this article is supposed to be about? Look at the first sentence: "A debt-based monetary system is a monetary system where coins, tokens or paper money that represent claims on individuals or institutions are used as the primary form of money in an economy." - that's every single freaking monetary system in the world! If you remove the words "debt-based" the sentence still applies. Hell, it's even better and clearer. The "debt-based" part is the OR. With it, this is just a OR/POV fork of "Monetary system" plain and simple.
 * If you want an article on credit based theories of money then start that article (perhaps by moving some of the text from this one). But delete this one.
 * Desperately adding in sources on mostly irrelevant concepts, or folks' worries about the size of debt of various economies (also irrelevant) just to - for some stubborn, pointless and extremist-inclusionist reason - save this particular article is, well, to put it plainly, pathetic. And stupid, since the same text can exist perfectly well in a different article, one that actually makes sense. Volunteer Marek 13:42, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Not all monetary systems are debt-based. For a specific example of a type of money which is not debt-based, see bitcoin. Warden (talk) 17:27, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Uh... no. Which economies exactly use bitcoin as their monetary system? None. And that's because it's not a "monetary system" but a payments system. Two different things. And let's stick to relevant and pertinent examples, please. This is already way off-topic as is. Volunteer Marek 17:40, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, perhaps more importantly, you're confusing your antecedent and consequent. It may or may not be true that not all monetary systems are debt-based. But the above definition - the opening sentence of the article - is a definition of any monetary system (actually, more or less a tautology), debt based or not. Volunteer Marek 17:45, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Or look at it another way - by reading the lede, as expanded by FeydHuxtable. The first part of the lede is about anthropologists' views of money and this whole credit/debt as origin of money theory, way back in antiquity. Then it transitions right into stuff about Nixon. From antiquity to 1971 in the same paragraph, with nothing in between. See the problem? Two different stories/concepts are synthesized (read WP:SYNTH again) because: a) the concept of the article is badly defined, b) the concept as invented by Wikipedians is not really notable, though some parts may be, and c) any and all sources, no matter how irrelevant are shoved into the article in a desperate attempt to pretend that there are sources on the concept while there aren't. Volunteer Marek 13:51, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * You make some useful points. Assuming we dont get an unexpected result to this AfD, I'll likely further improve the article to address the issues you raise. The Graeber source covers many of the intervening debt based systems which arose between antiquity and today. And it covers the concept of monetary systems being debt based both in the sense of money serving as a unit of account for debt, and in the "dual creation" sense. So Synth issues can be avoided.


 * Unfortunately, similar definitional problems to the sort you've identified apply to several of the most basic concepts in economics. John Hicks, one of the leading authorities on the relationship between econ and accounting, said that even such apparently simple concepts as Income and Savings can be "bad tools which break in our hands". This is all the more reason to have articles on these topics, so we can inform readers about the various perspectives.


 * Similar to most of the other sources, Graeber compares debt based systems to those based on commodity money, where money has its own intrinsic value. Again, not all monetary systems are debt based. Granted the distinction isnt as clear cut as we'd like. For Graeber, even gold coins largely acted as IOUs. Switching to the other sense, the dual creation of debt & money can still occur even with a gold standard, once banks start issuing paper money to supplement coinage. The difference is with commodity based systems, typically much less than 50% of new money is created simultaneously with debt - whereas with a debt based system the figure can exceed 95%.


 * As per the worlds leading economics commentator, Martin Wolf: "The essence of the contemporary monetary system is creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks’ often foolish lending." FT article


 * As ever, the Colonel's example was well chosen. With Bitcoin even more than with a gold standard, you dont get the dual creation of money and debt. And it is a currency, not just a payment system like say Paypal. To answer your question, Bitcoin is being used all over the world in the above ground economy, even for trivial things like ordering books. In certain dark economies, Bitcoin is even used exclusively. Our article gives Silk Road as an example of this. (I dont advise going on the TOR darknet to investigate, unless you're able to get expert help setting up your client side security. A great many folk have had their lives ruined by stumbling across the ultra-illegal material that infests the TDN, and then being "caught" by the authorities). Its interesting you should mention payment systems though. On the much cooler though less accessible ccc darknet, there's collaborative work going on to develop gear that will allow Bitcoin to be used for a new near universal micro payments system (infeasible to do this with old school systems like Paypal due to high transaction costs.) Several believe this could herald the dawning of web 3.0 and a great Age of Inclusion! FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:44, 13 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep but rename/refocus. This article should be renamed to something like Debt theory of money or Origin of money to better reflect its contents. The current title, 'debt-based monetary system', seems like original research, and raises the questions "What makes the monetary system debt-based? And how could it be anything else?" which the article doesn't do a good job of answering. I assume it means a system mostly made up of credit money rather than commodity money, but it isn't very clear. I think this article would be better as an examination of the idea of 'money as debt', in comparison to money as an instrument of exchange and replacement for barter; that's what the content is really about, so it just needs to be renamed to reflect that. Robofish (talk) 22:00, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Debt theory of money seems like a good compromise. --BDD (talk) 22:05, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I would be fine with that. I do think that the proper way to do it is for someone to start a new article on Debt theory of money and move (some of) the existing content to that article, perhaps with a note on the talk page, and delete this one. The present article has undergone metamorphosis several times in its past in regard to its scope, so starting a separate article should prevent that in the future. But sure, at the end of the day, I guess it doesn't matter all that much. Volunteer Marek 04:29, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Btw, if this is amenable to the objectors here, I can create the Debt theory of money article myself. Volunteer Marek 04:31, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.