[smacktoward]

We're using the word "modern" extremely broadly in this context. Fractional reserve banking goes back to what, the early Renaissance? Did the economies of the Middle Ages really serve people better than our economies do today?

[jnbiche]

Correlation does not equal causation.

And arguably, the invention of dual-entry accounting in the early Renaissance -- a self-auditing system similar in many ways to nullc's proposal -- played a much bigger part in the beginning of modern economic development than did fractional reserve banking.

[smacktoward]

This is the exact same answer you used to get in the old days, back when real communists actually existed, and you'd ask one of them why there were no communist countries with anything like a functional economy. "Correlation does not equal causation, comrade! Just because those troubled countries are all communist does not mean that it is communism that is the cause of their troubles."

I'm just sayin', theory is nice and all, but examples from real practice are more interesting. Fractional reserve banking has been widely in use for hundreds of years in countries which have prospered far more than the general run of humanity has. Show me a capitalist economy that (1) outlawed fractional reserve banking and (2) functions better in some tangible way than the rest of the developed world, and you've got an argument more compelling than a chapter from a textbook of Austrian economics.

[jnbiche]

Your argument against correlation doesn't equal causation is...communism? That's quite a red herring. For the record, and it shouldn't matter, but I learned about correlation doesn't equal causation in an epidemiology class, and I've always associated it with rational thought.

>and you've got an argument more compelling than a chapter from a textbook of Austrian economics.

Another ad hominem.

And you didn't even address my point about double-entry accounting, which shares a striking similarity in some ways to this proposal. Way to mount an effective argument.