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Private Property Rights as the Pillar of Human Civilization

The fundamental question all human beings face is, how do we organize our society in such a way that leads to the achievement of ground norms of justice, peace, prosperity and civilization? Particularly, how to organize the society so it avoids conflict between its members and promotes cooperation.     In this short essay I am going to discuss what lies at the foundation of human civilization. We must first begin by defining civilization.   What is civilization?  Before we go and discuss how private property rights are pillars of human civilization, it is important to define what that civilization is.   National geographic society encyclopedia entry defines it as: “The word “civilization” relates to the Latin word “civitas” or “city.” This is why the most basic definition of the word “civilization” is “a society made up of cities.” But early in the development of the term, anthropologists and others used “civilization” and “civilized society” to differentiate between societies they fou

On Government Digital Currencies

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The latest issue of the Economist magazine (figure 1) discusses the coming digital currencies of the governments. It talks about how these currencies are risky but a risk worth taking and how they will transform finance as we know it today. Let’s see what risk we all are taking when governments are going to impose their digital currencies on us. Do they represent something fundamentally different or represent the same system but in the guise of new digits?   The Economist To understand digital currencies we have to first understand what money is and then what is the difference between money and currency? What is money?   By definition money is a common medium of exchange against which every other goods trade in the market economy. Money’s evolution was gradual from the direct exchange barter economy to an indirect exchange money economy. Any commodity that was previously in use and highly demanded by everybody were potential money candidates. Historically this role has been played by p