Excerpt:
"Can the type of money used change the culture of a society? This might seem like an absurd proposition, but it is supported by the arguments of proponents of the Austrian school of economics.

First, let’s contextualize the importance of sound money as opposed to fiat money. Mises notes in The Theory of Money and Credit: “It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments.“

Fiat money has never arisen through purely voluntary market actions. It has always been coercively imposed via interventions such as legal tender laws, capital gains tax laws, central banking, laws permitting fractional reserve banking, government bailout guarantees, etc. This causes a degeneration in the quality of money used by society. But are there cultural consequences of this?

To see the cultural consequences, we must first understand the pivotal role money and prices play in coordinating production across society. Entrepreneurs must act under uncertainty to gather the required resources to offer their goods and services. And yet money, their unit of account, for measuring profit and loss, is being manipulated by the government. Money is created as new loans are issued by commercial and retail banks, and the first recipients of that money benefit at the expense of late recipients.

Using money with continual inflation encourages short termism and haste. We live more like animals in the wild. Animals in the wild care mostly about their next meal, rather than thinking, planning, and building for the long term as humans can do when we’re at our best."