On Debasement

Coinage is imprinted gold or silver, by which the prices of things bought and sold are reckoned. It is therefore a measure of values. A measure, however, must always preserve a fixed and constant standard. Otherwise public order is necessarily disturbed with buyers and sellers being cheated in many ways, just as if the yard, bushel, or pound did not maintain an invariable magnitude.

Nicholas Copernicus, Treatise on Debasement

The Individualistic Capitalism of today, precisely because it entrusts saving to the individual investor and production to the individual employer, presumes a stable measuring rod of value, and cannot be efficient -- perhaps cannot survive -- without one.

John Maynard Keynes, Social Consequences of Changes in the Value of Money