Not a full-blown criticism, but just a nit to pick. In George Selgin’s “100 Percent Reserve Money: The Small Change Challenge”, why does he assume that a bank’s fees must be strictly proportional to the amount of gold (or other commodity) that the bank is warehousing for its customers? Is that what the pro-100% reserves people are saying? I would think some sort of sliding scale or averaged monthly charge would be more flexible, to allow for the very fluctuations of floating money that he mentions, and in the case of small change, a small flat fee, as banks have traditionally charged, would probably suffice to cover the costs. After all, how much small change does one use at any given time? How much small change do you carry in your pockets right now?
In any case, whether this is Selgin’s assumption or his opponents’ assumption, I’m surprised that people who support the free market are incapable of realizing that entreprenurial solutions would arise out of problems found in the market, as opposed to some centralist idea that all such problems have to be figured out ahead of time.
As for small change as fiduciary media, I’ll have to think more about that.