Talk:Silvio Gesell

Quotebook Nonsense

Half of the article is quotes by other people, ostensibly about Gesell. It's more like a desperate attempt to raise his status by appeal to authority, than an encyclopedia article. If there are going to be such quotes at all, they should be in proportion to the page size and content...not as big as the rest of the page, combined.

And each quote, should ideally, have some kind of obvious or explained relationship to a point made in the article. This looks more like a pamphlet passed out by some cult of Gesell worshipers. --Kaz (talk) 16:34, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Opinions

Checking the sources of the opinions it turns out that quotes tend to be altered or incomplete.

Check for examples Keynes: http://cas.umkc.edu/economics/people/facultyPages/kregel/courses/econ645/Winter2011/GeneralTheory.pdf

Instead of what is given in the article, the quote here goes like this: "In spite of the prophetic trappings with which his devotees have decorated him, Gesell's main book is written in cool, scientific language; though it is suffused throughout by a more passionate, a more emotional devotion to social justice than some think decent in a scientist."

On the theory of Gesell, Keynes goes on to remark: "But there is a great defect in Gesell's theory. He shows how it is only the existence of a rate of money interest which allows a yield to be obtained from lending out stocks of commodities. His dialogue between Robinson Crusoe and a stranger is a most excellent economic parable—as good as anything of the kind that has been written—to demonstrate this point. But, having given the reason why the money-rate of interest unlike most commodity rates of interest cannot be negative, he altogether overlooks the need of an explanation why the money-rate of interest is positive, and he fails to explain why the money-rate of interest is not governed (as the classical school maintains) by the standard set by the yield on productive capital. This is because the notion of liquidity-preference had escaped him. He has constructed only half a theory of the rate of interest. "

-- 62.178.12.228 (talk) 08:45, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

why did Gesell set up a branch of his brother's business in Argentina?

Why did Silvio Gesell establish a branch of his brother's business in 1887 in Argentina, and not in some other country with substantial German immigration like the United States, Canada, Australia, or Brazil?

Unsigned. CapnZapp (talk) 10:04, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Argentina does enjoy substantial German immigration historically. If you're asking why not some other country, I suppose Argentina was the most developed economy in the Western Hemisphere at the time, second only to the United States. VladVP (talk) 12:38, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Citations?

Arminden: it looks like you are doing great on the text, but there does need to be more specific citing of material (e.g., in-line cites). Which isn't easy with the full citations being manually formatted. Would you like me to put those in a templated form, and then I can show you an easy way of doing the in-line cites? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:05, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Mangled text

I think that someone was trying to disparage Gesell, and ended up writing some nonsense. Here are the two sentences:

Hence Keynes' thought on Gesell's theory was in the prison which bars are consist of the results from the mis-designed monetary system. He was a man in the stomach of a lion which he wanted to hunt.

I don't know what this should be, so I will leave it to others to fix. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hephaistio (talk • contribs) 11:00, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

response/note

At this point I don't see any reason to include this material anyway because from what I can tell it's only a criticism of Gesell's work in an indirect way, as in Keynes' opinion on this/that is (apparently) incompatible w/ Gesell's.

Glad to see there are now 3 editors who have a (genuine) interest in this issue (myself, Hephaistio, and J. Johnson) versus someone who won't go to talk and says my problem is that I didn't read some book. A Jaguar went for a picnic with kidney issues.

Unsigned CapnZapp (talk) 10:04, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Quote selection

Does this section provide a well-rounded overview of opinions of Gesell?

I believe the section only includes openly positive voices, or stealth quotes - voices that might at first appear critical but turn out to end up positive after all. Unless this man and his theories was universally liked and respected, this section is biased. Since I am no economic historian, I'll leave it at that. CapnZapp (talk) 09:57, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Needs section on Free Money / Freigold

It seems that Gesell's best known theory is his work on depreciating ("free") money. It's alluded to, but the piece doesn't do a good enough job of summarizing it; I would endorse adding a section on the topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.53.255.126 (talk) 22:36, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Strongly agree. The idea of charging interest on money is one of his most influential legacies. It was widely discussed after first Japan and then other developed economies hit the [roughly] zero floor to interest rates. If it were practical to tax cash, the policy rate could be lowered below zero, generating more monetary policy stimulus. 86.18.122.60 (talk) 17:17, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Anarchist?

Gesell was a ... anarchist, libertarian socialist,

References

Is this really the best we can do for claiming Gesell was an anarchist? Does anyone have further detail on his philosophy and practice, perhaps in another language? The German WP article doesn't even mention anarchism in relation to Gesell. I see some recent books using "anarchist" as an epithet for introducing Gesell but I suspect citogenesis (citing Wikipedia) unless we have an actual source that explains his beliefs. czar 15:44, 13 May 2022 (UTC)