Silvio Gesell

Johann Silvio Gesell (; 17 March 1862 – 11 March 1930) was a German-Argentine economist, entrepreneur, and social reformer. He was the founder of (German for "free economy"), an economic model for market socialism. In 1900, he founded the magazine ''Money and Land Reform'' (), but it soon closed for financial reasons. During his time in Oranienburg, Gesell started the magazine ''Der Physiokrat'' together with George Heinrich Blumenthal. In 1914, it closed due to censorship. In 1916, he published his most famous work, ''The Natural Economic Order''.

Gesell is mainly known for his monetary theory. In particular, he noticed the asymmetry between the durability and hoardability of money versus the fragility of goods and services which depreciate due to entropy and the passage of time. He believed that people who are able to save or hoard money have an unfair economic advantage over people who are dependent on producing and selling decayable goods and services for their livelihoods. Gesell theorized that the unfair premium enjoyed by hoarders expressed itself in interest rates and spawned recessions, an argument that later influenced John Maynard Keynes's theory of liquidity preference. To resolve this problem, Gesell proposed a new form of money that depreciates over time ().

Gesell also supported free land () and free trade (). However, he disagreed with Henry George's contention that land value taxes could solve the problem of land rent, as Gesell believed that such taxes could be passed onto the tenants. Instead, Gesell proposed nationalizing all land from current landowners, with the purchases financed by land bonds that would be paid over 20 years from revenues raised by leasing the purchased land through competitive bidding. This would achieve many of the intended effects of Georgism, but with compensation for previous landowners, and with no need to repeatedly reappraise land values. Gesell also criticized Henry George for believing that Georgism would eliminate interest, economic crises, and unemployment.

At the suggestion of Erich Müchsam and Gustav Landauer, Gesell served as the finance minister of the Bavarian Soviet Republic for eight days in 1919. After the republic's violent end, Gesell was detained for several months on a charge of treason but was acquitted by a Munich court after he gave a speech in his own defense.

In the mid-to-late 1900s, Gesell's ideas were published and discussed only in the limited circle of his supporters. Since the beginning of the 2000s, Gesell has received increasing attention among the general public. The reasons for this include discussions about local currencies and cryptocurrencies, the zero interest-rate policy of some central banks, and the desire of some economists for negative interest rates. Provided by Wikipedia