Silvio Gesell

About Silvio Gesell

Johann Silvio Gesell (German: [ɡəˈzɛl]; 17 March 1862 – 11 March 1930) was a German-Argentine economist, entrepreneur, and social reformer. He was the founder of Freiwirtschaft (German for "free economy"), an economic model for market socialism. In 1900, he founded the magazine Money and Land Reform (German: Die Geld- und Bodenreform), 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 noted the asymmetry between the durability and hoardability of money and the finite shelf life 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.