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+--- Thread: Gresham's Law and Imam Ibne Taymayyah's Law (/thread-gresham-s-law-and-imam-ibne-taymayyah-s-law)
Gresham's Law and Imam Ibne Taymayyah's Law - awaisaftab - 08-31-2009
Gresham was the financial advisor of the Queen Victoria. He presented a law about the good and bad money. This law was based on his ovservations why good money disappears from market after some time of its issuance.
Gresham's law states that any circulating currency consisting of both "good" and "bad" money (both forms required to be accepted at equal value under legal tender law) quickly becomes dominated by the "bad" money. This is because people spending money will hand over the "bad" coins rather than the "good" ones, keeping the "good" ones for themselves.This law is known as Gresham's Law.
Consider a customer purchasing an item which costs five pence, who possesses several silver sixpence coins. Some of these coins are more debased, while others are less so - but legally, they are all mandated to be of equal value. The customer would prefer to retain the better coins, and so offers the shopkeeper the most debased one. In turn, the shopkeeper must give one penny in change - and has every reason to give the most debased penny. Thus, the coins that circulate in the transaction will tend to be of the most debased sort available to the parties.
Gresahms presented this law in 16th or seventeenth century. This law is taught in the economics of 2nd class. But Imam Ibne Taymiyyah (R.A)presented the same law around around 3 hundred years ago
His law is follows
If the ruler cancels the use of a certain coin and mints another kind of money for the people, he will spoil the riches (amwal) which they possess, by decreasing their value as the old coins will now become merely a commodity. He will do injustice to them by depriving them of the higher values originally owned by them. Moreover, if the intrinsic value of coins are different it will become a source of profit for the wicked to collect the small (bad) coins and exchange them (for good money) and then they will take them to another country and shift the small (bad) money of that country (to this country). So (the value of) people's goods will be damaged.
The above law states almost same situation but it reveals mainly the flight of money but in my opinion it is almost the same law.