Ironically (!) a System of Freely Fluctuating Paper Currencies (the Friedmanite-Monetarist Ideal) Is No Monetary System at All; It Is a System of Dysfunctional Partial Barter

Moreover, secession also promotes monetary integration. The process of centralization has also resulted in monetary disintegration: the destruction of the former international commodity (gold) money standard and its replacement with a dollar-dominated system of freely fluctuating government paper monies, i.e., a global, U.S.-led government counterfeiting cartel. However, a system of freely fluctuating paper currencies--the Friedmanite-monetarist ideal--is strictly speaking no monetary system at all. It is a system of partial barter--dysfunctional of the very purpose of money of facilitating rather than complicating exchange. This becomes obvious once it is recognized that from the point of view of economic theory, there is no special significance attached to the way national borders are drawn. Yet if one then imagines a proliferation of ever smaller national territories, ultimately to the point where each household forms its own country, Friedman's proposal is revealed for what it is--an outright absurdity. For if every household were to issue its own paper currency, the world would be right back at barter. No one would accept anyone else's paper, economic calculation would be impossible, and trade would come to a virtual standstill. It is only due to centuries of political centralization and the fact that only a relatively small number of countries and national currencies remain, and hence that the disintegrative consequences and calculational difficulties are· far less severe, that this could have been overlooked. From this theoretical insight it follows that secession, provided it proceeds far enough, will actually promote monetary integration. In a world of hundreds of thousands of independent political units, each country would have to abandon the current fiat money system which has been responsible for the greatest worldwide inflation in all of human history and once again adopt an international commodity money system such as the gold standard.

--Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed; The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011), 116-117.