> the only effect of rationing a good is to change the currency in which that good is priced
This just sounds like an instance of the fact that a sufficiently abstract system of reasoning can be always be forced to described any particular patch of the world. Though typically at the cost of considerable contortions of the terms that makes no sense in other bits of the world.
For example, you may well say that "ability to navigate bureaucracy" is a currency. But it's hard to understand how you put that currency in a bank, in which sense this currency splits into perfectly equivalent units, or how it represents equivalent value at many different physical locations since the specific bureaucrats are tied a specific location.
By the way, picking an instance of cheating as some sort of general argument of why a specific system is not to be trusted is just a straw man, since the problem of cheating is independent on the exchange mechanism. Alternatively, accept this argument: scammers on Amazon prove that free market mechanisms don't reliably give a fair price.
This just sounds like an instance of the fact that a sufficiently abstract system of reasoning can be always be forced to described any particular patch of the world. Though typically at the cost of considerable contortions of the terms that makes no sense in other bits of the world.
For example, you may well say that "ability to navigate bureaucracy" is a currency. But it's hard to understand how you put that currency in a bank, in which sense this currency splits into perfectly equivalent units, or how it represents equivalent value at many different physical locations since the specific bureaucrats are tied a specific location.
By the way, picking an instance of cheating as some sort of general argument of why a specific system is not to be trusted is just a straw man, since the problem of cheating is independent on the exchange mechanism. Alternatively, accept this argument: scammers on Amazon prove that free market mechanisms don't reliably give a fair price.