I am interested in writing a critique of libertarian monetary ideas.  (I already have one criticizing MMT.) But first I’d like to have a better sense of what those ideas actually are. Thus I’d appreciate any comments that you might have on the best places to find a summary of these ideas.

Let’s start with “abolish the Fed”, an idea I see mentioned in various settings. In some cases, it’s not hard to imagine what people mean by the term “abolish”. Thus if people were to say abolish FDIC, I believe that I would know exactly what they mean. But abolish the Fed? That could mean one of many different things. The devil is in the details, especially the transition from here to there.

Much of the uncertainty relates to the status of base money (especially currency), as well as debt instruments that promise to pay $X dollars of base money at a specified future period of time. Does abolish the Fed mean abolish the US dollar? That seems unlikely; how would all of our dollar denominated debt be repaid?

Perhaps the proposal is to peg the US dollar to a fixed rate of gold, and then allow private entities to issue banknotes. To me, that seems the most feasible way of abolishing the Fed. In that case, it would make more sense to describe the proposal in a positive sense—say define the dollar as X grains of gold—rather than in the negative way (abolish the Fed.)

A libertarian might say they are not wedded to the gold standard, and that the market should decide what system works best.  OK, but then in the meantime what do we do with all of the US currency and dollar denominated debt?  Am I missing something?

What are some other libertarian monetary ideas? I’ve seen the following ideas kicked around in various places:

1. Inflation targeting is a bad idea, because it’s a form of price control.

2. NGDP targeting is a bad idea, as it’s a sort of central planning.

3. The effects of monetary policy depend very much on who gets the money first.

4. The Fed has been artificially controlling interest rates in recent decades, usually holding them below equilibrium.

5. Fed policy artificially raises asset prices, often creating asset price bubbles.

6. In a free market, private currencies would displace the US dollar.

I’m in a rather odd position. I view these ideas as being mostly or entirely wrong. And yet I view myself as a libertarian and view my own approach to monetary policy as being relatively libertarian.

So please help me. What libertarian ideas am I overlooking? Which ones did I get wrong? And exactly how is the abolition of the Fed to be carried out?