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It's sounding increasingly likely that there will be only two or maybe three candidates for the Lib Dem leadership election. The Guardian is reporting that despite having secured verbal support from enough MPs to allow him to stand, Steve Webb is likely later today to rule himself out. This leaves, at the last count, just Chris Huhne, Nick Clegg and probably John Hemming prepared to join battle.

Now, it's not because my loyalty to Chris is in question, but I do believe this is bad for party democracy and was a big part of the questioning of the leadership of Ming over the past 18 months. It is true that the far too short timetable mitigates against a broad based debate and one has to question why FedEx made such a peremptory decision - worries about an attempt at a "coronation" spring to mind.

We have consistently positioned ourselves as the party of plurality and our voting system creates ample opportunity for people to prioritise from a wide field and shift our choices in a a multitude of different ways, but this only works with a decently large field to choose from. Which is why I much favoured the 1999 leadership election to the 2006 one. And why, despite not giving Charles any preference on the ballot I had a greater feeling then that he was the choice of the party as a whole than I ever did with Ming.

C'mon, more than two/three of you must have something to say about the future of our party and policy and the confidence to say it?

If you whittle it down to two or three before the membership has a say, are we any better than the Tories? At least the Tories had ballots amongst the MPs so we could all see which way support was shifting - you're all likely to stitch up the ballot paper in complete secrecy. And in the process, you give the lie to the notion that we are about devolution and local choice, and instead will have shown that as Westminster insiders believe you are above everyone else.

I am sure, for example, that those who have called on Steve Webb to stand would have different opinions about who to vote for as second choice to Steve, yet effectively Steve makes that choice for them if he "throws in his lot with Nick Clegg" as the Guardian are suggesting.

So, MPs, if any of you feel you have something, anything, to say on policy areas or party direction and priorities that might not be said by just two or three runners with their own priorities, please throw your hat into the ring so those ideas can get an airing, can prompt those who might win to take them into account, and give us a leadership that has assimilated the opinions and preferences of the whole membership. We might like the "Two Horse Race" for town hall seats up and down the country, but it is not appropriate here!

And those who don't want to stand in any event, you are the ones that can make or break this since every candidate needs seven of you to support them; please consider nominating outsiders if they ask. The last thing we want in my opinion is a race dominated by two people with twenty odd MPs backing them and none left over for anyone else to stand. We had what, 46 MPs when Charles was elected, and six candidates whittled down to five. Now we have 63 MPs, I'm sure more than two of you would like to have a say.

We complain that two party democracy is bad for the nation. I contend that a two candidate leadership ballot is likely just as bad for the party.

For balance, and because I am personally quite ambivalent about which direction monetary policy takes, there is an alternative to having a state run money supply. One that I believe Hayek speculated, and which in any case is steadily coming to pass.

Completely privatize money supply.

If just 3% of our money is actually created as base money, what's the point? After all, national currencies are irrelevant in the modern world aren't they? A defining attribute of a national currency is that it circulates in one territory mainly. It therefore acts as a restriction on globalization because it encourages us to trade with counterparties that share that common currency. And if controlling it is already quite a dificult balancing act for central banks, why bother at all?

Mervyn King himself recognizes this. At a conference of Central Bankers at Jackson Hole in the US in 1999 he speculated that the rise of the internet and the globalization of communications and information could render national currencies obsolete. Already 25% of global trade does not involve national currencies at all, but various forms of barter - France built power stations in Brazil I think it was in return for oil for example.

Anduntil now, such barter was really only worth doing on a grand scale like that or on a tiny scale between people you trusted because you knew them. But interpersonal communications, facilitated by the internet, and the ability of people to form their own communities separate from the geographical location they happen to reside in means that we could easily be entering a world in which all the information was there at our fingertips to be able to decide what we will pay whom for what and in what type of currency.

Already we do it to an extent without thinking. If we have more than one credit card we make a quick almost subconscious calculation of how much we will have to pay for something and when if we use one card rather than another. If we take it one step further, we join an internet community like Second Life, the fastest growing economy inn the world I am told, with its own, convertible, currency. Participants in Second Life already decide amongst themselves when they put something up for sale whether they want paid in US dollars or the local Linden dollars, or whether they will be open to negotiation as to what they get paid in.

Hayek merely saw banks competing to create their own currencies - you would choose which one to use depending on various factors - well managed backs would have a stable backing for their currency and minimize the risk of a collapse by prudent management. If there was too much of one bank's currency in circulation it would become devalued and markets would make sure it levelled out in time through people choosing to use other banks' currencies.

But now, potentially, we can deal in all sorts of "currencies" - even of our own making. And the more we get around the global arena the more people will trust our bona fides as creditworthy.

There is a catch. For all that this should appeal to those economic liberals that championed monetarism under Thatcher, they reject it because, as goes the argument over the Euro, if the state doesn't have control of its own money supply, it loses all economic sovereignty. Well, yes. it would. But that's the point, if we want a global economy with a level playing field, the protectionist nature of national currencies does in fact have to disappear.

So, if you want some control, any control, as a nation state, then we have to take more control of our money supply as mentioned in my previous opus. If we want truly free global trade that would truly lift the fortunes of the worst off on the planet, we have to abandon that pretense and go for privately created currencies appropriate for each transaction and the central bank is redundant. The technology nearly exists now to enable us to manage multiple currencies every day of our lives. Some people effectively already do - there was a fad if you remember for choosing Euro denominated mortgages. Well soon that flexibility could be available for the purchase of your morning paper.

But if we carry on with the buggers muddle of state sponsored but commercially created monetary systems, we will end up blindly handing all our economic sovereignty over without having a say in the matter. I give it five years, a decade at the most. We need to think about it now.

No doubt most readers will be unaware of the fact that nicotine is quite a nice drug to use when indulging in certain other illegal drugs. That's why you see people off their tits in clubs on E or coke smoking away even when you know they're not really smokers. The stimulant, nicotine, tops up the effects of these other drugs, sustaining or boosting the high.

It will be interesting to see if people take to sucking on a nicotine replacement lozenge or chewing gum instead. Maybe such oral delivery mechanisms for your chosen poison will become even more acceptable. Perhaps even make people think differently about "popping a pill" of something else.