If he also bartered away plums that would have rotted in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no part of the portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselessly in his hands (Locke, 1689).
This quotation indicates that the author believes that a technique such as bartering (which has obvious pecuniary implications) allows one to do "no injury," and that unless one utilizes such pecuniary means to extend the life of perishable goods (referred to as "plums" in this quotation) those who take more of such goods than they can use have "destroyed" such necessities that could have been used by others. Therefore, because the government is the primary entity that creates and utilizes currency that can be exchanged for non-durable items, and which then effectively extends the life of durable goods, one of its foremost purposes is to regulate the waste of resources through the issuance of money.
However, what did not escape the author' notice was the fact that money can also be hoarded just as much as perishable items, which could result in disproportionate wealth of a capital nature (versus that of a consumptive nature such as clothes, food and shelter). Ideally, Locke saw the government as being one of the primary entities responsible for the mitigation of this tendency among men to hoard monetary resources, as the following quotation explains.
…in some parts of the world, where the increase of people and stock, with the use of money, had made land scarce, and so of some value, the several communities settled the bounds of their distinct territories, and, by laws, within themselves, regulated the properties of the private men of their society, and so, by compact and agreement,...
The role that the author believed that the government should have in securing the protection of disproportionate wealth is exemplified in this quotation by the "several communities," which set boundaries for territories that men possessed, and enacted laws to regulate the properties of men. The fact that these functions are the primary role of the government is underscored by the fact that these goals were achieved by "compact," which is synonymous with the compact that citizens form when they elect a particular government.
Of course, the usage of money and the circumscriptions on the squandering of resources it presents through the facilitation of government enforcement merely changes the nature of hoarding. Despite the fact that money can be used to extend the life of non-durable goods, it may be argued that when a man has more land than he can efficiently use, that he is doing so to the detriment of those others who do not have enough land. This concept applies to whatever the particular form of resource might be, whether it is land, food, or even pecuniary resources such as money. In fact, it may veritably be argued that governments themselves are one of the main culprits in appropriating more wealth, resources, and fruits of the earth than is needed, all to the detriment of people who lack, and therefore suffer, these same materials. Yet in its most ideal sense, government and its usage of currency were propounded by Lock to more equally distribute the wealth of a state.
References
Locke, J. (1689). Two Treatises of Government. Retrieved from http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/locke/
