Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt echo Aristotle with their explanations of money. Mises, in his Theory of Money and Credit, identifies money as naturally arising in the form of precious commodities. Hazlitt, in his Economics in One Lesson, identifies money as naturally arising from the creation of supply. Aristotle, in his Nichomachean Ethics, correctly identifies that money is only introduced at all because it represents that productive work has been performed. For any species of commodity to naturally arise as money requires that productive work be performed to bring the commodity to market. That this productive work can be exchanged requires that its demand also be met with the creation of a supply from productive work. Thus, Hazlitt, Mises, and Aristotle are all in accord with respect to the first principle of money; Money represents productive work.
Likewise, all three error by then contradicting their initial identifications by also saying that the counterfeit of money is also money. Aristotle, identifies that money is introduced as the means of equalizing the disproportionate value of productive work and that this, understandably so, occurs without a third party decree. But then, Aristotle in practically the next sentence says that this money exists only by law, that it can be created and destroyed by law. In the context of the discussion on Justice and the necessary component of Justice as Equality, then it is a most appropriate example; for the purpose of money is the equalization of the values created by productive work. Money is justice. The contradiction is that justice, the correct actions of humans, is prior to its establishment as law, as sure as First Philosophy precedes Ethics, so does Ethics precede Politics (law), and yet Aristotle says in two sentences; money comes from ethics not politics and money comes from politics not ethics. It cannot be reconciled that the genius that we know as the Master of Them that Know could have taught this contradiction. I can only guess that it is a posthumous edit for the purpose of those that it would serve.
Mises and Hazlitt are not as easily forgivable in this respect. Mises immediately contradicts his identification of "commodity" money by then saying that although money represents productive work in the form of bringing a precious commodity to market that it then can also be represented by an authoritative decree, a fiat. Again, like Aristotle's contradiction, does money come from the evidence that productive work has been performed or only the imitation that it has been performed in the form of a law? Hazlitt explains that money is demand and that demand can only be represented by supply, the evidence that productive work has been performed. But then he too turns and says that there is "another kind of money" in the form of the imitation of the kind that comes from supply; a.k.a fiat. Thus, Hazlitt, Mises, and Aristotle are all in discord with respect to the first principle of money by contradiction and say that counterfeit, the imitation of productive work, also represents productive work.