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To: Snowshoe who wrote (73521)	5/16/2010 11:54:36 AM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Snowy, if you read my list of problems with state-run monopoly money, dilution is one of the main problems with it. Dilution is a technical term which means much the same as inflation though inflation is the representation of dilution in actual prices. The idea of a steady 2% inflation is to keep the politicians happy - they and their electorates like nothing more than getting hold of opm and it's a relatively painless way of getting hold of it without even having to knock on the individual's door or inspect their books which they probably don't have. Alan was working in the democratic real world, not a Libertarian nirvana. His job was to go along with the democratic process of state run monopoly money and make the best of a bad job. We don't get to be totalitarian dictators in real life and the idea of democracy is that totalitarian dictatorship is not a good way to run a railroad. So authority for any individual is, in the USA system especially, heavily circumscribed. I agree with the NZ Libertarian monetary policy and am busy getting my Qi machine up to speed in my shed. So far, so good. Note that <Individuals engaged in voluntary exchange should be free to use as money any mutually agreeable commodity or item. > doesn't mean it must be gold. My disdain for gold is because it seems so unintelligent to go to enormous effort to dig up gold to then bury it again in underground bunkers and spend eternity guarding it at not so great cost. The gold culture if it was used as money by 6 billion people would be ridiculous. Huge numbers of people would give up their sensible jobs to scrabble in the dirt for microscopic amounts of the stuff. Already the news media are drooling over it and hordes are hoarding it. It's better to do useful things such as produce the HTC Desire, the Motorola Droid. Look at TJ snuggle up to his beloved mobile cyberspace devices while ignoring his gold for which he pretends to have such affection. He carries his cyberspace everywhere and leaves his gold hidden in a dark cupboard or dungeon and buried at a beach in an exotic locale. As a child I loved the idea of gold and buried treasure and probably even dug a few holes to find a stash. I also thought socialism was a good idea - but that was before I realized how people actually work, or don't. As we mature, our youthful ideas and ideology are confronted by reality. True Libertarians live in the real world and deal with it as best they can. We all do. Big Brother Kleptocratic Suffocatocracy Democrats don't live in their ideal world either. They want another 31.14 cubic metres of laws, regulations, imposts, duties, taxes, fees, rates, envy, repression, and more and bigger wall to wall government departments but they do what they can to get that within the constraints of the reality of electoral politics. When everyone works for the government, then the Big Brother crowd figure that things will be hunky dory. When everything is illegal unless it's compulsory, then they'll be happy that the world and the firmament are at last under control and they will have their rightful place as ruler of existence and master of all they survey. They don't understand the Goedelian problem of no externality meaning no opm to confiscate. One of them would have to get a real job to keep all the rest in the manner to which they have become accustomed. Nobody is going to agree to be that sacrificial sheep. Or, as John Key joked the other day, he was invited to dinner with his present company but would be dinner if he dined with the Tuhoe tribe. Mqurice

To: Snowshoe who wrote (73521)	5/16/2010 2:29:03 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

“Gold and economic freedom are inseparable, . . . the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and . . . each implies and requires the other. What medium of exchange will be acceptable to all participants in an economy is not determined arbitrarily. Where store-of-value considerations are important, as they are in richer, more civilized societies, the medium of exchange must be a durable commodity, usually a metal. A metal is generally chosen because it is homogeneous and divisible: every unit is the same as every other and it can be blended or formed in any quantity. Precious jewels, for example, are neither homogeneous nor divisible. More important, the commodity chosen as a medium must be a luxury. Human desires for luxuries are unlimited and, therefore, luxury goods are always in demand and will always be acceptable . . . . The term “luxury good” implies scarcity and high unit value. Having a high unit value, such a good is easily portable; for instance, an ounce of gold is worth a half-ton of pig iron . . . . Under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy’s stability and balanced growth. In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold . . . . The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the “hidden” confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.” Alan Greenspan