What authority did I appeal to? I didn't even mention anyone in my post!

You are free to use anything you like now. You can pay your barber in hens, dollars, gold, coffee or buttons. And no one will stop you. And your barber is free to take hens, dollars, gold, coffee or buttons. Nothing stops him from doing that.

Issuing gold backed notes creates two problems: First, gold has no inherent value, either. It's metal. Money is paper. So what? Second, there is a finite amount of gold, so anytime you need to expand the money supply (like, you know, to grow the economy), you need more gold.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

You appealed to yourself as an authority on finance and economics.



Barter and alternative currency are "allegedly" (see below) legal, but not to repay public or private debts. You could not give a bank $10,000 worth of pigs to pay off a $10,000 loan, nor could you give the government $10,000 worth of pigs to pay off a $10,000 tax bill.

Now when you consider what percentage of the economy these types of payments are, it's easy to see how a de facto ban on other forms of currency has taken place - and that was exactly the intention of those who crafted the system.

Actually, the government does threaten people who choose to use a different currency:

'Liberty Dollars' Can Buy Users A Prison Term, U.S. Mint Warns

"So says the U.S. Mint, which would like to remind Liberty Dollar users that since the United States already has its own currency, the only thing Liberty Dollars buy in these parts is a jail term."

Link


Gold has intrinsic value besides its value as money. Fiat currency does not. If the legal tender laws were repealed tomorrow, no one with half a brain would use federal reserve notes, because they're worthless without the government forcing you to use them. Choosing a form of currency is a peaceful, honest, voluntary activity. Government has no right to interfere in this choice.

Expanding the money supply does not "grow" the economy. Expanding the money supply creates inflation, as proven by Milton Friedman:

"... a world monetary system has emerged that has no historical precedent: a system in which every major currency in the world is, directly or indirectly, on an irredeemable paper money standard . . . It is worth stressing how little precedent there is for the present situation. Throughout recorded history . . . commodity money has been the rule. So long as money was predominantly coin or bullion, very rapid inflation was not physically feasible . . . The existence of a commodity standard widely supported by the public served as a check on inflation .. . The key challenge that now faces us in reforming our monetary and fiscal institutions is to find a substitute for convertibility into specie that will serve the same function: maintaining pressure on the government to refrain from its resort to inflation as a source of revenue. To put it another way, we must find a nominal anchor for the price level to replace the physical limit on a monetary commodity." - Milton Friedman, "Monetary Policy in a Fiat World"

The reason we've been able to avoid hyperinflation so far is because the income tax is used as a buffer against the fiat currency. If you repealed the income tax tomorrow and allowed the government to print money at the same leves they do today, you would see runaway hyperinflation similar to what happened in Germany in the 1920's.

The Federal Reserve now admits Friedman's conclusions are correct:

"The "Great Inflation" of the 1970's challenged and permanently altered economic theory. It vindicated the once-controversial analysis of Milton Friedman, then at the University of Chicago.

"Friedman's monetary framework has been so influential that in its broad outlines at least, it has nearly become identical with modern monetary theory," said the Federal Reserve governor Ben S. Bernanke, at a recent conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. (The full text of his speech is available here)

Mr. Bernanke is not a former Friedman student. He did his graduate work at M.I.T. Someone reading Milton Friedman's monetary economics today is likely to miss its significance, Mr. Bernanke noted, much as an apocryphal student called Shakespeare's plays "just a string of quotations."

"His thinking has so permeated modern macroeconomics that the worst pitfall in reading him today is to fail to appreciate the originality and even revolutionary character of his ideas, in relation to the dominant views at the time that he formulated them," he said.

Against the conventional wisdom, Mr. Friedman argued that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." Inflation had nothing to do with aggressive unions, greedy businesses or even oil cartels -- the bad guys who took the blame in the confusing 1970's. Prices shot up everywhere because the federal government made the supply of money grow faster than the real economy created value. Based on the historical record, he argued, the effects of monetary policy were fairly predictable.

In a 1970 lecture, "The Counterrevolution in Monetary Theory," Mr. Friedman outlined 11 propositions about how monetary policy affects the economy. All were wildly controversial, almost disreputable, at the time. Most are accepted today."

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Actually, I didn't. I was merely stating that as someone with an advanced degree in econ I knew what the Fed does. Just like your mechanic knows how your car's brakes work. It's not an appeal. Just a simple fact. You implied I lacked knowledge. I countered with a credential indicating you were incorrect.

If your barber lends you $500 he is free to take turtles in return. No one will stop him or throw him in jail.

Banks take assets in payment of debts every day. They even go take assets to do so every day (foreclosures have been in the news I note). But you cannot MAKE them take assets. Which is only fair. The fact you want to pay for your haircut in ants or Truth Bucks does not obligate your barber to take the ants or Truth Bucks. A market takes two willing parties, not just one. When you took out the loan you agreed, in writing, to repay the loan in dollars. They are free to ask you for whatever they want in return for the loan. So what?

You cannot coin money. Weird law. But a law. However, you can make paper money and you are fine. Or pay in pigs or shiny stones. No one will say a word to you so long as the person you are dealing with takes shiny stones.

No, it doesn't. And it has no more intrinsic value as money than mud. What is the intrinsic value of gold and from where does it arise? People say things like "gold has intrinsic value", but they never stop to question it. It doesn't. It's a hunk of metal that is ONLY worth what someone is willing to pay for it and NOTHING more. If no one wants it, your pile of gold is worth $0. Nothing. Nada. Hence, it has no "intrinsic" value.

Other than whole coining money thing, they don't. Pay in whatever you like.

Ahhh, but I never said expanding the money supply causes the economy to grow! Rather, I said for an economy to grow you need to be able to expand the money supply. Which is 100% true. However, that does not mean that simply expanding the money supply for giggles will cause economic expansion. You need the latter to get the former, but the latter will not cause the former. Of course you will get inflation if you wake up one day and throw a few trillion in the hopper for the hell of it.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

Simply stating you have a degree and using that to imply a fact that you are thereby credible on the subject at hand, is indeed a fallacy. If degrees implied someone was always right on the subject at hand, medical malpractice suits wouldn't exist.

Then why is the government threatening people with jail time who seek to use an alternative currency?

So the conditions you're laying down here for banks and other parties to be treated fairly are conditions the government won't allow me to bypass. I don't want to use Federal Reserve Notes, yet the government will use force against me at some point if I refuse. I would prefer to negotiate with any other party I'm involved with in a financial transaction and come to a voluntary agreement about what we may use as money. That's fair.

The Liberty Dollar is issuing paper currency. They are still being threatened for this.

Again, the point is - can it be valued for other reasons besides its use as money - and, yes, it can - as jewelry for example.

No, we can't - government won't allow it. And government has no right to prohibit other parties from coining money either - as coining money is a peaceful, honest, voluntary activity.


No, it's not 100% true. Inventions and assets could be created and traded for other newly created inventions and assets. No exchange of money need to occur for the improvement and betterment of the human race.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

You're talking about "barter", right?

There's nothing illegal about that, that I know of..... is there?

As far as I know, the requirement to "valuate in dollars" only applies to taxes - in all other transactions, you're free to do as you wish.

Is that not the case?

No, there's not.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.