Can any Libertarians help me understand these concepts?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Falcon63, Mar 23, 2013.

  1. Falcon63

    Falcon63 New Member

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    I am an RP fan, and I believe in a lot of his ideas, but I have a few questions:

    1. If we returned to the gold and silver standard, how would we implement it? How would we redistribute the coinage? How we would we help ween people off of fiat currency? Do you think it would be better to add platinum to gold and silver?

    2. If we turned to laissez-faire capitalism, how would we discourage monopolies? How would we ensure that there weren't abuses of child labor or slaves? I've seen elsewhere someone suggest something that we apparently had in the past, something about private, non-government agencies that would investigate these things? Since these would be private agencies, how would they be controlled by the government? How would we ensure they actually did their jobs? I'm just trying to understand more how laissez-faire would work, if it was every implemented.

    These two questions really stump me, and prevent from being able to dish out full arguments in support of my position.
     
  2. Chad2

    Chad2 Member

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    Please do not consider the following to be fact, but only my opinion.

    The gold standard ended in 1971. I believe the gold standard is when the government would own $1 dollar worth of gold, for each $1 dollar in circulation. And the gold would be kept in a place like Fort Knox. But something tells me America could never acquire enough gold to back every American dollar, because of lack of gold supply and lack of money (if America purchased gold someone else would get our money.)

    I believe the strength of Americas manufacturing base, the strength of our economy, our high levels of technology, ex.ex. maintains the strength of our money without having gold to back it up. If you have an American dollar, America can give you something for it like a car, food, medicine, house, ex.ex.

    Personally I would agree with some form of gold, silver, or platinum standard. It could cause us to not blindly print money, and give our money some form of trade in value in bad financial times.


    You asked if we turned to laissez-faire capitalism, how would we discourage monopolies?, ex.,ex.

    I believe business laws and government would need to do those things. Private business would never be able to regulate itself, because it would only look out for its own profits.

    Chad.
     
  3. Troianii

    Troianii Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    1. The good standard doesn't mean we use gold coins, it means the dollar is tied to a fixed amount of gold. People could take the dollar and exchange it for that fixed amount of gold.
    2. Laissez faire never meant that people have no rights. The government would still protect basic rights, but would not subsidize business and allow it to run its course. Monopolies woke not be an issue. There has never been a monopoly that wasn't government created/supported.
     
  4. savage-republican

    savage-republican Well-Known Member

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    Typical, I am a Ron Paul supporter but, opening. If you really are a Ron Paul supporter you would understand how the gold standard works, and you would understand Laissez-faire capitalism is not devoid of a government, just that neither side would have an upper hand when it came to making laws.

    But please, explain to us how RP is full of (*)(*)(*)(*), and stupid, please, we love it!
     
  5. pimptight

    pimptight Banned

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    So you can set the rate of gold or silver at any ratio to currency. We could require 100% gold holdings, or 2% holdings to back the currency.

    The key here is that the gold standard forces something real for our money to be tied to. It makes it so what is occurring today, run away money printing, could never occur.

    Today money is being printed, and flooding into the commodities, causing prices of things like food and energy to skyrocket. This could not occur on a gold standard.

    Lastly, and most importantly it makes the FED pointless. There is no need to control inflation on a gold standard.


    Don't ask me. I can support laissez-faire economics only with trade tarrifs, and monopoly laws actually enforced, as they certainly aren't today.
     
  6. Oldyoungin

    Oldyoungin Well-Known Member

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    As far as lz markets , you have to use reputation and customer review slash word of mouth . For instance , if a company wants to practice child labor the community needs to reject that persons goods and not let their own children work for them .... Thus putting them out of business with out any government regulation .
     
  7. BleedingHeadKen

    BleedingHeadKen Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Do you want Ron Paul's views, or those of libertarians who are up on such stuff? Ron Paul would have the government still minting the coins and creating money. Libertarians would simply eliminate government interference and let the best forms of money be determined by the market.

    How we wean "people" off of fiat currency isn't so difficult. It's the government (specifically, the politicians) and the banks that would find it pure hell.

    They wouldn't form easily, and, if they do, they will be so busy keeping customers happy in order to fend off potential competition that you won't find any reason to complain. Maintaining a monopoly is expensive.

    Slavery, except for the underground kind, is a government-enforced institution. If person A tries to enslave person B and person B engages in self defense, person A will have no legal ground to claim injury. Unless, of course, the government has a law which says person B can be a slave.

    As for child labor, what parents want their children to work? Child labor was a dying institution long before the government got involved. Government usually lags behind these things, creating legislation to either protect an industry or make politicians look good.

    How do you ensure that a grocery store, or a restaurant, or a business consultant does a good job? These days, it's even easier than ever to root out the bad ones using a variety of online reputations sites.Ever hear of Underwriters Laboratories? They probably rate most of the appliances in your home and they've done a good job. If you have electrical appliances in your home that aren't UL listed, or listed by a similarly competent ratings agency (if there are any), you best get rid of it. There's a reason they use the term "Underwriters" in their name. If the appliance causes a fire, your insurance will cover it. They may fight you on an unrated appliance that causes a fire.
     
  8. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    Legally we're still on the "Gold Standard" as Nixon did not, dispite rumors to the contrary, remove the US from the "gold standard" but instead withdrew the US from the Bretton Woods treaty that required redemption of US foreign debt with one ounce of gold for each $32 in debt being redeemed. It would have been unconstitutional for Nixon to remove the US from the gold standard but not to remove the US from the Bretton Wood's treaty. In 1977 President Ford reintroduced the "gold clause" where contracts can demand payment in the lawful legal tender gold coins being produced by the US Mint.

    In the United States as American Eagle Coins, which include Platinum Gold Eagles, are legal tender lawful money in the United States. Under IRS law a $50 Federal Reserve (promissory) note and a $50 American Gold Eagle are identical. Title 12 also requires the Federal Reserve to redeem Federal Reserve notes in "lawful money" which are American Eagle coins but the US government refused to enforce the law.

    The question above is still valid though because the US does not have the gold reserves to redeem Federal Reserve notes and, in fact. there isn't enough gold, silver and platinum in the entire wolrd to redeem the Federal Reserve notes in circulation. That US national debt alone equates to over 300 billion ounces of gold. But the Constitution does address how this can be resolved. Congress, in Article I Section 8 is delegated with the role and responsibility to:

    http://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/article.html

    This was last done (although modified since) with the American Gold Bullion Act of 1986 where Congress established under statutory law that $50 equaled one ounce of pure gold. A $50 Federal Reserve note is a promissory note that promises redemption in "lawful (legal tender) money" which are American Eagle coins being produced by the US Mint but, as noted, the entire world doesn't have enough gold, silver and platinum to redeem Federal Reserve (legal tender promissory) notes so the "fix" is relatively easy.

    In the past I calculated what the value of gold had to be so that the US government had enough gold reserves to redeem the national debt and it worked out to about one ounce of gold for every $5,000 of national debt. In short, the US government could cover all of it's obligations if Congress "regulated" the value of minted coins based upon a $5000 gold coin containing one ounce of pure gold as opposed to a $50 gold coin containing one ounce of gold today.

    Congress can do this under Article I Section 8's authority to "Coin money, (and) regulate the value thereof" as noted above and which is has done repeatedly during US history. With the revaluation of US gold coins (and also redefining other other coinage based upon the $5000=1/oz gold) then the US government can enforce the statutory requirements of Title 12 › Chapter 3 › Subchapter XII › § 411:

    http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/12/411

    We can note that gold isn't currently "selling" at $5,000/oz but because US gold coins and US currency would be equivalent in purchasing power they could and both would be used in commerce in the United States. It would "reset" the gold standard in the United States which is the point of the gold standard in the first place. It prevents arbitrary "inflation" of the money supply because the US government and Federal Reserve would need to keep enough gold coins on supply to redeem the promissory legal tender notes in circulation. I do believe that the Federal Reserve would have to scamble to come up with enough gold to back all of the Federal Reserve notes it has issued but that is a problem for the (private) Federal Reserve banks and not the US government which is only responsible for the borrowing by the US government.

    I could also anticipate the increased "value" of gold as the Federal Reserve scambles to cover the debt it's created by issuing Federal Reserve notes that aren't backed by gold.

    We could also see enforcement of Title 31 › Subtitle IV › Chapter 51 › Subchapter II › § 5119 where the Sect of the Treasury is required to redeem gold certificates held by the Federal Reserve to ensure the equal purchasing power of all currencies (legal tender which includes Federal Reserve notes and US minted coins) in the United States.

    http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5119

    It's obvious to everyone that the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury have NOT maintained equal purchasing power of Federal Reserve notes and American Eagle coins which are the only two "legal tender" currencies authorized under the laws of the United States today.

    BTW I have read a Supreme Court decision, although I don't recall which one, where the Supreme Court ruled that the US can prohibit US minted gold and silver coins from leaving the United States (i.e. to pay foreign debts). The foreign debt is created by trade deficits where the US imports more than it exports and the US government can establish that this trade deficit can only be redeemed in "trade" and not in "money" of the United States. I'm going to have to find that Supreme Court decision agian and bookmark it because it's very relevant to this discussion.
     
  9. NothingSacred

    NothingSacred Active Member

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    And somebody explain IN DETAIL, how private sector jobs will DEFINATELY start popping up at random if we reduce government? Can you explain IN DETAIL? Do you think it is a fact? Or only a possibility?
     
  10. Burz

    Burz New Member

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    I think it's nonsense. If the private sector is going to increase jobs while we decrease government, let them vow to do so. Let them make a proposal.
     
  11. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    And Ron Paul, and other that advocate this, are fundamentally idiots. The reason behind legal tender gold, silver or other species money being minted by the government is to certify that the metallic content and alloy are accurate. The copper, silver, and gold was the "money" and the Constitution did not authorize the Congress to create money but instead to "coin money" which is a manufacturing process to make legal "tokens" of certified weight and alloy content of the coinage. When private enterprise engages in this there is no way to prevent fraud where the coin misstates the amount of "money" in the coin. For example I could mint a one-ounce gold coin from 14 carat gold and call it a "one-ounce" gold coin but it doesn't have the same gold content of a 24 carat gold coin. The "amount of money" is different and depending upon the court system to address the "fraud" when the perpetrators of the fraud can often be long gone is irrational and stupid.

    One of the reasons behind the Constitutional authority for Congress to coin money and regulate the value thereof was that prior to this, under the Articles of Confederation, each State was creating their own coinage and that complicated commerce even though each State certified their coins. A "one-ounce" gold coin from New York might not equal a "one-ounce" gold coin from Virginia because of different alloy composition. For a merchant trying to figure this out was next to impossible.

    Bottom line, this is one of Ron Paul's more stupid propositions because of the inherent fraud that would be involved and the impossibility of merchants to know the value of the coinage with thousands of different coins claiming to be "the same" but, in fact, most being different.
     
  12. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    Laizze faire capitalism is not devoid of regulations but instead requires pragmatic regulations that prevent the violations of the Rights of the People. This would include regulations that prevent unfair business practices from monopolies, it would require regulations that protect the workers from business practices that cause them harm, it would require regulations to protect the environment as no person has a "right to pollute" the air, land, or water which violates the Rights of other People in society.

    The greatest misconception of laizze faire capitalism is the belief that it doesn't mandate regulation and, in fact, we would have more regulations related to some issues (e.g. I could easily see a laizze faire regulation requiring the coal industry to employ "clean coal" technology because it would reduce air pollution by up to 40% in the US) while far less related to others.
     
  13. samiam5211

    samiam5211 New Member Past Donor

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    Once you start setting the ratio to anything but 1:1 you are just pretending to be on the gold standard.

    If you can change it to .000000000000000000001% when times are tough, you may as well just have the fed printing money.
     
  14. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    I will provide a single example based upon laizze faire capitalism. With laizze faire capitalism the government (or the Federal Reserve on it's behalf) don't manipulate interest rates. For the last few years the Federal Reserve has manipulated the interest rates so that they are only a faction of the normal 4%-6% historical interest rates based upon the "value of money" and this has dramaticaly reduced the income for tens of millions of US retirees that have assets stored in US Treasury notes and bonds. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars of consumption have been eliminated by the artifical suppression of interest rates and that loss of consumption results in a loss of jobs for those that would provide the goods and services to meet this consumption.
     
  15. NothingSacred

    NothingSacred Active Member

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    Agreed! If we are just slashing their taxes and saying, "you have more money now, I hope you create some jobs-if you feel like it, but it's all voluntary, you can pocket the money or create jobs in Sri Lanka, but nobodies forcing you to create jobs here"...then it's BS, Trickle Down is the most destructive scam ever perpetrated on Americans, it's a lie, it's BS.
     
  16. NothingSacred

    NothingSacred Active Member

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    OK, lets say that consumption came back, can you Gaurantee, 110% that the jobs to provide the goods and services to meet this consumption will be created INSIDE THE USA to employ AMERICANS?

    - - - Updated - - -
     
  17. septimine

    septimine New Member

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    Well, my thing with the gold standard is that it's a standard. It works for the same reason that any standard works -- you can't play games with it. You can't print lots of money if you can't meet the standard -- if a dollar is worth 0.001 of a gram of gold, I can't just hit "print" to get more money, I have to get the gold first, then print the money. Which means that inflation of the kind we've seen since QE began would not be possible -- if everything is pegged to gold (and FYI it doesn't have to be gold, but it's convienient) then everything is also pegged to each other. So items like bread would cost a set number of dollars because a dollar is worth 0.001g of gold, and bread is worth say 0.03g of gold, so there's no way to monkey around with the values. It also helps to maintain a standard of living -- since inflation isn't going to be an issue, a raise actually means a rise in standard of living. One of the problems we have now is that such a thing is not necessarily the case, in fact wages lag behind inflation, and in some cases, even if you get a "raise" your money is not worth what it was to start with. So businesses get it both ways, charge you more, make it look like you get paid more, but in fact they're pocketing the difference between what my wages should be to keep up with inflation and what they actually are, even with the raise. Can't do that on a gold standard as easily -- everything is standard to the same object, and you'll know right away.

    As to monopoly, the thing is that heavy regulations tend to keep competition out of the marketplace. An established business can absorb a lot of costs that a startup simply cannot. If the cost of keeping the government at bay is high enough, there's no reason anyone sane would try it. If you have a high cost for waste disposal, that's not a problem for a business that already has a brand name, customers, and an established profit margin. If you're a little guy trying to make it without having all of that cushion, those costs could push you out before you have a chance to establish yourself. You have no cushion.
     
  18. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    That, in my opinion, is more dependent upon tax policies than on anything else. From the research I've done we don't have a "level playing field" because of our tax policies that would also logically be addressed under laizze faire capitalism.

    Why I state we have an "unfair" tax policy is related to taxes on small enterprises where a small business owner, working at the business, would have a $37,300 tax liability (i.e. 37% tax rate) on $100,000 in net income. This includes the income tax plus the self-employment tax which replaces the FICA/Payroll taxes for other employees. These taxes are not imposed on foreign produced goods so there is an uneven playing field between US produced goods and foreign produced goods. Logically a consumption tax, which taxes all goods and services consumed in the United States identically, would level the playing field between domestic goods and services and foreign goods and services.

    A consumption tax is non-discriminatory and it's unlike a tariff that only taxes imports and which is typically recepricated by the foreign country affected by the tariff. That merely reduces US exports while increase the costs of US imports.

    Most Americans seem to be fundamentally unaware of the fact that our tax policies are what tend to drive US jobs overseas and, of course, the politicans wanting to drain every possible dollar from the US economy certainly aren't going to tell us that. We see both Democrats and Republicans referring to taxation and expendatures as a percentage of the GDP but the government doesn't own the GDP and this reflects their attempts to deceive the American people related to taxing and spending.
     
  19. Questerr

    Questerr Banned

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    1. As an economist, one of the things I disagree with other Libertarians about is the silver/gold standard. Adopting such a standard after the growth that we have had since we left it would result in massive deflation in our currency. Deflation is really bad for an economy that relies heavily on investment, credit, and loans to function.

    2. There is a difference between laissez-faire and corporatist anarchism. Under LF you can still have a government that manages and regulates market failures, such as monopolies and negative externalities like child labor.
     
  20. Questerr

    Questerr Banned

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    Unless there are barriers to entry or the requirement for a huge upfront investment/sunk costs in order to enter the industry. Then maintaining a monopoly is incredibly cheap.

    What happens if person B fails in his self defense?
     
  21. monty1

    monty1 New Member

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    That creepy Rand Paul got caught with his pants down supporting abortion. How in hell is he going to maintain support of the fukking crazies after that? The racist creep is both for and against everything and it's 3 1/2 years before the next election. I don't think he will even be included in the republican lineup of candidates.
     
  22. Taxcutter

    Taxcutter New Member

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    "...how would we discourage monopolies?"

    Taxcutter says:
    Get government out of the economy.

    Simple human greed will have competitors moving in on any monopoly that is not protected by the coercive force of government.
     
  23. Questerr

    Questerr Banned

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    Unless the industry has barriers to entry, large sunk costs, and huge upfront investments.

    Then with zero government regulation, the monopoly can engage in price discrimination and inflate the price well above the competitive level without worrying about competition (which they could destroy with predatory pricing even if it tried to enter the market).
     
  24. Roelath

    Roelath Well-Known Member

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    That happens with every new era of a product... First the product goes for what we consider thousands or even millions to purchase. Innovative ways of copying or creating it come about afterwards and the prices dramatically fall. It's not as if there is some evil corporation lurking in the dark seeking to create a product that sucks all of the water out of the planet... then plans to sell it back to everyone. That would involve every world power being involved to create such a scenario.
     
  25. Taxcutter

    Taxcutter New Member

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    What foreign competitors did to GM makes a hash of the monopoly argument. There are now eleven competitors in the US car market.

    Steel is a high-capitalization business yet competition has broken the power of the integrated mills.
     

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