Forum Post: Monetary Freedom - REAL money with Real Value - Fight the banks! - Ron Paul
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 5, 2011, 3:53 p.m. EST by theaveng
(602)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Congressman Ron Paul told Judge Napolitano - "I am quite convinced that the system we have will not be maintained - that's what these last 4 years was all about, and that's what the turmoil in Europe is all about:
"Paper money that can be inflated and devalued by the banks until it's worthless and the People's savings are wiped out. We know what to do - we did it once after the Civil War period. We went from a paper standard back to the gold standard, and the event wasn't that dramatic..... I would like to have a transition period and just legalize gold and silver as legal tender, per the Constitution, and then gradually work our way back to a gold-backed paper."
FUNNY CARTOON AD - http://youtu.be/-spkz9umMcY - (I like the image of the Corporation using TV media like a puppet)
INTERVIEW VIDEO - http://youtu.be/Cj-0B_60Nkk
Money backed by the full faith of the government- this era will be looked upon as the biggest joke/scam in the history of finance...
This. I wish there was a way to go forward in time to see what the history books will say. How will we be viewed by our children and our children's children.
If you think about it, gold really has no intrinsic value except in manufacturing. It's just a pretty shiny metal. Just because something is relatively scarce, it's not necessarily valuable. The price of gold is largely determined by the willingness of people to pay the going rate.
The real value is in land, food, water, and energy.
"Pretty shiny metal" is why gold has value. For 10,000 years of recorded history humans have wanted to have this pretty shiny metal, and since it is rare, that gives it high value.
It's difficult to carry land, food, water, or energy in your pocket, but the pretty shiny metal is nice and compact, and it can be used to acquire the first four as you need it.
Paper is worth less every year. (95% less since 1913.) But silver, gold, platinum has held its value. Half an ounce of gold would buy you a nice wool suit in the 1920s, and that's still true even today.
Again, no intrinsic value, only a perceived value.
By that logic, not even food or water has "intrinsic" value. They only have perceived value because humans desire them (like gold and sex). AND as I mentioned before (but you ignored)..... I can't carry my wages from labor unless I first convert it to a compact form (gold, silver, paper dollars).
I certainly cannot carry around 1 million dollars in land, food, or water in my pockets
This is the 21st century. Your worth is transferred electronically often. You don't have to carry anything. Food IS needed. Gold isn't. Your statement is false.
Except the fact that food is "needed" simply means there is stead demand and throughout human history there has been a steady demand for gold. If gold does not have intrinsic value for this reason then neither does food or anything else.
All value is human dependent so using the word intrinsic in the sense of value means "on value to humans" since that is the only way it can exist.
Actually, the demand for goods and services preceded the demand for gold by quite a span in time. You need food to live, you don't need gold at all.
Additionally, depending on where you look, "intrinsic" is defined as essential.
Yes but I'd like to see you use food as a store of wealth. Besides honey all food spoils. Gold does not, it doesn't even tarnish. So if you want to exist meal to meal on nothing more than a subsistence level food and individual crafting services would work. Personally I want a bit more ability to store wealth than that would offer.
I currently use food stored as wealth, in the form of seeds, plants, as well as produce stored in various forms. Additionally, since I've been growing my own food, I find the quality is better, and I eat a larger variety. I also invest in tools, which increase my ability to offer services. I live far above a subsistence level, and anyone who actually has any experience w/ doing things for themselves can also tell you that the quality is tremendously better, and the cost is near zero when you do it right.
Electronic money can be stolen by companies like MF Global (yes they stole customer money... erased the databanks and the e-money was gone). Therefore I'd rather have Real money in my possession so it can't be touched.
Also e-money can be devalued via inflation (the Fed just electronically increases the money supply). Precious metals can not. They can not be manipulated by the Fed.
Again precious metals have no intrinsic value. Their value is based on what people will pay. They only have a "stable" value in the current system.
Electronic money can be stolen because people are stupid. There's no reason a "repository" can't be made secure w/ an isolated network, physical security, and enough cross verification required by multiple servers.
There's really no such thing as "real" money. Money is just a medium of exchange designed to acquire commodities and services. The purchased commodities and services are the real things of value.
This article might be interesting to you. Note the percent increase in prices of commodities. You can't eat gold. http://davidxjohnson.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html
I expect this to get worse w/ the increase in population, rise in energy costs, and loss of sales due to increases in prices. Retailers have also increased prices to make up for losses in total sales.
the intrinsic value is that rather than the gov't just making more they have to buy it to make $$$$
paper money has no intrinsic value, AND can be manipulated. So which is better? Gold or paper?
Clearly gold. It might not have a lot of intrinsic value (saying it has NONE is patently false) but even if it were true paper also has no intrinsic value, with the additional dealbreaker being that it can be manipulated. Maybe gold is not perfect but it is much better than the current system.
What do you propose that we use other than gold? In addition to not being portable all land is not equal, all food is not equal, all sex is not equal... all gold is equal (or can be purified to become equal.)
And I find your statement ludicrous "Electronic money can be stolen because people are stupid." No electronic money can be stolen because it is kept track of a system that was created by humans... a large system that if you crack it, puts everyone at risk. E-money is also a system that bankers can manipulate and make money out of thin air and also move it around at their own free will.
Neither gold or paper is better.
I work in IT, and have for decades now. Your statement "And I find your statement ludicrous", is ludicrous. A secure system is indeed possible. Bankers are bankers. They have no expertise at all in systems. I think it should be patently obvious by now that they don't really even understand economics as a system. All they use are general rules for portions, but as a system, they're clueless.
What did we use before gold? Commodities and services. Both ARE portable. There appears to be an underground economy right now that uses barter, and whatever is currently of value. In fact I plan on being part of that economy once my paycheck stops, by exchanging services for whatever extra I need. In fact, that's what I'm doing now. I exchange services, for "money", then money for goods and services. I'll just cut out the middleman "money".
I also work in IT and have for decades. You aren't describing money you are describing currency. Currency is a means of standardized exchange - money is currency that has intrinsic value itself.
Commodities and services are both portable but services are not equally divisible into measurable quantities - commodities are. Do you trade an hour of LAN administration for how much of time of cleaning services? This is barter not currency or money.
Certainly it's barter. An yes, I have no problems w/ trading an hour of administration time, design time or anything else for an hour of cleaning services. Standardization is often inequitable. Worth/value is relative. An hour of time spent is an hour of my life that I'll never recover. It really doesn't matter to me when the time spent is work that I don't enjoy. Time spent doing something I like isn't work, it's play.
In a barter system, both parties have to feel that they received fair value, or the trade doesn't occur. Money isn't really needed, as evidenced by the fact that we didn't always have money.
Both parties feel they are gaining an advantage of true of every type of trade.
We are going to disagree about money not being needed for the modern world. How would you trade with an etsy artist in another state, ebay from another country? Work remotely?
Ridiculous statement. In my last post I proved gold is better than paper, if only because gold's purchasing power remains the same, while paper has lost 95% of it power since 1913.
Gold. The Greeks used gold, the Romans used gold, the Egyptians used gold. An egyptian gold coin still has enormous value even 4000 years later. Can we say the same about the U.S. dollar thousands of years now? Ha! No.
Even if the US and its Fed still exists in the year 6000 A.D., they will have devalued the paper dollar to ~0.0000000000001% of its present purchasing power.
No you didn't "prove" anything. You just made a statement of opinion. And no, we didn't use gold before we used gold. We bartered for goods and services. Obviously paper money is worthless, as are the current crop of minted coins. Gold is subject to price fluctuations as is silver. The difference is when you establish an agreed upon standard, everything is measured against the standard. It's a lot like an electrical ground. It's just a reference. It's not absolute.
Well you go ahead and waste 8 hours a day growing food (subsistence farming).
I'll be at my job for 8 hours, bring home $200, and then just buy the food I need for 5. Putting my time into getting money makes more logical sense, because the reward is far, far greater.
I agree. Gold is not perfect but it is CLEARLY better.
Just so you know, in the past salt and certain rocks were used as currency. But once they were found in abundance they became worthless. Could this happen with gold? (Or has it already we just don't know it... see diamonds)
Probably not w/ gold. While we CAN make gold, we can't make it at a cost as cheap as mining and refining naturally occurring gold.
Notice hyarborough is silent.
He knows I'm right (gold holds its purchasing power, while paper lost 95% over the last century), but doesn't want to admit that is true. He'd have to admit he's wrong..
I was silent because I have other things to do that merit more of my time than meaningless discussion. This is just playtime. As I mentioned before, I grow my own meat, vegetables, fruits, and a fair number of medicinals. Gold is better than paper currently, but certainly not inherently. The price of anything is something that's agreed upon and generally accepted. Believe it or not saffron is worth more than gold by weight, and has for quite a while. Worth is based on perception, and need. Real value is something different IMO.
That wasn't so hard now, was it. And gold has ALWAYS been better than paper. It holds its "purchasing power" while paper loses PP due to the central bank printing excess paper.
And of course if the bank or government collapses, then the paper they issued is worthless, but the gold coins still retain worth. As example: See the Confederate paper in 1870 after the Confederate government ended. Worthless. But the Confederacy's gold coins still had value.
re: saffron
WRONG. An ounce of saffron is only ~$100. Gold is obviously more valuable than that.
You missed a key point:
Paper and e-money can be devalued via inflation (the Fed just increases the money supply). Precious metals can not. They can not be manipulated by the Fed.
Money made from (or backed by) precious metals are better for the Working classes than paper money that can quickly become worthless. Paper money has lost 95% of its value since 1913 (wiping-out the laborers' savings). Gold and silver have lost none of their value. 1/2 an ounce of gold in 1920 would buy you a nice wool suit, and that's still true today.
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I missed nothing. You miss the point that money is used to purchase goods and services. If you provide your own goods and services or barter for them, What's the point of money? You apparently don't remember when there was an attempt to corner the market on silver. Prices fluctuated then. No, they only remain stable when used as a standard. Even then the price remains stable only relative to itself.
Time value.
I could waste 8 hours a day growing my own food. -Or- I could get a job for 8 hours, bring home $200, and then just buy the food I need for ~$5. Putting my time into getting money makes more logical sense.
I was talking about the LONG term. Sure gold has had some fluctuations but in the long term it holds it value. In contrast the paper dollar has lost 95% of its value (purchasing power) since 1920. If my grandfather had $100,000 in 1920 he would have been considered rich. Today that's not a lot of money.
In contrast if he had converted that $100,000 to gold, he'd have about 2 million gold coins. And he's still have those 2 million gold coins even today. There's no way for the Fed Reserve to ru a printing press and devalue physical metal.
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You can't print gold!
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Occupy Foreclosed Homes! Fight the banks! Reclaim! "Paper money that can be inflated and devalued by the banks until it's worthless and the People's savings are wiped out."
what Americans do you know that have savings. everyone i know is living paycheck to paycheck. a resource based economy makes more sense than a gold based economy, unless you have been hording gold for the last four years. and again, most Americans I know have not had the luxury to hoard gold.
The majority of americans have 401Ks or IRAs. Those are savings, and they are devalued in purchasing power when the Fed inflates the money supply by 95% since 1920.
could there be ways they could get those IRAs to earn greater interest than the devaluation of the money? if the fed is devaluing the dollar at two percent a year and a normal IRA is increasing at three percent a year, wouldn't the money managers be willing to look for a five percent a year investment. hypothetically speaking of course. and the best way for this to work would create value, IE lower the unemployment rate. this creates value. i also see why you want to occupy the bank's "property" maybe that will entice them to do the most profitable thing, put people back to work by investing here and not in other nations that have bigger returns. no?
Well stocks used to grow faster than the inflation rates, but now that the real inflation (including cost of food and energy) is over 9%, that is no longer true. There's no place to put your money which will grow faster then the private central bank is devaluing it.
Agree.
Go to gold, yeah right. It disenfranchises all but the wealthiest 1%. Is that what you really want? Our labor is worth pittance, nearly nothing! The elite want value to be in gold and oil, only THEY can afford to collect it from THEIR soil. So what if you own a few coins, they can always afford to bring more up from the ground, they OWN the money trees. YOU just pick them! YOU have to sweat for it, toil long hours, for a measly few dollars an hour!
Clearly you don't understand. It is PAPER that disenfranchises all but the wealthiest 1%, because they print the dollars out of thin air, and devalue any wealth the labor class might have saved.
It is only with gold (or silver or platinum) backing the paper that you have a STABLE currency that the top 1% cannot destroy or devalue. That is what the Founding Fathers had in mind from the very start..... no fiat (fake) currency. Only precious metals.
Will you be intellectually honest and read something?
http://mises.org/books/whathasgovernmentdone.pdf
I am tired of you gold bugs, Ron Lawlites sending people to the Mises page. I will not read that Koch Libertarian drivel, ok? You all gang up here and push your gold, ending of the FED, property rights, right of "free association", I am sick of it, lots of others are too. You all are the opposite of OWS, don't think the majority doesn't know what you all are up to. Half of you don't understand yourselves.
I don't know why anyone ever thinks that "I refuse to better inform myself or examine any argument I don't already agree with" would be something someone shouldn't be ashamed to state publicly.
I didn't think you would read anything that opposed your myopic views. Have fun with your worthless paper that is controlled and manipulated by the same people you say you are protesting against.
I have researched and studied both Keynesian as well as Austrian Economics. I have read countless books on Money, Macro-Economics, and finance. What have you done?
Thanks for the laugh.
You don't think metal is manipulated? Look at what China is doing with copper. No, most of what you want stems from religious, racist misogynistic cult views.
"Christian Patriotism is the result of the confluence of the far- right tax resistance movement, regressive Populism, and Identity doctrine. The Christian Patriot branch of white supremacy traces its explosive growth back to the rise of William Potter Gale's Posse Comitatus, a virulently anti-Semitic paramilitary movement which began operating publicly in 1968. Founded on the principle of all-out resistance to federal authority -- which has marked all white supremacy since the rise of the Ku Klux Klan at the end of the Civil War -- the Posse carries the notion of anti-federalism to new extremes. Most racist politics has its legal and philosophical roots in the "property rights" and "states rights" clauses in the Constitution. These sections of the Constitution were a compromise necessary to enlist the cooperation of the slave-holding states in replacing the unworkable Articles of Confederation with the federal Constitution. The exaltation of the rights of property over the rights of people is a common denominator of the entire right wing of American politics" http://www.albionmonitor.com/freemen/ci-roots.html
"Not surprisingly, in a patriarchal culture in which women function primarily as daughters, wives, and mothers of particular men, women have virtually no property rights. Unmarried women inherit from their fathers only if they have no brothers; and, in such cases, they must subsequently marry within their father's clan to prevent the dispersal of tribal property among outsiders (Numbers 36:2‑12). [This was the case with the daughters of Zelophehad, who successfully petitioned Moses and God for their father's inheritance.]
Queen Esther Widows do not inherit from their husbands at all, but are dependent on their sons or the generosity of other heirs. According to the practice of levirate marriage, childless widows are the legal responsibility of their husband's oldest brother (Deuteronomy 25:5‑10)." http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Issues/Gender_and_Feminism/Traditional_Views/Biblical.shtml
Huh? LOL I think you got the wrong person.
As far as China, they are a COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT of course they are manipulating metals! They manipulate EVERYTHING!
So you cannot or will not discuss the actual issues but instead feel compelled to first assign motives to and then attack those motives.
Do you understand the huge amount of fail in presenting only logical fallacies as your argument?
And I'm sick of you liberals and your name-calling. Why don't you GROW UP and stop acting like a fucking grade school kiddie? It is no more aceptable to call people""bugs" then to call black people the N-word. Stop acting like you never advanced past the 9th grade in your maturity level.
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