Anyone interested in helping ditch FRNs?

[tremendoustie]

Hi All!

I just bought spendingsilver.com. My plan is to develop it into a tool to promote silver as an alternative currency. The idea is to use google maps to show merchants in any given area that are known to accept silver as payment.

People would be encouraged to visit local stores and restaurants, and offer to pay in silver -- rounds, eagles, junk silver, whatever they like. This should be done in a polite, friendly, educational manner.

A report could then be entered on the site, including the manager's reaction, whether they might be willing to accept silver in the future, and any reviews of the actual products or services.

Different searches on the map could show coin shops, merchants that accept silver, highly rated merchants, merchants that have been visited any number of times, etc.

Users would be strongly encouraged to offer merchants a good deal -- we're not trying to rip anyone off, rather, the purpose is to educate, and to set up an alternative to the FRN system.

I've been planning to set up the site myself, but if there are any web developers interested in helping, I would welcome it! Also, it's currently hosted for free on godaddy, but they put ads at the top, so if anyone has a server and is interested in hosting, that would be helpful as well.

In case anyone's concerned, I promise, I will never make a dime off of this. I don't plan to have ads, but if we do, all the proceeds would go to liberty-supporting causes.

Suggestions are welcome too :) (but perhaps not quite so much as volunteers).

[nbruno322]

Check out

http://www.goldmoney.com/

[Ex Post Facto]

This has been attempted with some success; however, FBI raids and lawsuits effectively stopped the operation. Read the website:

http://www.libertydollar.org/ NORFED is the corporation doing this.

[tremendoustie]

Check out

http://www.goldmoney.com/

Goldmoney is a great idea, but this is different -- I'm talking about actually circulating silver rounds/coins. The purpose would be to promote an alternative means of exchange, in order to wean people off of FRNs, and as preparation in case the dollar really does bite it hard.

[tremendoustie]

This has been attempted with some success; however, FBI raids and lawsuits effectively stopped the operation. Read the website:

http://www.libertydollar.org/ NORFED is the corporation doing this.

I don't plan to mint any coins, so I don't think legality is an issue. People could simply use legal rounds and coins that already exist.

This is simply a way of connecting people who wish to barter.

[ClayTrainor]

I don't plan to mint any coins, so I don't think legality is an issue. People could simply use legal rounds and coins that already exist.

This is simply a way of connecting people who wish to barter.

I think this is an amazing idea!

Be sure to include us canadians in your venture as well :cool:

[Flirple]

Yes sounds like an idea with potential. Seems like it would be important to get this going as soon as is practical even if it isn't really used that much at first. But under the right circumstances (which hopefully we won't see) of severe stress on the dollar that we may see in the coming months or years a website like this will be inevitable. The market will absolutely demand this.

Maybe at first the strategy should be to try to get people too simply offer 2 prices on their price tags. A conventional price, as well as a price in pre-1964 90% silver dimes, Quarters, half-dollars, and silver dollars. And then let the movement grow from there.

And yes, this is a totally different concept than The Liberty Dollar and/or Goldmoney.com.

[Athan]

+1

+1000 if you can keep the fed from fucking this up.

[nate895]

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=171734

[TulsaRevolution]

If anyone needs to ditch some FRNs they can send them to me :)

[tremendoustie]

Bump just in case someone's interested in helping with development (I'm working on it now).

[tremendoustie]

Hey, looking for a tip here, what's the best way to save data off a website into a database? Which are the best free software tools? Thanks.

[jake]

awesome idea.. you really have to speak to people as to WHY they should barterwith silver instead of using Fed notes. also, yes, include Canada pleas :)

good luck.

[ghengis86]

+1

+1000 if you can keep the fed from fucking this up.

that will be the largest obstacle. the network will build in time, but the feds will keep a close eye on you.

[Truth Warrior]

No, but I am interested in ditching their source.

[Josh_LA]

Hello?

Why was NORFED raided? It's illegal under federal law to circulate silver and gold as currency.

[tremendoustie]

Hello?

Why was NORFED raided? It's illegal under federal law to circulate silver and gold as currency.

My understanding is that they were raided because they may have called their silver rounds "coins", did call them "dollars", used a dollar denominated marking on them, and suggested they actually had the corresponding dollar value (it was considered counterfeiting).

I'm not suggesting we do any of these things -- or even make any rounds at all, just help people barter. If anyone really thinks this may be illegal, I want to know now, but I'm not aware of any law against trading silver for goods and services.

[tremendoustie]

Here's the IRS on barter:

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

If they tax it, I'm pretty sure it's legal.

[Josh_LA]

Here's the IRS on barter:

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

If they tax it, I'm pretty sure it's legal.

what advantage is there in using it if its just as taxable?

[mport1]

This is a great idea but unfortunately I don't know how to create or operate websites. I will definitely help in spreading the word though.

[tremendoustie]

what advantage is there in using it if its just as taxable?

Because it is an alternative to FRNs, which are prone to inflation, are based upon debt, are abused by banks, and are at the mercy of bernanke and paulson, whose actions right now are less stable than lucy ricardo on roller blades and cough syrup. Also, barter cannot be tracked by the feds like digital or even monetary transactions can, so it increases privacy.

Furthermore, suppose we do really experience a monetary crisis in the near future, and dollars become worthless or close to it. Wouldn't you like to know where you can spend your PMs? :)

[Flirple]

Hello?

Why was NORFED raided? It's illegal under federal law to circulate silver and gold as currency.

It's not illegal to use or accept pre-1964 90% silver US coinage for a purchase. Focusing on this form of silver first will negate any apprehensions people might have about all the confusing legality questions with this.

Getting businesses to start offering 2 different prices on the price tag of merchandise (a normal fiat price and a pre-1964 90% silver coinage price) will be a great way to get people in the mindset of viewing gold and silver as money. A great educational tool to prepare people for a larger movement of using other forms of silver later on.

Sorry I am of no help with website development.

[gilliganscorner]

It is interesting the number of posts on this topic is increasing. There are a couple of things I would like to highlight.

I asked this question a while ago w.r.t to agorism (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showpost.php?p=1652039&postcount=1), which was written in response to a member named "Social Engineer" who set up exactly what you are proposing, albeit with a different pitch:

www.freemarketforliberty.com (http://www.freemarketforliberty.com)

The issue with setting up an alternative currency site, is that there is a centralized database containing a list of users. Anything centralized is a target for a State raid, assuming it gets to the size of some critical mass where they feel it is worthy to deploy the bad guys wearing clown suits brandishing guns to your home to terrorize you and your family, once they arrest the owner of the site, seize records, and waterboard the participants.

In an agorist network, you need only start with 4-5 TRUSTWORTHY trading partners to offer your products and services in return for gold or silver coin. You can even use FRNs at the point of trade, but convert them ASAP to gold/silver rounds to avoid the inflation tax - as long as it has a good hallmark and is easily recognizable and can be verified at point of sale (i.e. with a Fisch instrument (http://www.fisch.co.za/), for example), there should be no problem with acceptance.

With a local network, you don't need software to optimize anything. Pen and paper will do.

Over time, your local network will grow, as your trading partners will network with people they trust and so forth. More products and services will be offered through the network. You can only work part time in this network as you still need to work in the "red market" - the current taxation/inflation system we are all enslaved to - to pay taxes and acquire things not available in the network.

However, "wizardwatson" brought something to my attention that I think looks promising: RipplePay (https://ripplepay.com/). The interesting part of it is that it looks like the folks over at that site recognize the centralization problem i.e. Ripple Pay supports the concept of distributed servers.

Eventually, if software is to be used to promote an alternative currency network, I would like to see it running as a P2P client everywhere (i.e. on your computer, iPhone, Blackberry etc etc). P2P client protocols are developing quickly. Case in point? Look at the difficulty the State is having to shutdown P2P filesharing sites. Napster's demise was excessively hyped by the State/Media cartel, claiming "Mission Accomplished" for ending filesharing. How well did that work out? It didn't. New P2P sites started up immediately. P2P client software developed rapidly to get around the barriers of centralization, encryption, and other sorts of protocols to get around ISP detection and throttling of P2P packet signatures. The robustness of this type of development continues to get more sophisticated.

The State will collapse eventually (some say within 20 years). What will we need? A number of things, but the most important thing is our networks as a result of us not being able to produce all the things we need ourselves, thus we will need an established trading network.

Does this all make sense?

PS, You can read a post about agorism and ripplepay here (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=171801)

[gilliganscorner]

As an aside, you might wonder if there was an example of agorism ever implemented? The answer is yes:

1) e-gold.com and goldmoney.com are centralized agorist networks, thus subject to State terrorism, like e-gold was. It is only a matter of time before they go after goldmoney.com

2) In the early part of the Great Depression, there were tax revolt groups being created all over the place as taxes were not falling inline with declining property values. I believe the greatest example was Chicago, where over 30,000 people were members of the revolt.

One of the items that people had discovered was they could trade with each other using gold and silver coins, thus effectively boycotting Federal Reserve Notes, which is not permitted by the State as it avoids people people taxed via inflation.

Some say that is the reason FDR confiscated gold from Americans and rendered contractual disputes nullified in court (via the gold clause) if payment was rendered in gold.

[Elwar]

Hey, looking for a tip here, what's the best way to save data off a website into a database? Which are the best free software tools? Thanks.

I tend to use MySQL as my database but after a few websites I think I've made things more complicated than I need to. You can use javascript to write data to a file on your machine.

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1171273&page=1

For your purpose I would imagine you'd have a form to fill in where people will have an address of a business where they can use alternative currency, with perhaps some other information. They hit submit and the info gets appended to the file with all of your other info in a format that is easy for reading on google maps.

It makes for easy backups of the "database" because you just have to save the file every once in a while.

[Peace&Freedom]

My suggestion is to set up the exchange in an international network, where both the site and its server are offshore (Switzerland, South Asia or even Russia). If the database is within the US Gestapo's reach, it will reach for it. It's not really about protecting FRNs, their reall objective is to ensure the gov has automatic or no legal process access to all financial transactions. It's important to have the network pre-established now while it's still can be done conveniently (using the web, for example), given that the internet may be largely locked down within the next few years.

[gilliganscorner]

My suggestion is to set up the exchange in an international network, where both the site and its server are offshore (Switzerland, South Asia or even Russia). If the database is within the US Gestapo's reach, it will reach for it. It's not really about protecting FRNs, their reall objective is to ensure the gov has automatic or no legal process access to all financial transactions. It's important to have the network pre-established now while it's still can be done conveniently (using the web, for example), given that the internet may be largely locked down within the next few years.

It would only work for a short time. It's amazing how many countries will co-operate with each other to stop each others citizens from evading their extortion fees. Tax treaties anyone?