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AsifShiraz
03-04-2009, 09:41 AM
Hi,

I would like to know some details around what practical work is being done by the supporters of Ron Paul to bringing about sound money practices.

I'm not a US citizen, but admire Ron Paul a lot. From where I come from, we too dearly hold the ideals "very similar" to those proposed by the Austrian school and Ron Paul regarding economic policy. Unfortunately, such people are in a minority.

In order to achieve practical results, one can either wait to become the majority, or else to do whatever little they can through their current means.

I see that Ron Paul is a very well-placed individual here in the US, with a genuine possibility of bring about large scale change. But that big aim, I think, will take a lot of time and a long and arduous road ahead. What I am interested to know is, without waiting for that bigger change (through a democratic process) to come about, what are the steps you guys are taking in your current positions, specifically regarding introducing gold based economy.

When a person first studies these ideas, and goes about searching, we find initiatives like liberty dollar and goldmoney. These all appear to be "private" enterprises, or "for-profit" organizations, which, inspite of doing good work, can perhaps also be viewed as making money off of the higher ideals which this economic theory teach.

So my question: Is there any non-profit initiative by the followers of Ron Paul to introduce a gold-based sub-economy in the US? E.g. we can all pool our money and skills together to charter a private bank, that provides full services like regular banks do, without creating money and by savings its funds in gold, or something similar, but my primary point is, it ought to be in the public domain, not a private corporation initiative?

To do public good, why wait to be in the government, why not start right away? Does anyone know of any such existing initiative to which I can join and contribute?

theoakman
03-04-2009, 11:52 AM
Hi,

I would like to know some details around what practical work is being done by the supporters of Ron Paul to bringing about sound money practices.

I'm not a US citizen, but admire Ron Paul a lot. From where I come from, we too dearly hold the ideals "very similar" to those proposed by the Austrian school and Ron Paul regarding economic policy. Unfortunately, such people are in a minority.

In order to achieve practical results, one can either wait to become the majority, or else to do whatever little they can through their current means.

I see that Ron Paul is a very well-placed individual here in the US, with a genuine possibility of bring about large scale change. But that big aim, I think, will take a lot of time and a long and arduous road ahead. What I am interested to know is, without waiting for that bigger change (through a democratic process) to come about, what are the steps you guys are taking in your current positions, specifically regarding introducing gold based economy.

When a person first studies these ideas, and goes about searching, we find initiatives like liberty dollar and goldmoney. These all appear to be "private" enterprises, or "for-profit" organizations, which, inspite of doing good work, can perhaps also be viewed as making money off of the higher ideals which this economic theory teach.

So my question: Is there any non-profit initiative by the followers of Ron Paul to introduce a gold-based sub-economy in the US? E.g. we can all pool our money and skills together to charter a private bank, that provides full services like regular banks do, without creating money and by savings its funds in gold, or something similar, but my primary point is, it ought to be in the public domain, not a private corporation initiative?

To do public good, why wait to be in the government, why not start right away? Does anyone know of any such existing initiative to which I can join and contribute?

the black market.

nayjevin
03-04-2009, 12:25 PM
the black markecompletely unnecessary.

There have been discussions about starting a bank here, never came to fruition. There was an initiative by libertyforums.org which was an attempt to reward good posters with micropayments from a gold account, that was interesting, but libertyforums died.

www.mises.org (http://www.mises.org) is good, I'm sure you know, but short of 'awareness' missions, I do not know any org's doing serious footwork.

Live_Free_Or_Die
03-04-2009, 12:31 PM
nt

Nationwide
03-04-2009, 12:34 PM
We are:
-- supporting Dr Paul's HR833 bill to Abolish the FED www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h833/show
-- supporting www.goldmoneybill.org in several states
-- joining www.committeesofsafety.org to promote the return of Constitutionally necessary state militias
-- using US gold/silver coins (legal tender), Goldmoney.com, RipplePay, alternative currencies whenever possible.

Money can be many things, not just Federal Reserve Notes. As for a sound money bank? Well, any aggregated vault of precious metals trying to be money is susceptible to federal raid (LibertyDollar) without protection from the states Militia. Banking is hugely profitable thanks to fractional-reserve, etc., and can afford to offer free-banking. You don't want modern banking practices in a sound bank. So you're looking at a PM warehouse; a place to store wealth and transmit pieces of it (same as a bank), ei. Goldmoney, which must charge fees, although they're fairly reasonable ($1.30 max for a silver payment).

AsifShiraz
03-04-2009, 01:22 PM
1. You mentioned that libertyforums.org attempted to do this but "it died". Makes me thing why.. was it for inadequate support, or organized opposition from the powers that be? For a Senator who even competes in the elections, and every now and then a car with a bumper sticker to support ron paul here in austin, don't we have enough muscle now to be able to sustain such initiatives?

2. Your idea about cloning craigslist/ebay sounds nice, but is that really required? A competing sound currency would only need its own payment network, not necessarily duplicate actual market places. So basically, instead of cloning ebay and craiglist itself, all we need to do is clone paypal !!

3. Regarding the comment that a sound money bank cannot compete with the regular banks working off of fractional reserve, I think actually they can. This is in the current economic environment, this sound money bank can create a niche for itself by being the ONLY institution that offers consumers the ability to consume as well as invest their money at one and the same time. The profitability can come from alternative means, if not the unsound fractional reserve practices, but it definitely can compete. E.g. visa cards compete with cash, even though visa charges a per transaction premium. Gold can compete with visa by charging per transaction premium, but the premium actually comes from the fact that underlying money store has increased in value (assuming that some idiots will always cotinue to use inflationary paper notes). Isn't that something that can be done.... You guys have a great platform for getting your act together and rolling this into something like a grassroots 401c trust bank....

In case somebody wants to do that... i'm in for any help I can give....

Live_Free_Or_Die
03-04-2009, 02:00 PM
nt

Bradley in DC
03-04-2009, 02:04 PM
I explained how to do it here:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/285572

If there's funding, I'll put the team together to do it.

gcopenhaver
03-04-2009, 02:53 PM
So far I've taken the "clone craigslist" route and created http://paulslist.us the other day, especially for Ron Paul fans. The actual transactions/methods of payment are the responsibility of the users to figure out. Using alternatives to the U.S. Dollar/FRN's is highly encouraged.

Maybe someone can/will create a payment system to go along with it, and/or for general use...it's something I'll consider doing myself, but my biggest concern is what the government will do if I were to create such a thing.

Costs aren't necessarily that high, unless you're dealing with government regulations and lawyers, or have to pay someone else to do the work if you don't have the necessary knowledge to get it done yourself. Starting paulslist only cost me a total of about $25 (+ $20/month from here on out), for the domain ($5) name and the VPS ($20). All the work was done by me, in less than a day, with the occasional minor tweak here and there since I first put the site up a few days ago. I'm not good at graphical stuff, though, so I just used a theme from drupal.org (the site runs on Drupal).

I'm working on another website that's going to be more general purpose for the liberty movement, and will have a lot more features, so it will require a bit more work, but I hope to have it up and running within a week. I'm thinking about using the domain 'operationfree.us'. Like it? Hate it? Any other ideas?

I'm a fan of the political philosophy called agorism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism).

nayjevin
03-04-2009, 02:58 PM
1. You mentioned that libertyforums.org attempted to do this but "it died". Makes me thing why.. was it for inadequate support, or organized opposition from the powers that be? For a Senator who even competes in the elections, and every now and then a car with a bumper sticker to support ron paul here in austin, don't we have enough muscle now to be able to sustain such initiatives?It died, but not because of the micropayment issue - although that was hitting roadblocks, I don't know the details. it may be archived somewhere, but I have been unable to find it - a shame - the rise and fall of that forum would be INVALUABLE information to this forum today. I'll relay what I can, but was a young and ignorant lad when I lurked there. Don't hold me to the details, hopefully someone who remembers better can come and correct me.

the micropayment system was based on a premium forum membership being exchanged to a pooled gold account. Posters could rate up or down posts that they liked, the result being that more of the gold from the account would go to the poster with high ratings for posts. It was a rich get richer system, ultimately, I thought, but the whole system was set up to attempt to employ good posters (albeit at a very low 'salary'), and along with the ratings system, to keep infiltrators from having undue influence. The ratings system went from -1 to 5, and you could have your settings block any of the ratings you wanted -- for instance, you could block any post that didn't have a 4 or 5 rating.

My impression is that the people who thought it could work, thought it would only in as small a group as they had - - in other words, I think most people knew that if too many people joined, the philosophy of the message of liberty would become fragmented, and presumably, troll posts could eventually be the ones rewarded with high ratings.

Don't know whether that will be relevant here, but that's my explanation. :)

nayjevin
03-04-2009, 03:07 PM
also, got an email just this morning from someone with a similar idea, i forwarded this info:

http://www.freemarketforliberty.com/
http://www.thelibertyhive.com (http://www.thelibertyhive.com/)
http://www.operationcatherder.com/index.php/Skills_Bank
http://paulslist.us/

are similar projects, these guys should probably be contacted

Here's some threads where the future of barter within the movement has been discussed extensively:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=153542&highlight=ron+barter+site
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=164748&highlight=ron+barter+site
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=123601&highlight=ron+barter+site

Nationwide
03-04-2009, 03:46 PM
Asif, bank accounts in the United States must be denominated in U.S. Dollars. That includes unsound Federal Reserve Notes. Do you really want a bank? You cannot have Constitutionally sound money, demand deposits, AND loans in the same bank account. Unless of course the depositor agreed to loan out his gold, but then it would not available 'on demand.'
I suppose you could call it a 'bank' but you're probably looking at what would legally be called a 'money transmittal service.' Right now, Goldmoney.com comes very close to what we are all describing (half a billion$ in deposits).

Edwin Vieira, Jr. Ph.D is the pre-eminent scholar is this field, BTW.

Yes, a liberty clone of ebay/craigslist would be great; that's a marketplace which is distinct from a digital payment system, although they go hand in hand. Perhaps we could get Steven from www.freebay.com interested. Good to see all the interest in this!

Bradley in DC
03-04-2009, 05:04 PM
Asif, bank accounts in the United States must be denominated in U.S. Dollars.

That statement is not true. That there is so much bad information among RP supporters on this issue still isn't encouraging.

enjerth
03-04-2009, 05:12 PM
IMHSO (humble, sad opinion), we can't have sound money until, basically, our fiat system is destroyed.

To use gold as money, reliably, gold cannot be priced as a commodity. Gold must be priced directly in opposition to the worldwide supply of goods and services. Critics say there isn't enough gold for us to move to a gold standard and, at current prices, that's absolutely true. While gold remains priced as a commodity, the threat that it's value can fall or be manipulated by people who have or can corner the market means that any such venture to use gold as sound money is perpetually in jeopardy.

We would have to convert gold to dollars and back again to participate in a gold-based monetary system. In our current fiat system the value of gold fluctuates dramatically, as it did in the last year, which could potentially devastate people financially where they would have been just fine if they just stayed in fiat money.

I would not join any such system until gold is priced as money, because the exposure to the tumultuous gold market could crush me. I'm all in favor of sound money, but until our fiat system comes crashing down, Gresham’s Law applies.

Gold and fiat money cannot co-exist.

Nationwide
03-04-2009, 09:51 PM
That statement is not true. Bradley, I read that "all US bank accounts must be denominated in US Dollars" on PayPal's website. Anyway you may be right - I see that Everbank (http://www.everbank.com/001Metals.aspx) offers a precious metals account ($5000 minimum) - but is that a bank account?

I listened to your online Austrian Scholars Conf talk - "IMF prohibits member nations from using gold as money. ...withdraw the US from the IMF ... TIPs treasuries .. gold-backed US treasuries .. convert to gold bonds to compete against the fiat treasuries. .. Gold contracts were re-legalized 30 years ago .. landlord reserves the right to demand payment in cashiers check, cash & gold of the weight & fineness of the date of the origin of the contract."

I'm all for it, but much of that centers around dismantling the Federal Reserve System from within, which I just can't see the banks going along with. I didn't know gold contract clauses were legal. Is a contract denominated in gold enforceable by the courts?

ItsTime
03-04-2009, 09:54 PM
There is only one historical way to bring change to a monetary system. The answer is not what you want to hear.

raystone
03-04-2009, 10:14 PM
A business owner was talking this month how he accepted silver for payment. He said it was hurting him because he was paying the spread at the time of receipt of the silver, and then paying the spread once more. Not sure if he said when converting it for deposit, or ?

AsifShiraz
03-05-2009, 01:08 PM
Regarding paypal. That is one way to go about it. I tend to think that is the longer road though as there are already some alternates to paypal.

You mention: "with competing commodity based currencies". So when I say gold-based paypal-clone, it is one such competing commodity. My basic point is, to settle transactions in an ebay/craiglist clone, we would need some kind of "monetary medium". A ebay clone cannot work without that medium, but once that medium is there, it can work with regular ebay/craiglist too once the buyer and seller choose to do that. In that sense, I meant that logically, the payment mechanism in gold piece ought to come first?

AsifShiraz
03-05-2009, 01:17 PM
I explained how to do it here:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/285572

If there's funding, I'll put the team together to do it.

Funding is always the biggest issue. My thoughts on funding are:

1. Sound money allows you to get rich by actually "competing" in the economy with superios products and services, instead of minting money off of existing money you have. So its pretty much a given that VC, Banks and "capitalists" won't fund any such venture. However, the do we really need them? My point is that you guys are strategically placed under a "banner" of ron paul revolution which has widespread (and increasing) following. All that needs to be done is to tap the collective resources and start a publically owned, pooled money initiative to which everyone chips in some funds. I volunteer to purchase shares worth of 5K in any initiative started for this. If there are only 20 others like me, that can meet e.g. the minimum net worth requirements for operating a money services business in texas. (just to illustrate the point). So its very much possible....

AsifShiraz
03-05-2009, 01:30 PM
IMHSO (humble, sad opinion), we can't have sound money until, basically, our fiat system is destroyed.

To use gold as money, reliably, gold cannot be priced as a commodity. Gold must be priced directly in opposition to the worldwide supply of goods and services. Critics say there isn't enough gold for us to move to a gold standard and, at current prices, that's absolutely true. While gold remains priced as a commodity, the threat that it's value can fall or be manipulated by people who have or can corner the market means that any such venture to use gold as sound money is perpetually in jeopardy.

We would have to convert gold to dollars and back again to participate in a gold-based monetary system. In our current fiat system the value of gold fluctuates dramatically, as it did in the last year, which could potentially devastate people financially where they would have been just fine if they just stayed in fiat money.

I would not join any such system until gold is priced as money, because the exposure to the tumultuous gold market could crush me. I'm all in favor of sound money, but until our fiat system comes crashing down, Gresham’s Law applies.

Gold and fiat money cannot co-exist.

This is rather a philosophical / subjective comment. I would only comment that

a) Gold would be the monetary system in our own little sub-economy (just like inidividual countries have their currencies). Within it, it would not be commoditized, but act as true measure of value.

b) Even though manipulated and commoditized, even so it maintains its value. What more can be a convincing argument. If one were to buy gold last year at its hight of manipulation, just in one year you touched those same price levels again. And that was the "worst case" so far. Practically, in that worst case too, since it touched that price again, while corresponding amount of regular money would have lost its value through inflation, it fared equally well in that worst case scenario. It is very likely in the next spike, we beat that price! and it may happen within an year.

c) It is going to be difficult to convert gold back and forth to dollars to be able to spend it, and that is exactly where my concept of gold "bank" would help out. It would help in the transition, by operating in both fields "temporarily" to facilitate the transition.

AsifShiraz
03-05-2009, 01:34 PM
A business owner was talking this month how he accepted silver for payment. He said it was hurting him because he was paying the spread at the time of receipt of the silver, and then paying the spread once more. Not sure if he said when converting it for deposit, or ?

This would only happen temporarily, and can be mitigated by pooling resources through a gold bank. This discussion is too high level to demonstrate how exactly, but in principle, because the price of gold will keep rising (a given), there are many creative ways possible of some financially savvy skilled leaders to rise up and facilitate this transition for all those people who are willing to hitch on this, if not for immediately monetary (which by the way can come!!), but for the ideology and principles involved.

Nationwide
03-05-2009, 09:41 PM
Asif & Bradley, If bank accounts in the US can be denominated in gold, why are there no gold banks in the US? I'm not talking investment accounts but banks for banking transactions. I submit to you that a gold bank represents a genuine threat to the banking cartel which operates in the US under the protection of the Federal Reserve System and they would never allow such a bank.

However, we can certainly transition ourselves away from FRNs into sound money today. Right now I can list an ebay/craiglist ad specifying payment in silver/gold through either www.goldmoney.com or www.RipplePay.com (a distributed payment network between trusted users).

raystone
03-07-2009, 02:41 PM
bump

Live_Free_Or_Die
03-07-2009, 03:04 PM
nt