Money vs Currency. Explaining Gold.

[Steven Douglas]

There is no such barrier.

You can import whatever currency you want and use it with no restrictions - you can price your goods in terms of that currency, and insist on trade with it.

What is stopping you?

Nothing.

You would have made a great emissary for King George, I think, telling all the colonists that there really is no barrier to entry for tea.

True, there is nothing that "stops" me from using them. That's your completely uncritically thinking brain-fart straw man argument -- that a "barrier to entry" to currency is necessarily an outright prohibition of some kind. That goes to the heart of why you really can't engage in an honest debate. You constrain (and strain) definitions to suit your own premises. Very much like Roy L. You have defined everything, and as narrowly as possible to fit your governing assumptions.

I already have alternate currency, Mr. paper-centric trapped-in-his-own-box guy. Hard specie, gold and silver US minted coins -- not more intrinsically valueless irredeemable paper currencies.

My gold and silver US minted coins were demonetized, and are now both taxed as something "other than money". That is the barrier to entry, no different than an internal TARIFF -- the artificial guarantee that I will be TAXED for simply using such coins as money. But, like the $1,004.95 single lb. of taxed butter example, I am "free" to use those coins, aren't I? And to price my goods in them. At a price.

See, I actually can and do trade in hard specie. All silver US minted "junk" coins, and most every day. And when the tax man sees that my silver coins have "increased in value", I will be taxed on that. No attention will be paid to the loss in value of FRN's, only the relative "increase" in value of the coins. Thus, whatever economic advantage I had (not really an advantage, so much as a protection from an artificial disadvantage) is lost - siphoned away.

And you're right, YOU can't argue with Von Mises:

"[T]he sound-money principle has two aspects.

1) It is affirmative in approving the market's choice of a commonly used medium of exchange.
2) It is negative in obstructing the government's propensity to meddle with the currency system."

You're the idiot who reads #1, thinks he has the Holy Grail nutshell of an answer, and calls it a day.

"It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of right."

You're the idiot who says, "What the US Treasury sees is of no concern to me or anyone else."

Yes, pay no attention the man behind the curtain.

If they decided to use blueberries wouldn't change a thing either - unless, they demand blueberries as payment for taxes - then, eventually, blueberries would become money - not because the government said it was money, but because people needed to pay their taxes would trade in blueberries, and by that marketability, blueberries would become money.

Your befuddled brain has Mises backwards, convoluted, and completely confused, with your notion that money is derived primarily from its use as a taxation medium. That's your lunacy, which you haven't backed up. You have it exactly backwards. That government tail didn't wag the dog. The dog was there first. If the market was using blueberries (or Tulips, or tea), the government would sniff it out and glom onto it afterward.

Read the Coinage Act of 1792. The government didn't just "decide" a currency into existence. It based its new dollar on the Spanish milled Dollar that was already widely in circulation, and chosen by the market already - and NOT because anyone was wandering around trying to figure out the best way to pay taxes.

[WilliamC]

What the US Treasury sees is of no concern to me or anyone else.
If they decided to use blueberries wouldn't change a thing either - unless, they demand blueberries as payment for taxes - then, eventually, blueberries would become money - not because the government said it was money, but because people needed to pay their taxes would trade in blueberries, and by that marketability, blueberries would become money.

[Black Flag]

You would have made a great emissary for King George, I think, telling all the colonists that there really is no barrier to entry for tea.

No, they used guns to seize the tea that had no tax.

The government does not use guns to force FRBN into your hands to pay for your goods.

Because you have distorted view of what is going on, you apply really strange attitude to such things.

[Black Flag]

True, there is nothing that "stops" me from using them. That's your completely uncritically thinking brain-fart straw man argument -- that a "barrier to entry" to currency is necessarily an outright prohibition of some kind.

There is no barrier whatsoever enforced by government.

I have money, in my hand right now, from at least a dozen different countries, and I have no fear that King Obama's Jackboots will kick my door down, nor any fear if I use them to buy something today that the Secret Service will pounce on me.

The government does not give a hoot what I use - period.

PS: It is not my definition that is narrow - it is yours. You take one requirement - payment of tax - as the complete determination of money while ignoring the billions of other transactions that have no such requirement.

I see the billions of other transactions, free to use whatever they wish, and review their choice.

[WilliamC]

No, they used guns to seize the tea that had no tax.

The government does not use guns to force FRBN into your hands to pay for your goods.

Because you have distorted view of what is going on, you apply really strange attitude to such things.

Magic eight ball says...



from any reliable source...

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it.

[Steven Douglas]

There is no barrier whatsoever enforced by government.

Oh, really? So sales and capital gains taxes on gold and silver is a fiction? No need to pay them, no government enforcement on these? Good news!

You are being incredibly, and I think deliberately, obtuse.

[Black Flag]

Oh, really? So sales and capital gains taxes on gold and silver is a fiction? No need to pay them, no government enforcement on these? Good news!

You are being incredibly, and I think deliberately, obtuse.

Your requirement to pay tax is completely independent on the currency or goods you use for any transaction.

[Bern]

Steven, you made your point brilliantly. Time to let the thread die IMO. BF is obviously just trolling - no one could honestly be that dense. Capital gains taxes <> sales taxes. Barriers to entry <> 100% occlusion from entry. BF prefers to believe that Gresham's Law does not exist.

[WilliamC]

Oh, really? So sales and capital gains taxes on gold and silver is a fiction? No need to pay them, no government enforcement on these? Good news!

You are being incredibly, and I think deliberately, obtuse.

Magic eight ball says...



Yea, it's fun but there's only so much one man can do to hold back tide of trollishness that threatens to take over the topic

[Travlyr]

Steven, you made your point brilliantly. Time to let the thread die IMO. BF is obviously just trolling - no one could honestly be that dense. Capital gains taxes <> sales taxes. Barriers to entry <> 100% oclusion from entry. BF prefers to believe that Gresham's Law does not exist.

This.