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Thread: Money vs Currency. Explaining Gold.

  1. #181
    Quote Originally Posted by Bern View Post
    The barrier for entry for gold and silver to compete with FRNs as currencies are legal tender laws and capital gains taxes.

    Is Warden Norton being purposely obtuse? He be trolling.
    Is anyone stopping you from using gold and silver as your means of transactions? No.

    Whereas it is true that FRBN, needed for taxes, makes FRBN highly marketable, hence, becomes the money - not because of government making FRBN money, but by the marketability generated by the people using FRBN.



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  3. #182
    The barrier of entry is not the money.

    It is the banking.

    The people chose their own money.
    The people cannot chose their banking system.

  4. #183
    What is a good price for a roll of mercury dimes? Thanks

  5. #184
    Bern is oustandingly correct.

    The very usage of gold/silver in transaction is taxable as per the IRS through barter laws (I'm not saying it's morally right, I'm saying it's the laws on the book - and they have the powerful guns).

    The barrier IS the taxation and legal tender laws. Enact the legal competition of currencies and remove legal tender laws and people/the market would be ABLE to choose the forms of banking they so choose, UNCOERSED.


    Quote Originally Posted by Black Flag View Post
    Is anyone stopping you from using gold and silver as your means of transactions? No.

    Whereas it is true that FRBN, needed for taxes, makes FRBN highly marketable, hence, becomes the money - not because of government making FRBN money, but by the marketability generated by the people using FRBN.



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  7. #185
    Quote Originally Posted by Black Flag View Post
    The barrier of entry is not the money.

    It is the banking.

    The people chose their own money.
    The people cannot chose their banking system.
    Wow, you don't even know what an economic barrier to entry (not barrier "of" entry) is. You're making up how you think it ought to be defined in order to fit your specious arguments.

    A barrier to entry does not mean that entry is physically impossible. Barriers to entry are nothing more than artificial obstacles that make one option artificially less competitive in the market place than others - in other words, a market manipulation. Sometimes they are outright prohibitions (e.g., drug laws). Regulations can also serve as barriers to entry. Mostly they are whatever artificial barriers are imposed that make it economically unfeasible for something to freely compete in the marketplace.

    Tariffs are a classic barrier to entry. If a country places a $1,000 per lb. tariff on foreign butter, that would be a barrier to entry. However, I could make your absolutely obtuse and poop-stupid argument that there is no barrier to entry to butter in such a case, because people can still get that foreign butter. All they have to do is pay $1,004.49 per lb. - and it's theirs! See? No barrier to entry!

    Legal tender laws are a barrier to entry, as are capital gains taxes on hard specie. State bank notes were literally taxed out of existence in 1863 - that was a barrier to entry for something that already existed, but the artificial taxation barrier served its purpose and drove all such notes completely out of circulation. The fact that people could still "freely" trade in them, so long as they paid the extortion fee levied by government does not mean that there was no barrier to entry.

    You listed a bunch of paper currencies from other countries around the world. That was mind-numblingly stupid, because they all have barriers to both entry and exit for currency both within and without various borders (another barrier you overlook) in one form or another.

    I'm pretty sure you knew all this, which makes me also pretty sure that you are not interested in honest debate, but are only trolling.
    Last edited by Steven Douglas; 03-16-2012 at 05:02 AM.

  8. #186
    20 pages and no Rep + peeps?!? lol

  9. #187
    Quote Originally Posted by Black Flag View Post
    Is anyone stopping you from using gold and silver as your means of transactions? No.

    Whereas it is true that FRBN, needed for taxes, makes FRBN highly marketable, hence, becomes the money - not because of government making FRBN money, but by the marketability generated by the people using FRBN.
    Magic eight ball says..

    Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.

    NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012

  10. #188
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    Wow, you don't even know what an economic barrier to entry (not barrier "of" entry) is. You're making up how you think it ought to be defined in order to fit your specious arguments.
    Well, of course I do - and your spew here notwithstanding.

    A barrier to entry does not mean that entry is physically impossible. Barriers to entry are nothing more than artificial obstacles that make one option artificially less competitive in the market place than others
    There is nothing artificial in the choice of money.

    The people chose their money, not government.
    The fact that people could still "freely" trade in them, so long as they paid the extortion fee levied by government does not mean that there was no barrier to entry.
    No such tax exists today to so to interfere with your choice. Your argument here is specious!

    You listed a bunch of paper currencies from other countries around the world. That was mind-numblingly stupid, because they all have barriers to both entry and exit for currency both within and without various borders (another barrier you overlook) in one form or another.
    Another specious argument.

    They do NOT all have such barriers - some do, called currency controls - but those are a vast minority and nothing worth pinning your argument upon.


    The people chose their money - this is another fundamental and riveting point Mises made, for it explains perfectly well why money becomes "not money".
    Last edited by Black Flag; 03-16-2012 at 08:29 AM.

  11. #189
    Quote Originally Posted by Black Flag View Post
    Well, of course I do - and your spew here notwithstanding.

    There is nothing artificial in the choice of money.

    The people chose their money, not government.

    No such tax exists today to so to interfere with your choice. Your argument here is specious!

    Another specious argument.

    They do NOT all have such barriers - some do, called currency controls - but those are a vast minority and nothing worth pinning your argument upon.

    The people chose their money - this is another fundamental and riveting point Mises made, for it explains perfectly well why money becomes "not money".
    Magic eight ball says...

    Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.

    NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012

  12. #190
    Black Flag, it's been fun reading your garbage. What do you think of gun bans?

  13. #191

  14. #192
    Quote Originally Posted by William R View Post
    bump
    magic eight ball says...

    Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.

    NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012



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  16. #193
    Quote Originally Posted by Travlyr View Post
    Black Flag, it's been fun reading your garbage. What do you think of gun bans?
    Why should some people be prevented to have weapons to protect themselves while others -just because they have funny hats- are allowed to have weapons to protect themselves?

  17. #194
    Quote Originally Posted by Black Flag View Post
    Why should some people be prevented to have weapons to protect themselves while others -just because they have funny hats- are allowed to have weapons to protect themselves?
    Magic eight ball says...

    Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.

    NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012

  18. #195
    Interesting thread until it turned into a petty argument .... thanks black flag. (sarcasm)

    Seems to me with such uncertainty about the world political, social & financial environment, owning top commodities like gold and silver is a wise move. Picked up a few ounces from apmex during this recent fall in prices.
    Last edited by airborne373; 03-16-2012 at 10:27 AM.
    Life is not a movie & liberty will not be delivered on a bed of feathers.

  19. #196
    Quote Originally Posted by Black Flag View Post
    A barrier to entry does not mean that entry is physically impossible. Barriers to entry are nothing more than artificial obstacles that make one option artificially less competitive in the market place than others
    There is nothing artificial in the choice of money.

    The people chose their money, not government.
    Nice try at a weak non-sequitur, troll.

    I talked about artificial obstacles as barriers to entry as it applies to "other" forms of currency, and you respond with a side-tracking, FRN-centric non-sequitur, arguing from the baseless premise of your worthless theory that the reason FRN's are the dominant currency is that people "chose" it as their form of "money". Forget that it was a reasonably sound, prior-existing currency in a completely different form, one that everyone was dependent on, which got later FULLY hijacked. No, in your mind, people actually "chose" FRN's. They preferred them doncha know. Right from the git-go. And why did they prefer them, according to your noodle-brained theory? Well, because they "wanted" something to pay their taxes with, that's why!

    No such tax exists today to so to interfere with your choice. Your argument here is specious!
    Stop licking windows and pay attention. If you try to use hard specie (e.g., U.S. minted gold and silver coins) as money, the US Treasury that minted those very coins will not see them as currency, but only commodities. You're not "converting" one currency to another, you're "buying and selling" commodities that are subject to various taxes, capital gains being one of them. Likewise, various states will see those same coins, not as money, but also as taxable commodities, subject to sales tax. Those are barriers to entry.

    You're not that daft, that obtuse. You're trolling. I'm pretty sure you knew that already, but I could be wrong. If I'm right, you're just dishonest, that's all. If I'm wrong, and you really didn't know that about capital gains and sales taxes be, then you're incredibly stupid, having missed that to go along with the rest of the knowledge you appear to have.

    The people chose their money - this is another fundamental and riveting point Mises made, for it explains perfectly well why money becomes "not money".
    How does your argument square with a currency that went from fully redeemable at times for gold and/or silver, to only sometimes redeemable, to not redeemable at all. Was that also a market choice, each step of the way, made by individuals? When a government "chooses" to demonetize a given metal as currency, is that also the "choice" of the people (aka - individuals in the market)?
    Last edited by Steven Douglas; 03-16-2012 at 10:37 AM.

  20. #197
    Quote Originally Posted by airborne373 View Post
    Interesting thread until it turned into a petty argument .... thanks black flag. (sarcasm)

    Seems to me with such uncertainty about the world political, social & financial environment, owning top commodities like gold and silver is a wise move. Picked up a few ounces from apmex during this recent fall in prices.
    magic eight ball says...

    Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.

    NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012

  21. #198
    Quote Originally Posted by airborne373 View Post
    Interesting thread until it turned into a petty argument .... thanks black flag. (sarcasm)

    Seems to me with such uncertainty about the world political, social & financial environment, owning top commodities like gold and silver is a wise move. Picked up a few ounces from apmex during this recent fall in prices.
    It is what the rich and the central bankers do - however, if you are not rich nor a central banker, it would be more effective to stock on goods that you would need during political, social or financial distress.

  22. #199
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    Nice try at a weak non-sequitur, troll.
    Hahahhaha

    Riiighhht!

    I talked about artificial obstacles as barriers to entry as it applies to "other" forms of currency, and you respond with a side-tracking, FRN-centric non-sequitur, arguing from the baseless premise of your worthless theory that the reason FRN's are the dominant currency is that people "chose" it as their form of "money".
    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.

    . No, in your mind, people actually "chose" FRN's.
    In fact they did, as they are using exactly that.

    Now, you can argue against Mises - however, I have found that he rarely loses...

    If you try to use hard specie (e.g., U.S. minted gold and silver coins) as money, the US Treasury that minted those very coins will not see them as currency, but only commodities.
    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.

  23. #200
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    How does your argument square with a currency that went from fully redeemable at times for gold and/or silver, to only sometimes redeemable, to not redeemable at all. Was that also a market choice, each step of the way, made by individuals? When a government "chooses" to demonetize a given metal as currency, is that also the "choice" of the people (aka - individuals in the market)?
    Precisely.

    The actual economic good changed, as did the money.

    Money is merely the most marketable good - and yes, the US removed gold making it illegal. The people picked up the most marketable - FRBN - as a replacement.

    I don't judge whether the choice made by Americans is right or wrong - but they accepted it. They could have revolted against it, but they didn't - they accepted the FRBN and here we are.



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  25. #201
    Quote Originally Posted by Black Flag View Post
    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:


    Quote Originally Posted by Ludwig 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.

  26. #202
    Quote Originally Posted by Black Flag View Post
    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.

    Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.

    NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012

  27. #203
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    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.

  28. #204
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    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.
    Last edited by Black Flag; 03-17-2012 at 10:50 AM.

  29. #205
    Quote Originally Posted by Black Flag View Post
    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.
    Last edited by WilliamC; 03-17-2012 at 11:05 AM.
    Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.

    NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012

  30. #206
    Quote Originally Posted by Black Flag View Post
    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.

  31. #207
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    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.

  32. #208
    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.
    Last edited by Bern; 03-17-2012 at 12:29 PM.



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  34. #209
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    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
    Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.

    NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012

  35. #210
    Quote Originally Posted by Bern View Post
    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.

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