Tagged: commodity, commodity currency, economic, economy, fiat, fiat currency, fiat money, gold, gold standard, Government, governments, oil
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LEO THE WISE 1 year, 8 months ago.
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I would like to invite those who believe that fiat currencies and governmental control of a society’s money supply are detrimental to building a prosperous society to read and comment on this article from the Hampton Institute on the topic.
The basic points:
* Gold has no intrinsic survival value and is just as much fiat currency as any other paper or “precious” metal
* Fiat currencies and centralized control of a society’s money supply leads to stability and prosperity (Roman Nomisma, Colonial Script, Lincoln Greenbacks, etc)
* Since the value of any given commodity can and will fluctuate radically as a result of market manipulation, no currency backed by a commodity can ever be stable.
* Private control over money by monarchs, plutocrats and private banks is the cause of financial destabilization, wealth inequality and societal economic collapse
For those of you who have been arguing with me in other threads about the evils of fiat currency, this article (and I, by extension) will properly make your argument for you right here: “The ruling class [i.e. bankers] creates this funny-money out of nothing, at little or no cost. They then lend it into circulation and charge interest for its use because of the “risk” involved in lending something that cost them nothing and is worthless in any case.”
Now, shall we continue to pointlessly discuss fiat currency itself or shall we move forward to discuss the motives and methods of the people who are currently perpetrating the evils you so rightly rail against and what can be done to effectively stop them?
The Gold Myth and Commodity Money: Ancient Scams of Historical Proportions
For the record, the Hampton Institute is an “unabashedly anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-fascist” think tank that seeks to “help develop the working class into a self-conscious class-for-itself capable of fundamentally changing the nature of society.”
Do you know what is happening right now because of a fiat currency? The one percent of the rich own the printing pressing and they literally print trillions of dollars to give to themselves, and dump onto the market to maintain their power. By doing this, they cause devaluation of the dollar, and raising prices, this hurt us, the people. With us having to pay more with less.
This way, the rich become richer, while they make us poorer without firing a shot, nor having to directly steal our wealth.
That is not getting into the rigged job market, the welfare state, bank bail-ins/theft, nor taxes and regulations. All designed to hurt us. Never to help us.
There is no real point in building a future, when there is nothing to build a future with.
Actually, precious metals and rare earth’s have real industrial value.
Without them modern drugs and computer chips go away.
My opinion is that it is how fiat currency / fractional banking is being done, rather than it exists is the evil.
Love is just alimony waiting to happen. Visit mgtow.com.
Anonymous24I have been over this topic a million times.
Fiat Currency = Wars (the ability to borrow and print endlessly) Nixon took us off the gold standard to fund Vietnam, he said it would only be temporary…
Fiat Currency = Pushing down of the middle class. (without wage increases to keep up with inflation everyone gets poorer except the uber rich who keep getting richer)
Fiat Currency without audit = Who knows where the F the money is going.I am tired of this topic, have been over it many times with many people. Fiat Currency enslaves the planet. End of story.
Time for something different. Nationalize our banking system at the very least as did Iceland. Oh, and jail bankers as well as did Iceland. Oh, and let people keep their homes as did Iceland. Oh, and send everyone in the country a check when they dismantle the banking system as did Iceland…
I’ve looked into fiat currency extensively, and it continues to be a fascinating subject to me. Thank you for providing an alternative take on the much hated fiat system.
Fiat currency is not necessarily a bad thing if the economy is growing steadily and the politicians manage the country properly. The rise in currency supply gets negated by the growth in the economy.
It also provides an abundance of cheap credit, helping business expand and grow faster. Also, using a currency that depreciates in value forces us to invest our “money”, so it could be argued that it has a positive effect on the overall economy.
The problem is that this system is not sustainable over the long run, and it creates all sorts of imbalances, unintended consequences, and bubbles.
The biggest problem with a fiat currency, is that it’s a debt based system, as opposed to an asset based system. That’s why it’s called a Federal Reserve Note. You got your house note, your car note, and your currency notes. A note is an instrument of debt.
That means all currency in existence is created through debt. Even the government borrows currency from the Federal Reserve. So even if you work for a paycheck every week, if there was a way to trace the dollars in that paycheck back to it’s genesis, it would have originated with a swipe of a credit card, or some form of debt obligation.
Now wrap your head around this cause it’s about to get crazy…
The bank only creates the principle, but the government and the people all have to pay it back with interest. Thats why there is so much more debt then there is currency. The government can borrow at 0% and just tax future generations to pay it back, so the people are always forced to pay it back, even if it was “society” that borrowed recklessly and wasted it on something foolish.
That’s how everyone: People, Corporations, Governments can all be in debt at the same time, for seemingly astronomical amounts. There isn’t even enough currency out there to pay off even 1/3 of the total debt outstanding. Foreclosures and repossessions are baked into the cake, and will only rise from here on out.
In an asset based system, most people would own their houses and cars out right. We have this vampire squid called central banking just sucking all the prosperity out of the economy. Keep in mind, new currency/debt has to go up exponentially and always collapses. The only way to keep the system going is for society as a whole to take on bigger and bigger amounts of debt each year.
Now as far as gold having no value, you are absolutely right. Intrinsic value is a bulls~~~ concept. Some things are just the most convenient when it comes to a mere token like money. Paper currency, gold coins, bitcoins, and cowry shells all have NO INTRINSIC VALUE WHATSOEVER.
Money in itself is not meant to be useful. It’s just a token. It’s an abstraction of value. Someplace to store your economic energy until you are ready to deploy it. Personally I accept and use all forms of money. No discrimination here.
Also you are correct that pure capitalism is by it’s nature cutthroat and always leads to a huge wealth divide. It’s survival of the fittest. If you don’t work or do something that society values, you die. I’m a blue collar working man that supports capitalism because I want the opportunity to better my future through work.
My way of thinking is that the world has never seen this many people. 8 billion something right?
Now at the same time every natural resource on Earth is peaking or is in the process of peaking.
If you were to play God and decide the most fair, the most moral way to divvy up the remaining scarce resources in society, how would you do that?
Personally I would let people fight it out, through business and working, not violence. The more value you provide to society, the more resources you get.
That is capitalism.
See these think tanks like to say they are for the “working man”, but what they really mean is they are for the “uneducated man”. These think tanks are all bought and paid for by government cronies who stand in the middle and profit. 9/10s of the money you pay for welfare goes to various bureaucracies and only 10% goes to the leech.
Now some people say we should all just divvy up everything equally. Of course these people never want to go bust their b~~~~ out in the field and make it happen. They just want to be passive with their hand out, much like a female.
Capitalism = Patriarchy. Work or die.
If I have to work, so do you. There is no free lunch.
People have to get over this “equality” concept. It’s government propaganda. For instance, Men are provably both stronger and smarter than women. Not equal
Some people work harder, some are smarter. Equality is a myth. It’s just people that produce value and people that look for a handout.
The economy is a closed system. There is no magical Patriarch daddy figure that want’s to go out into the field and be your slave.
Sorry for the rant. I’m very passionate about capitalism lol.
Not my property... Not my problem
Anonymous24A resource based currency would allow those who save to retire well, as following generations will constantly be behind the game and those who save will be ahead. This is because as population grows, your resource based currency, which is limited, will grow more and more valuable as demand increases. Fiat Currency does indeed promote growth as you say, but this is a double edged sword as it decreases your wealth every day because of inflation. Our current system exists for this very reason, because without growth the uber rich cannot exploit and get even wealthier. It is a explosive situation. A resource backed currency is much more stable and better for everyone except the leeches at the top. I too lean more to right as well, and would prefer that we had a system in which those with money (backed by a resource) would compete with one another in lending. (true free market capitalism). All that would be needed is oversight to keep monopolies and collusion out of the game. This would give the people the best product due to competition. It would also put an end to war, as most of us would vote against most wars even though our leaders keep waging them, we would therefore not borrow from an institution that funded them. True democracy. As it stands we have no way whatsoever to control our government. Voting at the presidential level clearly means nothing.
Fiat money is the source of most of the world’s problems.
I read something about the American Revolution. How the Dutch bankers would’t loan us money until we were in debt to somebody. Something about if we already owed someone money then we could borrow money….Sorry no link, just my memory so who knows.
EDIT: I think it was the John Adams series.
Love is just alimony waiting to happen. Visit mgtow.com.
A resource based currency would allow those who save to retire well, as following generations will constantly be behind the game and those who save will be ahead
I’ve thought about this too, but here’s my take:
Let’s say we go back to gold or forward to cryptocurrency, or a mix of whatever the market decides to use. The market is smarter than us and they will choose the most superior form of money once fiat collapses yet again.
Now think of these younger generations that are born with no capital. They are dependent on their father from birth. They have not produced anything of value for society yet, therefore they have no savings, but they are not “behind the game”. They just haven’t started yet.
See where I’m going with this? If bitcoins or gold coins or whatever just fell out of the sky, they would have no value….
You have to accept that the world is in a constant state of competition. That is nature. Everything that has any value is already owned and controlled by someone. That doesn’t mean that a young kid with no capital can’t go create the next facebook. Happens all the time.
The way I see it, a child should have a father to depend on, who should teach their son to work hard and should encourage independence as they get older. It’s no different from Daddy lion teaching baby lion to go kill s~~~. Competition is natural.
Not my property... Not my problem
Anonymous24I guess you took my “behind the game” statement too literally, I understand they haven’t started yet. The point I was trying to make is that with a resource backed currency your wealth would grow more easily just sitting there, instead of being de-valued due to massive lending/money printing. And that over time the following generations would have to compete for the limited resource, therefore rewarding those who save. Those at the top don’t want this. They want rampant spending/lending/growth. Really, it is a race off a cliff. This planet is doubling it’s population every 38 years or so… Should we really be promoting growth with funny money???
Anonymous24* Private control over money by monarchs, plutocrats and private banks is the cause of financial destabilization, wealth inequality and societal economic collapse
So, you are saying that a supposed government institution that has NEVER been audited in the entire 102 years of its existence is actually not a private bank??? If it is part of the government, why do we owe it money??? How can we owe ourselves money???
This is where your argument falls to pieces. It is a private central bank. And this one sentence of yours ends your arguement dead in the water.
Also, if a banking system were truly part of the government would it not use it’s profits to fund said government???
You have no leg to stand on. Unless we start auditing the Fed, we have no idea what is going on, we have no idea where the money goes. We literally know nothing.
I get what you’re saying Joe. You’re spot on. The fact is we’re in a Post-Growth world with a currency system that requires constant growth.
The reason fiat currency has lasted so long is several decades of cheap oil. It’s easy for the economy to grow fast when everyone has the equivalent of 300 oil slaves working for them day and night.
The best solution I can come up with is some sort of gold standard, or digital gold standard. Before we had fiat currency, there was enough wealth in the hands of the people, that there was an abundance of private charities. I think if we went back to some sort of commodity money, we would all be surprised how prosperous everyone would become.
Of course I’m always open to a new idea, that’s better than gold or cryptocurrency…
It just cant involve the government putting a gun to my head and making me someone’s slave.Not my property... Not my problem
Anonymous24Yea, personally I would like to see a return to a gold standard and either a nationalized banking system or a true free market banking system with actual competition. Nationalized would keep profits from loans to fund the government, but this would only solve some problems. A true free market money lending competition would cure many ills in my opinion.
I am out for now, good talk.
This is why I’m excited about cryptocurrency. DECENTRALIZE THE CENTRAL BANKS. F~~~ing brilliant.
Imagine a future where the government is powerless to seize your bank funds because you have secured it yourself, in an anonymous bitcoin wallet.
Possession of your funds is a powerful concept.
Government/banks/fiat currency is the matrix that gives control of your finances over to your wife.
Once they have those marriage papers, they never have to suck your dick ever again. Because the bank/government has possession of your “money”, not you.
Not my property... Not my problem
Some say Andrew Jackson was impeached because he took on the central bank. It’s not my area so take it for what it is worth.
Love is just alimony waiting to happen. Visit mgtow.com.
Like it or not, fiat currency is what we are dealing with world wide. The economies of the world today are built upon fiat currency, for better or for worse.
Society asks MGTOWs: Why are you not making more tax-slaves?
Fiat currencies and centralized control of a society’s money supply leads to stability and prosperity (Roman Nomisma, Colonial Script, Lincoln Greenbacks, etc)
* Since the value of any given commodity can and will fluctuate radically as a result of market manipulation, no currency backed by a commodity can ever be stable.
* Private control over money by monarchs, plutocrats and private banks is the cause of financial destabilization, wealth inequality and societal economic collapse
Let me add a graphic to oppose these points:
* So Faust votes to give up.
* Jan argues that gold has industrial value which has nothing to do with the argument or the article (SURVIVAL value, not industrial uses, nobody is arguing that gold doesn’t have industrial uses… and good luck producing electronics in a subsistence agrarian economy).
* Joe argues against fiat currency again, claims to be done with the argument and then makes a FANTASTIC proposal (no sarcasm, I really mean it is fantastic) that we jail the bankers and let the people keep their s~~~. I went to Iceland last year and heard their story and I think they did exactly the right thing, One point to Joe for offering a real solution.
* Sovereign makes most of the same points that the article does about the pros and cons of currency, governments, bankers, etc but then takes the stance that it’s a cutthroat world out there and we can’t sustain 8 billion people on hopes and dreams of equal distribution of resources and the milk of human kindness. One point to Sovereign for being realistic and implying, if I understood it correctly, that the system sucks but it’s the best thing we’ve got so suck it up.
* Joe re-hits with another assault on fiat currency and a suggestion that a resource economy (by which I assume he means barter or something close to it like commodity backed currency) would be better for the little guy but since everything is pretty well f~~~ed, well, it’s pretty well f~~~ed. No solutions to offer there… may as well just give up, is it?
* Sovereign reiterates the notion that individuals are in constant competition for scarce resources, most of which are already controlled by someone else, though there are opportunities to create new forms of value. I like it but it’s pretty much a double-dip so no extra points.
* Joe implies that the intrinsic value of resource (commodity) money would grow by simply going unused which I don’t agree with. The whole point of commodity money is that if we need more of it, we go and produce it. If you simply hoard your wheat, sugar, copper, salt or whatever, someone who needs it is going to get it elsewhere or make more of it themselves. In this regard, money unspent is only valuable to the holder if and when they choose to spend it or consume it. Sitting on it doesn’t increase its value a bit and, in the case of perishable commodities, diminishes it’s value.
* Sovereign again suggests that gold is not a fiat currency (it has survival value, does it?) and that crypto currency is better than fiat currency (I assume because there are no controls on it? How has your Bitcoin investment been treating you?) and then. We hear the old saw about how currency is forced on people under threat of violence. I’ll assume this is a reference to the changeover from the gold backed currency to non-gold backed currency where holding gold was made illegal. Has anyone considered that maybe people were not resistant because they didn’t believe in or were refusing to accept the federal reserve notes but rather because their gold was being stolen from them? Small distinction, you might say, but an important one, I think.
* Joe votes for governmental control of the money supply… still on about the gold standard, though. Do you disagree that gold is a fiat currency with no intrinsic survival value?
* Sovereign votes for cryptocurrency as the way to defeat the powers that be… but do you really think people will have faith in cryptography given how often cyber security issues are in the news? I’m an IT professional and I have no faith in cryptography. Does anyone, really? I’d rather have gold than bitcoins or anything like them, honestly.
* Roy throws in a vote for “this is the world as we have it so deal”. Plus one half point for suggesting we have to work with what we’ve got but only a half as there’s no statement of a better solution or that there isn’t a better solution.
So did anyone actually READ the article? Nobody referenced it. I mean, at least I made the effort to watch that four minute video on commodity basket currencies so that I could try to formulate a reasonable response to it. Anyone? Are we just going back to our poles on this and restating the same tired old arguments, for the most part? I’m trying to find some common ground here, help a brother out,
Let me add a graphic to oppose these points:
Can we get a key to that graph? The squiggly line represents what and the vertical axis represents what? After 1913, neither gold nor stocks are money or represent real, consumable value so how does the two of them fluctuating against each other effect what appears to be a straight line upward averaged trend of something?
Please don’t just post graphs and videos and assume you’re making a point. If you want to make a point, we need enough info to see the point you’re trying to make for ourselves, thanks.
Absolutely, I posted in a haste. The chart illustrates the Dow-gold ratio. I’ll add the original quote from the article from http://www.acting-man.com/?p=42160
Prior to the Fed implementing its “scientific” monetary policy (which is really “intervention based on the atrociously bad guesses of some of the worst forecasters on the planet”), economic busts were actually more frequent. Fractionally reserved banks tended to bring credit expansions to an end much sooner voluntarily without a “lender of last resort” backstopping them all the way.
The overall long term effect was one of remarkable economic stability. Although credit expansion by private banks still engendered boom-bust cycles, these were far milder and usually self-corrected quite quickly. It took the Federal Reserve to produce events like the Great Depression and the Great Financial Crisis. No dislocations of similar impact had ever been encountered before it was decided that we needed central economic planning and the “stabilizers” took over.
Do not buy government issued bonds. They are designed to make you a poor man. Bonds in general are a bad idea, except as a very temporary way to store money until it can be wisely invested. I cannot argue too much about the ‘temp storage’ bit, although I am against it for my own purposes.
The politicians will grow rich and their children will inherit large sums of money all because suckers like us buy bonds, pay taxes, and fall for their lies.
Society asks MGTOWs: Why are you not making more tax-slaves?
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