I’ve often thought that, since havign gold or silver backed currency is not feasible. So they say anyway. Why not have it backed by basic necessary commodities. Like 1 dollar can be redeemed for 1 pound of wheat, rye, other grain, or 1 2x4 of lumber, 1/2 gallon of milk, etc. etc.
The dollar would be pegged to those values from then on. No inflation. Food/necessities would always have the same value.
I’d like to hear a cool economists view on the feasibility of that.
Money madness is the belief that the money token has an intrinsic value, independent of the marketplace of goods and services. Money (wealth) is not prosperity. A billion billion ounces of gold are worthless if there’s nothing in the marketplace to trade it for (Gilligan’s Island scenario). Ditto, for “backed” currency.
Nor would “redistribution of wealth” spur production. Frankly, if everyone had “all the money they could ever use,” why bother working or selling one’s property for more money?
The scam of money madness requires both scarcity AND instilled demand for it.
But that’s not the key to prosperity.
Prosperity is the prodigious production, equitable trade and enjoyment of surplus usable goods and services. Doing more with less so more can enjoy is the recipe for happiness. Doing less with more so few can enjoy is the recipe for misery. Money madness is the throttle on prosperity, as shown by unemployment, closed factories, and unmet demand - all which are blamed on “no one has enough money.”
Though not widely known, all taxes in America are based on government privileges, and they’re all voluntary.
What privileges, you ask?
Depends.
Based on the republican form of government, where all men are created equal and have Creator endowed rights that governments were instituted to secure - not tax, regulate nor trespass.
However, those who consent to be governed, accept mandatory civic duties that abrogate endowed rights, liberties, etc.
Consider that ‘private property’ is expressly protected, whereas ‘real estate’ is taxed and subject to confiscation. (Didn’t they tell you that they were mutually exclusive?)
You will never find a single statute imposing a tax on private property. But the state only records ‘real estate’ transactions.
Curious, eh?
Can you determine the (legal) difference between the following pairs?
❏ national v. citizen
❏ sovereign v. subject
❏ inhabitant v. resident
❏ domicile v. residence
❏ natural liberty v. civil liberty
❏ personal liberty v. political liberty
❏ private property v. estate (real and personal property)
❏ absolute ownership v. qualified ownership
All facts are in the public record, available at any county courthouse law library.
A currency backed by something people want, or even better, need, does have value. I think it should be backed by food and other commodities, like basic manufacturing supplies. Copper, steel, etc. Things that will never lose all value, and are always in demand.
Then prices only raise or fall in relation to those things. Plentiful basic commodities would mean higher priced luxuries, as they’d be in demand, while food shortage would mean low demand for luxuries and low prices.
“Nor would “redistribution of wealth” spur production.”
If you gave a trillion to the lowest earners tomorrow, a trillion extra woudl be spent within a month. But it would just be temporary, aside from a few small business’s that might get the boost they need to make it.
You could buy stocks when the checks went out, then sell when the money ran out and make a bundle. I’m sure many made a bundle buying amazon and ebay when the covid checks went out.
“not enough money” is just what regular people see happening, who don’t know how to explain why they seem to have less money than their parents, though they work as hard.
I think it relates back to inflation and a currency not backed by real value.
Inflating of unbacked dollars has been used to steal generations of real wealth.
“Though not widely known, all taxes in America are based on government privileges, and they’re all voluntary.”
There is now generations of precedent for how taxes have been applied, so it’s now become the law pretty much.
People have been trying to educate people about their rights in regards to taxes for decades, and it’s done little.
So I don’t know if it even matters now what the law actually says. Except maybe for convincing elected people.
Typical Signs of ‘Money’ Madness
[1] money ‘backed’ by some thing
[2] assuming wealth = prosperity
[3] inflation = too much money chasing too few goods
. . .
[1] Money is a medium of exchange to facilitate trade when barter is insufficient. In essence, money passes value to a future transaction. But money madness requires one to assume that money has an intrinsic value (‘backed’) independent of the marketplace of goods and services.
Take ‘gold backing’ for instance.
World wide gold supply is approximately $19 per capita (pursuant to the Coinage Act of 1792)
Can you really operate international trade with only $19 per capita - and that being inequitably divided? Of course not.
For the scam to operate, money tokens must be scarce and in demand. Gold works well for that. However, the supply of gold bullion can never grow proportionally with the marketplace of goods and services, and thus strangles trade and generates poverty.
The madness is a bit more subtle. Let’s use a humble private promissory note - like a coupon for one free MickyD burger. You tender the coupon and receive your burger. It passed value. Trade is over. The coupon ceases to have any ‘value’ unless the retailer re-issues that ‘promissory note.’
But if you tendered ‘money’ for the burger, the money simultaneously passed value and retained value. See the madness now? At the end of a day’s trading, all the money retains ‘value’ despite the marketplace being bare. That’s money madness.
[2] Wealth in money is not prosperity. If money solved poverty, let us go all in . . . based on your example. Giving everyone a trillion dollards would not ‘generate’ a trillion dollards worth of goods and services per capita.
Who would bother to farm, mine, work, fabricate, ship, and sell for ‘more’ money that they don’t need? Even the starving children are fabulously wealthy.
PROSPERITY is based not upon money, but upon prodigious production of surplus usable goods and services, equitably traded and enjoyed. Barter doesn’t require money. Money mad people are taught to believe MONEY is more valued than the goods and services. In reality, money is the root cause of all poverty.
[3] Classic inflation is defined as too much money chasing too few goods. However, billionaires aren’t bidding up the price for milk and cookies.
No government ‘prints money.’ For example, Congress is delegated power to ‘coin money’ (stamp bullion) and ‘borrow money.’ If Congress could create money (bullion), it wouldn’t need the power to borrow money. Likewise, any government that prints money would simply SPEND IT into circulation. But they don’t. They borrow it or tax it from the people. (Federal reserve NOTES are IOUs - debt - denominated in dollars, but have a MINUS value until redeemed. But Congress repudiated redeeming their IOUs in 1933. They are worthless.)
What eCONomists won’t admit, is that we’re suffering TAX SHIFT INFLATION. That’s when any tax on labor and production migrates to the RETAIL PRICE. Where else do tax payers get their money if not from their customer. The problem worsens, when there is a time delay between when the tax is collected and spent, and when it shows up in the retail price. Right now, our hyperinflation is the consequence of socialist taxation for the past 92 years. (Aggregate tax bite is approx. 44.4%, local, state, and federal).
Ignorance of law is no remedy.
The income tax is not a tax on income.
"The income tax is, therefore, not a tax on income as such. It is an excise tax with respect to certain activities and PRIVILEGES which is measured by reference to the income which they produce. The income is not the subject of the tax: it is the basis for determining the amount of the tax.”
_ _ _ F. Morse Hubbard, Treasury Department legislative draftsman. House Congressional Record March 27th 1943, page 2580.
"When a court refers to an income tax being in the nature of an excise, it is merely stating that the tax is not on the property itself, but rather it is a fee for the PRIVILEGE of receiving gain from the property. The tax is based upon the amount of the gain, not the value of the property.’
_ _ _ John R. Luckey, Legislative Attorney with the Library of Congress, ‘Frequently Asked Questions Concerning The Federal Income Tax’ (C.R.S. Report for Congress 92-303A (1992)).
"The terms ‘excise tax’ and ‘privilege tax’ are synonymous. The two are often used interchangeably.’
_ _ _ American Airways v. Wallace 57 F.2d 877, 880
"Excises are taxes laid upon the manufacture, sale or consumption of commodities within the country, upon licenses to pursue certain occupations and upon corporate PRIVILEGES.’ ‘…the requirement to pay such taxes involves the exercise of a PRIVILEGE…’
_ _ _ U.S. Supreme Court, Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U.S. 107
“The revenue laws are a code or system in regulation of tax assessment and collection. They relate to taxpayers, and not to nontaxpayers. The latter are without their scope. No procedure is prescribed for nontaxpayers, and no attempt is made to annul any of their RIGHTS and remedies in due course of law. With them Congress does not assume to deal, and they are neither of the subject nor of the object of the revenue laws…”
_ _ _ Economy Plumbing & Heating v. U.S., 470 F2d. 585 (1972)
[Always ask which revenue taxable privilege is the reason for the imposition of a tax.]
“Where rights secured by the constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them.”
Miranda v. Arizona 384 US 436, 491.
“A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the Federal Constitution.”
Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 US 105, at 113 (1943).
Caveat emptor?
If Blackrock or any such bought up huge acreage and sublet it at exhorbitant rents, what family farms or ranches could afford to pay them? Where is the value to Blackrock et alia?
Limits could be set on the amount of land and other assets that could be held per capita. Just to choose an arbitrary number, suppose ownership of land for family farms and ranching were set at 10,000 acres (a very, very commodious number which might easily be much smaller). Also, some account of the land’s productive capacity might be included. Western desert and semi-desert lands might be fit for grazing livestock but require a great many more acres to be profitable whereas land in Virginia or the Carolinas would provide better grazing in smaller parcels.
It ain’t rocket science or in-utero brain surgery.
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I meant if a trillion was divided among people. Giving everyone a trillion each would just make prices go up so that a gallon of milk would cost like a million dollars. No one who thinks that woudl work knows anything about money.
“you tender the coupon and receive your burger. It passed value. Trade is over. The coupon ceases to have any ‘value’”
The note represents a physical good. The person coudl have been paid in potatoes, and traded those potatoes for a burger. The potatoes don’t lose value until someone eats them. Instead they are given a promisory note that is worth some potatoes, The problem is there is nothing guaranteeing the value of that note. So it might be worth 10 potatoes on payday, and you are satisfied, but is only worth 3 after the weekend, and you’ve been cheated. You gave value with your labor worth 10 potatoes.
Were the govt. to guarantee each notes value at 10 potatoes, prices would remain stable. And makign new money would be impossible like it should be. Or they would have to tell everyone their dollars are now only worth 9 potatoes because we wanted to make new money to give to our bankign friends. No one would go for it then.
Money is now created by private banks makign loans with money they don’t actually have. They only need to have like 5% or something in reserve. So they have 50k, and loan 1 million, creating 950 million dollars. They then earn interest on money they didn’t have.
That seems to me to be where the inflation is comign from.
Unless a new product is made, new money is just stealing value from all the dollars that do represent some value.
Money madness is hard to shake.
Consider your belief that “the price would go up.”
That presumes that there would be goods and services in the marketplace.
Why believe that? What drives people to produce a surplus and trade it for money?
THE NEED FOR MONEY.
If you don’t NEED MORE MONEY, you don’t bother.
Imagine if you owned all the money in the world. Are you rich? No. Because everybody else is trading without needing YOUR MONEY.
. . . .
You almost ‘got it’ with respect to the PROMISSORY NOTE (Coupon). A note denominated in anything BUT MONEY, is a right, not subject to an excise tax.
The note is ‘not backed’ in that it is a promise to pay - IN THE FUTURE - a specific sum. Whoever issues that note had better have the goods, etc, to discharge it, otherwise has committed a fraud.
Money is not a promise to pay anything. It is an abstraction used for trade. It is supposed to pass ‘value’ to a future trade. Certificates are receipts for ‘money in the vault’ and are thus ‘backed.’ Notes being promises to pay IN THE FUTURE are never backed.
No ‘general’ money token can be pegged to a specific item, such as ‘all gold’ or ‘all potatoes.’ There is no correlation between the sum and value of money and any ‘thing.’ Furthermore, ascribing such a quality would create a paradox. You can never make a subset of a set into an abstraction for the whole set. And in the history of money, there never was a time when the money supply kept proportionality with the marketplace. It has always lagged behind, strangling trade. And, IMHO, is the root cause of the decline of empires.
Remember, the function of any money token is to facilitate trade. Ironically, precious metal coin is often hoarded, and thus not doing its function. Trade suffers.
Banks came along with their clever scam of ‘using’ your hoard, to extend credit, at usury. The real money stayed safe, and the paper instruments acted as if they were money, facilitating trade. After time, people believed that the paper instruments were as good as the hoarded coin. But it was all just a scam.
REAL MONEY - Money which has real metallic, intrinsic value as distinguished from paper currency, checks and drafts.
_ _ _ Black’s Law Dictionary, Sixth Ed. p. 1264
MONEY - In usual and ordinary acceptation it means coins and paper currency used as a circulating medium of exchange, and does not embrace notes, bonds, evidences of debt, or other personal or real estate. Lane v. Railey, 280 Ky. 319, 133 S.W. 2d 74, 79, 81.
_ _ _ Black’s Law Dictionary, Sixth Ed. p. 1005
Only gold and silver coin ‘pay debt’ (Art 1, Sec 8, 10, USCON)
Everything else is NOT MONEY, by law. (Certificates that are exchangeable for real money are money, but notes, like the Federal Reserve Note, are not money.)
Unfortunately, gold is never going to be used for money, since there’s only $19 per capita. No precious metal coinage can keep proportionality with the population growth and the marketplace.
No bank ‘creates’ money (stamps coin). Banks issue notes or worthless securities, as if they were real money, at usury (interest). But never is the interest created.
And for that PRIVILEGE, we are trapped into paying excise taxes ad infinitum, as well as pay interest to the creditor.
Creating ‘stable prices’ is but an illusion of money madness. You cannot buy that which is not available, or when there’s not enough money or funny munny.
Usury is defined as any fee, in money, for the use of money - not just “excessive interest”.
Usury has been denounced for “only” 3500 years, proscribed by all religions (that I checked) and condemned as an abomination in Ezekiel 18:13 KJV.
Usury is mathematically unsustainable in any finite money token system, causing a proportion of debtors to default and lose their pledges, because there never is enough ‘money’ for the principal and interest to be paid.
Due to the exponential equation used for compound interest, an infinite money supply is needed, which is impossible.
Yet usury is universally embraced, despite it being an abomination.
Summed up, money masters require us to be money mad, embrace usury, use a money token that is scarce, and in demand, and preferably imposed by government as the sole means to pay taxes and fees.
Try and apply those same concepts to barter.
MAKING MONEY?
Under money madness, there are only three ways to acquire money tokens:
- Trade (labor or property)
- Charity (private or public)
- Predation (crime, extortion, etc)
The slavers / true believers of collectivism argue that once a worker is deprived of a job, exhausts his stock of property and private charity, all that remains is a life of crime to support himself and his family. Therefore, public charity (socialism) is a necessary remedy to deter the desperate from a life of crime. Unfortunately, the cure is worse than the disease, since it perverts government from a beneficial defender of endowed rights to life, liberty and private property, into a predator of life, liberty and property…TAKING from one to GIVE to another, under threat, duress and or coercion.
Of course, for this remedy to succeed, requires money madness and cooperation of the usurers whose financial acumen can maintain the grand illusion that keeps the workers docile and cooperative while being skinned alive, over and over, repeatedly.
Modern socialist governments routinely tax 40 to 60% of the gross domestic product. An Egyptian serf had it better under Pharaoh, who only took 1 part in 5 (20%).
Liberty Money
There is a FOURTH WAY to get necessary mediums of exchange - issue them. Free Americans always had the power to “create money.” A humble coupon (1/20 cent cash value) is an example.
Once people awaken to the notion that they can make their own mediums of exchange to facilitate trade when barter is insufficient, the “powers that be” are overthrown. Without the “need for money” under the control of the monied powers, there is no demand for credit nor loans (at interest). When the unemployed can trade their private promises (coupons, obligations, etc) for their necessities, the need for public charity is eradicated. Remember, money is only a medium of exchange when barter is insufficient.
Using private promissory notes means that anything not already traded (bartered) has an existing coupon to trade for it. The ‘liberty money supply’ exactly matches the marketplace. Everything in the marketplace can be ‘bought’ (traded) without clearance sales, markdowns, or other abominations. That’s real stable pricing.
Liberty money destroys the collectivists, money masters and the usurers, and they know it only too well.
Farewell to the Peoples Democratic Socialist Republics of America.
If it’s(liberty money) not guaranteed by “the collective”, then it’s only guarantee is a persons word. Not going to work in any poor areas. I wouldn’t trust a promissory note from someone I didn’t know well.
You’d have to have some complicated escrow type system, that everyone put some type of collateral into, that woudl guarantee their personal notes.
Having a govt. that provides such necessities is much easier. But if there was no govt., or you lived in a commune, that would be the way to go.
Doesn’t sound feasible otherwise.
The dollar only works because it is trusted, now that it’s backed by nothing.
LIBERTY MONEY, such as a private promissory note, is denominated in a specific item or service. Ex: Trade to the bearer on demand FOUR HOURS of labor. Thus an unemployed worker can “spend” his promises to work into the marketplace. Someone who needs labor, can trade for his notes, and tender them. No need to advertise for workers.
A restauranteur could finance his operation by issuing notes denominated in MEALS. Once he redeems all his notes, anything past that point is profit. And he doesn’t have to advertise to get customers, since his circulating notes will achieve that same result. Hopefully, the value added by his labors will make enough meals to redeem his notes, and then some.
The bottom line - trade is no longer strangled by the dearth of circulating money tokens. Once people can trade without the overhead expenses imposed by usury and money madness, they’ll escape poverty.
Those who issue bogus notes will be shunned in short order, and be forced back into using the scarce money token system. Woe to those who lose their ‘credit worthiness.’
Banks might shift from usury to being note clearinghouses. They can discount local notes, in exchange for widely circulating bank notes. Since no usury (interest) is involved, it’s benign. Ditto, for corporations. Imagine GM paying dividends denominated in automobiles (or percentages thereof). Since GM can make automobiles, it’s not constrained by scarce money tokens.
The following link is to a science fiction story that highlights some aspects similar to a republican form and liberty money (private promissory notes), but erroneously links it to anarchy and civil disobedience.
“And Then There Were None” (1951) by Eric Frank Russell
“They have a peculiar, moneyless economic system which, in my opinion, manages to function only because it is afflicted with large surpluses.”
(They rely on “OBS” - obligations - promises to do something)
MYOB !
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Unless additional laws are passed forcing all businesses to scrub all client data from their databases, it would be quite simple for a state, local or god forbid, the federal government to demand those records. Since most people use some form of credit or debit card, their identity is known to businesses as well as their buying habits and can easily tied to how much they spend.
Example: I regularly shop at a particular grocery store. It took a couple of months after I moved to my current residence for targeted adverts from that grocery store’s parent company to start showing up in my mailbox.
Tracking one’s demographics becomes even easier and more thorough if one gives that business one’s user name. These corporate entities gather and keep everything they can about you . It is no stretch to think any government can use legal pressure to gain access to those records which contain details about your purchase right down to the date, time and amount.
Stuffing that particular genie back in the bottle will be monumental task, particularly with the recent advances in AI.
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All laws are temporal except God’s laws. In modern America, the least temporal laws are those embedded in the US Constitution (not including opinions handed down by judges and justices, which have been shown to be temporal); therefore, the best way to protect privacy (and anonymity) for citizens would be to amend to constitution to add rights to privacy and anonymity to those rights enumerated in Bill of Rights.
One wonders why those sapient men who wrote the constitution, and those who engraved other basic, God-given rights into it soon after, failed to enumerate privacy and anonymity into the list. Perhaps they lacked the foresight to see what their government would devolve into.
Conclusion: That a) privacy and anonymity are God-given rights, and b) the constitution should be amended to give assurance that they can be enjoyed by honest citizens. A corollary is that when dishonest men hide behind those rights, it should require orders by duly appointed courts to give anyone the ability to investigate their activities, much like a warrant is required to search a premises only upon probable cause proved magisterially and thus issued. Such would deter (but not eliminate) abuses by politicians and law enforcement.
“Backing currency” is an artifact of money madness.
Prosperity is not money. Prosperity is based on prodigious production of surplus usable goods and services equitably traded and enjoyed.
HOW you trade is up to you. Shouldn’t be restrained by government nor usurers.
Consider if mothers had to be paid for their service 24/7?
Frankly, there’s not enough money in the world to pay mothers. . . they’re literally PRICELESS.
I think back then it was just assumed. It was very rude to show up at a home without writing ahead of time, and you never just wondered around looking at things while a guest without permission. To look at someones mail would be unforgivably rude and intrusive.
So I think your right. I don’t think they ever could ave imagined a time when most messages are on public forums, and most don’t even seem to value that privacy anymore.
If the rent is unusually high it won’t be rented as family farms margin of profitability is low and blackrock would end up paying 20 percent taxes.
Unfortunately, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution makes the theft politicians call taxes legal (still not ethical) and imposes NO limits on how much they can steal from us.
The 16th Amendment (Passed by Congress in July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913)
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
The only way to effect any change with this greed from the people that are supposed to be representing us is to repeal the 16th Amendment. This can be done two ways: 1. Congress passes a bill to repeal (Article 5 of the Constitution). (Which we know will never happen.) or 2. A Constitutional convention by the states (Article 5 of the Constitution).
Number 2 is currently in the works and you can get involved and support…or not.
The choice is ours. We can pressure the people in congress to act against their own self-interests (lining their pockets) and actually represent the people that put them there or we can come together as states (at least 37) and change it ourselves.
It’s a ridiculous amendment really, and no judge worthy of being called a judge should uphold it. If upheld with force, it completely negates our rights to liberty, and to our right to be unmolested in our homes.
To be legal, they woudl have had to remove those rights first. Of course that wouldn’t have flown, and they counted on corrupt and stupid judges not contesting their illegal actions. And they were right.
It just goes to show how all our supreme courts have either been completely inept, or totally corrupt, ever since the income tax began.
A convention of states isn’t needed, and won’t happen anyway, since most state level judges and politicians are equally as inept and corrupt.
Going to take enough people being informed and demanding their rights. Then the 16th amendment can be struck off for the illegal nonsense that it is.