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FPC: The Hard Money – Soft Money Synthesis

May 222012
 
 May 22, 2012  Posted by at 3:30 pm Finance

This is a critique of the theory of Freegold (F-theory), which is part of an ongoing series entitled, Freegold: Perspectives and Critiques (FPC).

One very important thing to note about FOFOA right off the bat is that he is NOT a “hard money” advocate, i.e. someone who believes currencies should be backed by a hard commodity (typically gold). He makes this clear repeatedly throughout his writing, as did Another and FOA, because F-theory is supposed to represent progress in the monetary structures of human civilization. That means going beyond the national/international systems of gold-backed money that existed for centuries, as well as the global system of pure credit-money that has practically existed for the better part of the last century.

Here is an excerpt from FOA and FOFOA on this issue from the latter’s article, Gold is Money – Part I:

FOA: Owning wealth aside from official money units is nothing new. Building up one’s storehouse of a wealth of things is the way societies have advanced their kind from the beginning. What is new is that this is the first time we have used a non wealth fiat for so long without destroying it through price inflation. Again, a process of using an unbacked fiat to function as money and building up real assets on the side. Almost as if two forms of wealth were circulating next to each other; one in the concept of money and the other in the concept of real wealth.

 

This trend is intact today and I doubt mankind will ever pull back from fiat use again. Fiat used solely in the function of a money concept that I will explain in a moment.

 

Understanding all of this money evolution, in its correct context, is vital to grasping gold’s eventual place in the world. A place where it once proudly stood long ago.

 

All of this transition is killing off our Gold Bug dream of official governments declaring gold to be money again and reinstitution some arbitrary gold price. Most of the death, on that hand, is in the form of leveraged bets on gold’s price as the evolution of gold from official money to a wealth holding bleeds away any credible currency pricing of gold’s value in the short run.

 

To understand gold we must understand money in its purest form; apart from its manmade convoluted function of being something you save.

 

 

FOFOA: he human concept of money is changing whether we like it or not. It is being torn apart. Gold, as a wealth reserve and wealth asset, will exist and trade parallel to the world of fiat, the world of credit and debt. Producers and savers will finally have the option to switch tracks so to speak. To get on a parallel track that avoids the inevitable collision with the debt-hungry collective their savings have always faced.

 

And as we pass through this phase transition, as gold switches from the transactional track to the wealth-reserve track, it will take on a whole new meaning… and a whole new value! The non-dollar part of the world already knows this. This is why they are buying gold now!

As you can see, this commentary is so far more of an explanation of an insightful concept expressed by Freegold advocates than a critique of F-theory itself. I am in complete agreement with the writers above that the conflation of transactional currencies (credits) and “money” used for savings is (partially) responsible for creating the extremely unbalanced, unstable economic system we have today, and that, ideally, the two functions should be separated into two different types of money, whose roles should always remain separate. It just makes good sense!

Where the critique comes in, though, is when the Ideal is transformed into the natural result of monetary evolution in human society, and is predicted to occur with near certainty as a part of F-theory. One could think of the synthesis between hard money and soft money in a Freegold system as a monetary Utopia, in which producers (savers) and consumers (debtors) will exist in a harmonic stasis that could theoretically last forever. Compare this to a description of Hegelian philosophy in theory and in practice:

…all successive historical systems are only transitory stages in the endless course of development of human society from the lower to the higher. Each stage is necessary, and therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin. But in the face of new, higher conditions which gradually develop in its own womb, it loses vitality and justification. It must give way to a higher stage which will also in its turn decay and perish.

 

…

 

Mankind, which, in the person of Hegel, has reached the point of working out the absolute idea, must also in practice have gotten so far that it can carry out this absolute idea in reality. Hence the practical political demands of the absolute idea on contemporaries may not be stretched too far. And so we find at the conclusion of the Philosophy of Right that the absolute idea is to be realized in that monarchy based on social estates which Frederick William III so persistently but vainly promised to his subjects, that is, in a limited, moderate, indirect rule of the possessing classes suited to the petty-bourgeois German conditions of that time…

Do you notice a similarity between what Hegel did and what A/FOA/FOFOA have done? They have taken a very well thought-out philosophy of the Ideal and forced it to become an actual economic/political denouement that human civilization will occupy. After all, what good is a philosophy if it does not have very practical implications and/or predictions for human society? As Frederick William III proved, though, the material manifestation of the Ideal does not always reflect the Utopian conditions envisioned, and, most of the time, it doesn’t even come close! F-theory predicts the manifestation of a monetary Ideal throughout all of global human society, and that fact alone should leave us very skeptical of its predictions.

(more critiques of F-theory are to come later, and, fear not, most of them will not be nearly as philosophical as this one!)

DISCLAIMER: I am not an EXPERT on the writings of Another, his friend (FOA) or HIS friend (FOFOA), or on the theory of Freegold. Just like I am not an expert on the writings of any other economic theorist out there or their theories in general. There are a lot of economic works that I have not had the pleasure to read and a lot of ideas I have not considered in-depth, including those contained within the body of work that comprises F-theory. None of my descriptions of F-theory should automatically be taken as 100% accurate, and I welcome any and all challenges to my representations.

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  • May 22, 2012 at 3:30 pm #8523
    ashvin
    Participant

    This is a critique of the theory of Freegold (F-theory), which is part of an ongoing series entitled, Freegold: Perspectives and Critiques (FPC). One
    [See the full post at: FPC: The Hard Money – Soft Money Synthesis]

    May 23, 2012 at 4:12 am #3460
    pipefit
    Participant

    “FOFOA: he human concept of money is changing whether we like it or not. It is being torn apart. Gold, as a wealth reserve and wealth asset, will exist and trade parallel to the world of fiat, the world of credit and debt.”

    You gotta be kidding me. You buy into that nonsense? Ever heard of Gresham’s Law? Bad money drives out good. People hoard ‘real’ money, and get rid of unbacked fiat as quickly as possible. Nothing ‘parallel’ about it.

    So you press the FOFOA folks, and they admit it is fiat coerced upon the people by legal tender laws. They can get away with legal tender laws now, because there is no obvious alternative, and the sheeple don’t realize how fragile the paper system is. Once the house of cards falls, and HI asserts itself, legal tender laws will force more and more of the economy into the black market, where transactions are conducted in gold, silver, other tangibles, or plain barter.

    This tells you that Freegold is bunk. Just the slightest push and it falls over. All hat, no cowboy.

    May 23, 2012 at 5:11 am #3461
    Tao Jonesing
    Participant

    “They have taken a very well thought-out philosophy of the Ideal and forced it to become an actual economic/political denouement that human civilization will occupy.”

    Of course. The term “philosophy” is merely shorthand for “political philosophy,” and it is always an engine and never a camera.

    FOFOA is obviously influenced by the Austrian school and, therefore, has massive blinders induced by his dogma. The problem is that his “debt-hungry collective” was trained to be debt-hungry for a reason, as it is through debt that the individuals of the collective lose their liberty and are controlled by a very few. Gold as money will free nobody because the value of gold itself is a fiction, but its scarcity is a fact. Control the gold, control the collective through constrained liquidity. Where’s the freedom?

    May 23, 2012 at 5:28 am #3463
    ashvin
    Participant

    pipefit,

    On the one hand, I believe you are correct about the idealism inherent in Freegold. OTOH, I believe you are greatly under-estimating the knowledge/thought that has gone into the theory.

    Gresham’s Ghost

    Here is an interesting fact: Sir Thomas Gresham did not formulate “Gresham’s law”! It was actually a well known concept of the time, though it didn’t carry any name. It wasn’t until 300 years later, in 1857, when an economist named Henry Dunning MacLeod attributed Gresham’s name to the concept.

    I think it is clear from this story that Thomas Gresham was not exactly a hard money hero. In fact, he was an agent of monetary control and debasement. Which brings me to the main concept of this post, that Gresham’s Ghost is still with us today, debasing our medium of exchange and unit of account and driving the evolution of money to Freegold.

    Money. It is what confuses our soul and drives us to do that which makes absolutely no sense. It is only because we have been led by a chronological history, rife with warnings of debasement, into thinking that we must retain that which is only an ephemeral medium of exchange as our ultimate store of life-long value. Do the truly wealthy hold rooms-full and truckloads of paper cash? Hell no! They hold real stores of wealth, like artwork, antiques, property, collectibles and land. Why then have we, the subjects of the world, the masses, been led to only hold that one faulty medium of exchange as our main store of value? Why? Because it is the one thing in this world that is vulnerable to the collective, the government and banker debasement and the surreptitious theft of the inflation tax!

    With each new advancing stage of civilization we climb one step higher on the ladder of economic sophistication. And once there, we perceive the need for a more sophisticated way to use money. We are told that this newfound monetary sophistication is responsible for our higher standard of living. What a lie!

    It is here, at this step of sophistry, that men always attempt to combine receipts with real wealth. Each time we come to this point, each new idea throughout history promises to undo the prior problems. And each time the wealth of the common man, his life-long savings is risked, plundered and squandered once again as the world tries to make gold into something it isn’t.

    It is the mashing of the gold wealth concept with the circulating credit receipt concept that opens the door to some of the greatest problems man has ever seen. Take, for example, the period of the modern gold exchange standard. 1913: Creation of the Federal Reserve System. 1914: WWI. 1923: Weimar hyperinflation. 1930: The Great Depression. 1939: WWII. 1950: The Korean War. 1959: The Vietnam War. 1971: Off the gold exchange standard.

    Inflation of the circulating money supply is simply a fact of life in our imperfect world. The collective or the King always finds a way to inflate or debase money to its own advantage. And if circulating money is gold, or based on gold, then inflation is historically done through the golden spoils of war or confiscation. The cry of the hungry collective is “if fiat is our money, we must borrow it. We must print it. If gold is our money we must take it. We must have money when it is needed!”

    I don’t agree with everything expressed above (such as the implication of causation between the modern gold exchange standard and all of those nasty events – although, they are certainly not unrelated), but the point is that FOFOA is right about the classical/neoclassical corruption of reality through such concepts as “Gresham’s Law”, which may be taken to imply that any use of fiat currency is an inherently BAD thing.

    It is not really the market system that determines which forms of money prevail at any given time, but centralized authorities who are attempting to maintain their own wealth/power, as well as that of their supporters. As long as money exists in large scale systems, this will happen, regardless of whether it is pure fiat or gold-backed currency. Under the IDEAL of F-theory, people hoarding gold in response to monetary debasement is fine, because it only serves to maintain purchasing power over time.

    Where I diverge from FOFOA and F-theory, as explained in this commentary critique, is when he suggests that an Ideal synthesis can be implemented and sustained at a global scale, which will offer producers/savers a means of monetary protection from the “hungry collective”, as if it is the natural result of some Darwinian socioeconomic “evolution”.

    It is for this reason that electronic fiat money is here to stay. Yet evolution still takes us forward, not back. Gresham’s Ghost is with us today, driving the finite physical gold supply of the world into private hands, into mattresses and shoe boxes as the collective’s play money is inflated to the heavens. Moving forward with the flow of evolution means embracing this fiat money experiment that society will always tamper with, and at the same time owning the wealth of ages as the ancients did, in your possession. In this way, the average family can know their wealth is real while society at large pursues its greedy folly while issuing unlimited receipts of credit.

    Embrace Gresham’s Ghost, for it is leading us to Freegold!

    May 23, 2012 at 6:11 am #3464
    andrew_not_the_saint
    Member

    Ash

    F-theory doesn’t deserve that much press. I used to read him for a while, roughly during the 2009-2010 period. His writings on gold were always hard to digest and bloated, and in the end, I just find most of it to be just “ideas” without empirical evidence backing it up.

    The one article, which I still very much like to revisit is more to do with debt, and BTW you must have read it as you posted one of the graphs from it: https://fofoa.blogspot.co.nz/2010/06/its-debt-stupid.html

    IMHO, this is the crux of any economic policy. Knowing that debt can be both productive and destructive, i.e. it can lead to both real growth or fictional growth, what kind of regulations should be enforced for Consumer Debt and Corporate (i.e. investment) Debt, two very different animals.

    My view is that most kinds of consumer debt in the current form are pretty evil and that in a “hard-ish” currency world should NEVER be enforced by the government. I.e. if you take out a loan you’ll be never legally required to pay it back (but of course your credit rating could suffer). I’m also thinking that real-estate finance could be based on equity rather than debt – the bank could have a stake in your house, thus making it suffer more when things go sour.

    Corporate debt, on the other hand, is different as it’s supposed to be productive (unless it’s speculative of course). Even there, I feel that equity-based investment could work better than monetary debt in many situations, as it would require the lender to have more skin in the game. Nonetheless, I can definitely see why business would need easy ways to raise money (equity does seem a lot more complicated), and the downsides of company bankruptcies are not as bad as the downsides of personal ones.

    And of course, fractional/fictional reserve banking in the current form should be abolished too. Private entities creating government-backed money is a ridiculous privilege, nothing more than a parasitic rent.

    May 23, 2012 at 7:49 am #3466
    ashvin
    Participant

    andrew_not_the_saint post=3081 wrote: His writings on gold were always hard to digest and bloated, and in the end, I just find most of it to be just “ideas” without empirical evidence backing it up.

    I understand what you mean, but somewhat disagree. The best parts of the best economic theories, IMO, boil down to “ideas” about how these systems have worked in the past and how they may evolve or devolve in the future. Usually, the theories or parts of theories with too much emphasis on empirical/mathematical data analysis are the ones that are a bunch of BS. A notable exception to this may be Dr. Steve Keen, who has attempted to model Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis, but his model is very simple and even he admits that a lot more work needs to be done to make it close to reality (and his narrow focus probably gives him an overly optimistic picture of reality, anyway).

    That same naivety is certainly found in FOFOA, but his theories are just as interesting and not much less devoid of evidence. His view/descriptions of how the monetary system currently works is much better than most other out there, especially MMT (modern monetary theory). It is not really anything new, either, just a description of monetary history with a semi-Austrian spin. I also think there is evidence to suggest that there were/are high-level people involved in the founding of the EU/EMU who eventually wanted to use a Freegold system to overtake the $IMFS and make Europe the dominant global force once again. However, in contrast to FOFOA, I believe those dreams have been dashed in the last few years and I can’t imagine that any of them still hold out hope.

    May 23, 2012 at 8:16 am #3468
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    Tao Jonesing post=3078 wrote: “They have taken a very well thought-out philosophy of the Ideal and forced it to become an actual economic/political denouement that human civilization will occupy.”

    Of course. The term “philosophy” is merely shorthand for “political philosophy,” and it is always an engine and never a camera.

    FOFOA is obviously influenced by the Austrian school and, therefore, has massive blinders induced by his dogma. The problem is that his “debt-hungry collective” was trained to be debt-hungry for a reason, as it is through debt that the individuals of the collective lose their liberty and are controlled by a very few. Gold as money will free nobody because the value of gold itself is a fiction, but its scarcity is a fact. Control the gold, control the collective through constrained liquidity. Where’s the freedom?

    One of the goals of the Huxley’s Ultimate Revolution was to get people to love their servitude… the gold bugs seem to fit that bill.

    My current view is that the oligarchs may well use gold to claim to get rid of “bad political monetary decisions” (decisions mandated by banksters behind the scenes) by tying money to gold. That could easily be correlated with the Greatest Depression collapse and scapegoated for the same.

    Folks, the monetary system isn’t the problem, it is that hard core, wicked, demonic criminals run it and the general populace is wilfully as ignorant as a lava rock.

    All evidence points to tyranny kicking some hard core *ss over the next several decades…

    May 23, 2012 at 8:21 am #3469
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    andrew_not_the_saint post=3081 wrote: Ash

    F-theory doesn’t deserve that much press. I used to read him for a while, roughly during the 2009-2010 period. His writings on gold were always hard to digest and bloated, and in the end, I just find most of it to be just “ideas” without empirical evidence backing it up.

    The one article, which I still very much like to revisit is more to do with debt, and BTW you must have read it as you posted one of the graphs from it: https://fofoa.blogspot.co.nz/2010/06/its-debt-stupid.html

    IMHO, this is the crux of any economic policy. Knowing that debt can be both productive and destructive, i.e. it can lead to both real growth or fictional growth, what kind of regulations should be enforced for Consumer Debt and Corporate (i.e. investment) Debt, two very different animals.

    My view is that most kinds of consumer debt in the current form are pretty evil and that in a “hard-ish” currency world should NEVER be enforced by the government. I.e. if you take out a loan you’ll be never legally required to pay it back (but of course your credit rating could suffer). I’m also thinking that real-estate finance could be based on equity rather than debt – the bank could have a stake in your house, thus making it suffer more when things go sour.

    Corporate debt, on the other hand, is different as it’s supposed to be productive (unless it’s speculative of course). Even there, I feel that equity-based investment could work better than monetary debt in many situations, as it would require the lender to have more skin in the game. Nonetheless, I can definitely see why business would need easy ways to raise money (equity does seem a lot more complicated), and the downsides of company bankruptcies are not as bad as the downsides of personal ones.

    And of course, fractional/fictional reserve banking in the current form should be abolished too. Private entities creating government-backed money is a ridiculous privilege, nothing more than a parasitic rent.

    We are meant to get lost in endless details. The macro detail is best – the mechanism by which ALL money is created and distributed within a society exposes the fraud that is lost in more micro analyses.

    This is why Steve Keen is so close… but just not quite there.

    The looting mechanism embedded within Debt Money Tyranny is visually expressed here:

    https://www.keepandshare.com/doc/3325954/debt-dollar-tyranny-2-54k?tr=77

    keepandshare is a PDF hosting website. Google it for problems if you don’t trust it. This information is KEY.

    So KEY that everyone, apparently, is left speechless after seeing it.

    May 23, 2012 at 8:33 am #3470
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    ashvin post=3083 wrote: [quote=andrew_not_the_saint post=3081]His writings on gold were always hard to digest and bloated, and in the end, I just find most of it to be just “ideas” without empirical evidence backing it up.

    I understand what you mean, but somewhat disagree. The best parts of the best economic theories, IMO, boil down to “ideas” about how these systems have worked in the past and how they may evolve or devolve in the future. Usually, the theories or parts of theories with too much emphasis on empirical/mathematical data analysis are the ones that are a bunch of BS. A notable exception to this may be Dr. Steve Keen, who has attempted to model Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis, but his model is very simple and even he admits that a lot more work needs to be done to make it close to reality (and his narrow focus probably gives him an overly optimistic picture of reality, anyway).

    That same naivety is certainly found in FOFOA, but his theories are just as interesting and not much less devoid of evidence. His view/descriptions of how the monetary system currently works is much better than most other out there, especially MMT (modern monetary theory). It is not really anything new, either, just a description of monetary history with a semi-Austrian spin. I also think there is evidence to suggest that there were/are high-level people involved in the founding of the EU/EMU who eventually wanted to use a Freegold system to overtake the $IMFS and make Europe the dominant global force once again. However, in contrast to FOFOA, I believe those dreams have been dashed in the last few years and I can’t imagine that any of them still hold out hope.

    Hi Ash,

    I’m not trying to rain on the parade here, but this is a 100% POWER microeconomics issue and absolutely nothing more.

    The oligarchs control the money, but they want to hide their tyranny behind a veneer of legitimacy.

    So, they run the system that they feel will maximize their return (control, wealth) while not being so obvious as to wake up too many of the sheeple.

    If near term hyperinflation met their goals, they’d do it, system be d*mned. They’d just change the system – they control it after all. They finance almost everyone in “government.” They run the bureaucracy and their military industrial complex listens in on every Congresscritters phone calls and they know their web and other habits, if you know what I mean.

    The near term hyperinflationists are simply under some kind of delusion that government is sovereign in practice and will put the banksters in their place to defend their jobs.

    That idea is absurd based on my research and ongoing observations.

    The folks buying physical gold are right in that they have a tangible asset they can carry around and can’t easily be zeroed out by the criminals running the show.

    The idea that gold will be driven up by demand as everyone is impoverished and 50% of credit evaporates doesn’t gel with me, so I wait. I’m more focused on getting the message out and trying to get more control of the necessities of life (a winner no matter what happens).

    Those asking for a gold standard without a wholesale change in WHO is running the system are asking for their own slave master.

    A reasonable monetary system is theoretically possible, but it will NEVER happen with a “box of rocks” prole mentality regarding “finance.” Even its name taunts us of slavery.

    It would include 1) a debt free national monetary system with cheap components, 2) a statutory limit on expansion of the monetary supply relative to population and one hell of a line to cross that limit, 3) and educated and active populace and 4) utter disdain for anything big and a yearning desire to support local small businesses.

    That would be grand, but I can’t argue with people who say, given the level of general ignorance and apathy in the population, that this will never happen.

    May 23, 2012 at 10:59 am #3472
    andrew_not_the_saint
    Member

    TheTrivium4TW post=3087 wrote:

    So, they run the system that they feel will maximize their return (control, wealth) while not being so obvious as to wake up too many of the sheeple.

    If near term hyperinflation met their goals, they’d do it, system be d*mned. They’d just change the system – they control it after all. They finance almost everyone in “government.” They run the bureaucracy and their military industrial complex listens in on every Congresscritters phone calls and they know their web and other habits, if you know what I mean.

    The near term hyperinflationists are simply under some kind of delusion that government is sovereign in practice and will put the banksters in their place to defend their jobs.

    That idea is absurd based on my research and ongoing observations.

    The folks buying physical gold are right in that they have a tangible asset they can carry around and can’t easily be zeroed out by the criminals running the show.

    The idea that gold will be driven up by demand as everyone is impoverished and 50% of credit evaporates doesn’t gel with me, so I wait. I’m more focused on getting the message out and trying to get more control of the necessities of life (a winner no matter what happens).

    Those asking for a gold standard without a wholesale change in WHO is running the system are asking for their own slave master.

    A reasonable monetary system is theoretically possible, but it will NEVER happen with a “box of rocks” prole mentality regarding “finance.” Even its name taunts us of slavery.

    It would include 1) a debt free national monetary system with cheap components, 2) a statutory limit on expansion of the monetary supply relative to population and one hell of a line to cross that limit, 3) and educated and active populace and 4) utter disdain for anything big and a yearning desire to support local small businesses.

    That would be grand, but I can’t argue with people who say, given the level of general ignorance and apathy in the population, that this will never happen.

    Agree with pretty much everything that you said: the tides of XX-flation are in the hands of our owners. However, do note that hyper-inflation is still an unlikely but possible game plan – only if TPTB can manage to give themselves (and of course only themselves) huge loans before the tsunami hits, which they’d use to buy RE and equities and which would be effectively wiped out afterwards. The big problem for them would be how to come out looking clean, as it’d be pretty obvious that something dodgy happened… which maybe they could spin as “there were very few people willing to borrow at the time”.

    BTW, I posted a thought experiment on this topic a while ago on a finance forum: https://www.talkfinance.net/f36/yet-another-inflation-vs-deflation-debate-politics-5548/

    May 23, 2012 at 3:23 pm #3474
    Reverse Engineer
    Member

    TheTrivium4TW post=3087 wrote:
    A reasonable monetary system is theoretically possible, but it will NEVER happen with a “box of rocks” prole mentality regarding “finance.” Even its name taunts us of slavery.

    In THEORY, just about ANYTHING is possible. A perfectly equitable Communist Society is possible in THEORY. A perfectly efficient Free Market is possible in THEORY. In THEORY, Unicorns can Shit Skittles.

    I am more interested in how things REALLY work than in THEORIES about how some ideologue THINKS they should work, and FOFOA is so ideologically bound to Gold he better not go swimming, because he will SINK very fast.

    Anyhow, I finally got through all the photo work I had to do for the Railroad Article, so I got started on deconstructing FOFOAs Austrian THEORY.

    Swiss Cheese folks. Really.

    RE

    May 23, 2012 at 5:54 pm #3475
    pipefit
    Participant

    Tri wrote, “2) a statutory limit on expansion of the monetary supply relative to population and one hell of a line to cross that limit,”

    That’s what gold is. The supply of above ground gold has remained fixed at about one ounce per living person for 5000 years.

    We don’t need govt. (or their semi-private banker) to tell us what money is or where interest rates should be. Unfortunately, they aren’t likely to relinquish that power until they have run the whole deal off the big cliff. (2008 being the small cliff)

    With modern debit card technology, there is no need for any fiat currency. To open an account, you merely need to deposit a gold or silver coin at a private bank, in my system. The banks in my system make their money by charging small fees for routing your transactions, and organizing your information, such as estate planning, tax preparation, etc.

    If a business needs capital for a project, let them present their idea to a high net worth individual, and if persuasive, borrow some gold/silver.

    May 23, 2012 at 6:02 pm #3476
    FOFOFOA
    Member

    Freegold is realistic, not idealistic. It recognizes the fact that debtors and savers are in conflict when people save in the currency (medium of exchange). Freegold is an emergent system designed to solve this problem.

    FOFOA’s dilemma: When a single medium is used as both store of value and medium of exchange it leads to a conflict between debtors and savers. FOFOA’s dilemma holds true for both gold and fiat, the solution being Freegold, which incidentally also resolves Triffin’s dilemma.

    It is much more idealistic, and unrealistic, to believe that using gold as money at a fixed price can impose discipline on a government. Note that a gold standard does not solve the conflict between savers and debtors either.

    I am not FOFOA, merely a reader of his.

    May 23, 2012 at 7:05 pm #3478
    pipefit
    Participant

    FOFOFOA post=3094 wrote:
    FOFOA’s dilemma: When a single medium is used as both store of value and medium of exchange it leads to a conflict between debtors and savers. FOFOA’s dilemma holds true for both gold and fiat, the solution being Freegold, which incidentally also resolves Triffin’s dilemma.

    The conflict between debtors and savers is arises when an entity, other than the free market, sets interest rates. In the USA they are set by a semi-private bank, the Federal Reserve Bank.

    The problem is compounded when you have coercive legal tender laws. Not only is the interest rate manipulated, so is the medium of saving.

    When interest rates are free to float, savers lend to debtors at a mutually agreed rate. Incidentally, under a hard money standard, interest rates don’t vary much either.

    May 23, 2012 at 7:24 pm #3479
    FOFOFOA
    Member

    Legal tender laws do not require me to save in the currency. In fact, I do not save in the currency, and I am breaking no law.

    I have no idea how you determine whether ‘the free market’ is setting the interest rate or it is influenced by something else. Were rates ‘free’ under Volker? Further, are you saying that currently savers are forced to lend to debtors at artificially low rates? Who can force me, a saver, to do that? In fact, I refuse to do that, so your argument cannot be correct.

    This is off the subject of freegold, so I probably won’t follow up on an interest rate argument.

    May 23, 2012 at 7:50 pm #3480
    ashvin
    Participant

    FOFOFOA is right.

    Dr. Keen and others have shown that the Fed does not CONTROL interest rates, nor do they control the money supply, within the logic of this system. Creation of base money in the past actually lags the creation of credit money by private banks – the banks create money (credit) and go looking for reserves later. That is the way the system has evolved over time.

    This is where Triv’s argument breaks down. The Owners cannot defy the laws of human behavior in complex, dynamic systems any more than they can defy the laws of physics. They are also boxed in by the very systems that they helped to create (both capitalism and debt-backed money), so their range of options available to exercise control diminishes over time. They have been instrumental in directing the course of evolution, but they do not control it.

    These are not “microeconomic” discussions, they are discussions about how the system actually works, when considering ALL aspects of the system, not just the tiny cabal of occult elites who have traditionally been in complete control of policy decisions within the system. That being said, we run into other problems when we ignore that aspect of concentrated control present in the system throughout our history, which is basically what FOFOA does, so that is a legitimate critique of his perspective and the theory he advocates. OTOH, if Freegold is a theory that was established at the upper levels of the BIS, then it is quite relevant to any discussions of the NWO agenda.

    Either way, it is it not legitimate to dismiss everything he writes or argues because of that. If it was, then we would have to dismiss the writings of just about every economic/financial analyst out there who fails to say “this is what’s happening and what will happen because the Owners SAY SO”. There is value in trying to understand how our world works and where we may be headed, and that is what we are all trying to do. If you believe that EVERYTHING that happens to human society is controlled and pre-determined by TPTB, some type of God and/or some Alien species, then there really isn’t anything left to say, is there?

    May 24, 2012 at 12:10 am #3489
    pipefit
    Participant

    FOFOA-said, “Legal tender laws do not require me to save in the currency. In fact, I do not save in the currency, and I am breaking no law.”

    Wrong!! If you have worked 40 calendar quarters, more or less, you are vested in the social security system, and you are saving in communist fiat script. Did they ask you if you wanted to join that communist retirement program? Doubt it, lol.

    And not only are they not paying you any interest, they are quietly trying to figure out how to steal your principal as well. Whether you are counting on those federal reserve notes or not is irrelevant. They belong to you. If you don’t care that they are stealing your money, you are a bit different.

    “Further, are you saying that currently savers are forced to lend to debtors at artificially low rates? Who can force me, a saver, to do that? In fact, I refuse to do that, so your argument cannot be correct.”

    If you get a tax refund, you are loaning money to the government at zero percent interest. If you are disgusted with communist legal tender laws and ‘out of thin air’ fiat creation, you can buy gold. I own a little myself. But it pays zero percent interest as well. You could get a good return with Bernie Madoff, lol. So your options are quickly reduced by reality check.

    I’m hoping my gold doesn’t get confiscated, but just in case, I have a very diverse portfolio of various types of tangible assets. Any system that has a government repressive and dishonest enough to feature legal tender laws, is quite capable of confiscating the people’s gold. Not a sure thing, but capable of it.

    My guess it that the absurdly named Patriot Act will be amended to allow the confiscation of Americans’ gold, but at fair market value. Therefore, I hold some gold. I could be wrong. Maybe they will seize the peoples’ gold, then devalue the fiat, like in 1933.

    May 24, 2012 at 2:45 am #3491
    rlmrdl
    Participant

    The power of money, whatever its form, is entailed in the ability of some power to force payment in that form. The Romans enslaved the Carthaginians not only by conquering their armies but by requiring that taxes be paid in Roman coin and that failure to pay taxes resulted in forfeiture of property, liberty and life. Those who wished to live a moderately quiet life were forced to work for the state or its appointed lackeys who were the only source of money needed to pay the taxes.

    In our supposedly more enlightened times, the same force applies. Do we think for a moment that central authority would exist without its power, backed by force, to require that taxes be paid and that they be paid in the form prescribed. Legal tender is only half of the story, since the state will accept ONLY its own scrip, money acts as a proxy for enslavement. (See the forced exchange rate in Nazi-occupied France and the criminalisation of p2p exchange)

    In times of plenty it is a light yoke, but in hard times it is a hard yoke indeed. All other discussion of what money “is” is merely an accounting of the number of angels dancing on the heads of pins.

    May 25, 2012 at 10:58 am #3533
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    pipefit post=3093 wrote: Tri wrote, “2) a statutory limit on expansion of the monetary supply relative to population and one hell of a line to cross that limit,”

    That’s what gold is. The supply of above ground gold has remained fixed at about one ounce per living person for 5000 years.

    I disagree, although I’m sure that’s what you *think* it is.

    It has never worked in the past and it will surely not work now – for one simple reason.

    The criminals own most of the gold and they will control its availability to do what they do now… increase and then decrease the money supply, conveying the nation’s wealth into their own hands.

    As this process is occurring, guys like Ash will revel in the fact they don’t control absolutely everything, but they will miss the bigger point – THEY DON’T NEED TO IN ORDER TO RIP OFF MUCH OF HUMANITY’S FACE. But the perceived “intellectual win” will be enough of a victory for some as the oligarchs watch the world burn from their mansions (unless people realize the con and take positive action to resist this tyrannical system in legal ways).

    And then we haven’t even gotten into how credit can be abused left, right and center – even with a gold standard.

    But I get it – gold is… shiny.

    Cool!

    May 25, 2012 at 11:03 am #3534
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    pipefit post=3107 wrote: FOFOA-said, “Legal tender laws do not require me to save in the currency. In fact, I do not save in the currency, and I am breaking no law.”

    Wrong!! If you have worked 40 calendar quarters, more or less, you are vested in the social security system, and you are saving in communist fiat script. Did they ask you if you wanted to join that communist retirement program? Doubt it, lol.

    I WISH it was a “communist retirement program.”

    I’m of the belief that absolutely nothing will be there when I retire.

    Nada, zip, zero, zilch.

    And the average ignorant person talks about how “good” social security is.

    It is very strange to me how most people can only think linearly and once the variables get above 2, they literally can’t think straight any more.

    No, an unsustainable Ponzi scheme where insiders get to steal $2.5 trillion ISN’T A GOOD PROGRAM!

    Yes, a reasoned program to help the elderly poor is a good program, BUT THIS AIN’T IT!

    May 25, 2012 at 10:40 pm #3548
    ashvin
    Participant

    TheTrivium4TW post=3151 wrote: As this process is occurring, guys like Ash will revel in the fact they don’t control absolutely everything, but they will miss the bigger point – THEY DON’T NEED TO IN ORDER TO RIP OFF MUCH OF HUMANITY’S FACE. But the perceived “intellectual win” will be enough of a victory for some as the oligarchs watch the world burn from their mansions (unless people realize the con and take positive action to resist this tyrannical system in legal ways).

    If the Owners have that as much control over the outcomes as you suggest, what good will “positive action to resist… in legal ways” do? And how do we go about waking the people up? Continually shouting at them that everything that has happened and is happening in their lives within a larger society is part of a wicked master plan, and that they are eternally screwed?

    It amazes me that people seem to believe the tactics used by the financial elites in the late 19th century , or in the GD, will be exactly as effective now as they were then, despite all of the popular sociopolitical sentiment and cognitive dissonance working in the opposite direction, as well as energy/environmental issues.

    Even the most “radical” doomers, who believe now marks the coming of the Antichrist, recognize that it ALSO marks the time of Christ’s return, God’s Judgement and His salvation. If instead you adhere to Asian philosophy/religion, then perhaps you recognize there is a yang for every yin. If you are a secular Marxist, the painful death of capitalism signifies the natural transition to a better world system. The list goes on… the night is darkest before the dawn, and all that.

    Perhaps that’s just something we tell ourselves so we can sleep better at night, but, OTOH, maybe there’s a lot of truth to it. There is certainly plenty of evidence that would lead me to believe that the Owners will not maintain control for a lot longer – that they will be consumed by their own bad deeds. My point is that the TPTB control narrative is only half of the equation, if that, and should be treated as such.

    May 29, 2012 at 11:27 pm #3622
    Otishertz
    Member

    I wrote a plan to produce and allocate a fungible crop without money or wages using barter concepts including time banks, complimentary currencies, grain warehouse receipts, and the ideas of Silvio Gesell. The system is designed around Oregon’s OMMP laws which outlaw most of the prevailing market and monetary system for the production of cannabis.

    The OMMP is unique in that it mandates a gift economy and essentially describes cashless barter and crop share. It provides a rare real world case case study of what happens when crucial variables of the marketplace have been forcibly removed.
    Plan O primarily deals with the non horticultural issues of deploying land, labor, capital and initiative without normal prices, wages, or profit and how to build incentives into a system where consideration is illegal.

    Plan O shows how to unleash and utilize skilled labor without wages to create economic activity without money. It models a supply, distribution, and incentive system for marijuana production that can work without money or wages based on literal interpretation of Oregon’s OMMP laws which prohibit wages and profit. This organizational structure can more easily be applied to other commodities and crops that do not have legal problems.

    The entire Plan O is here:

    http://www.otisgardens.com/forum/index.php?topic=128.0

    Unique aspects to the plan:

    1. Shared crop necessitates cooperation toward common goals for shared common interest bountiful harvests which is a better community structure than self interested competition that breeds hoarding and dishonesty.

    2. Commodity account balances have a maximum value related to legal weight limits. This is uniquely egalitarian because no one person can have more cannabis than the law allows. This fosters increased production and rapid turnover since getting your share more times is one of the only legal ways to get more.

    3. Time bank volunteer networks are a liberating way for people to capture value from fallow skills that are needlessly waiting for a dollar that isn’t coming. Time banks create economic activity in the absence of money and thereby enable survival without money. Time bank hours can provide an alternate medium of exchange. Negotiated time value is more egalitarian. CEO’s would not be able to negotiate 250 times worker pay for themselves.

    4. Commodity shares based on warehouse receipts can function as a store of value and medium of exchange. A medium of exchange that is directly backed by a locally produced commodity is not inflationary because there are no extra shares are created beyond the quantity of cannabis that has been produced.

    5. Depreciative money combined with maximum balances reduces hoarding and accumulation of advantage. This further focuses the community on increasing the total crop since there are only two ways for OMMP patients to get more: by increasing crop frequency or increasing yield and crop size.

    6. No free riders = no rentiers. Everyone is a stakeholder and individual exchanges can only be increased through active involvement.

    Doing these things only requires will and cheap or free tools like open source software combined with ubiquitous communication devices. People need a way to meet their needs outside of the failed credit money system and can do it by organized sharing. organized sharing. There is no reason for skilled people to sit around waiting for a dollar to validate their abilities. They can trade their labor among themselves and capture real value. Real community democracy and freedom through cooperation are possible by capturing the inherent value in small world networks for the mutual benefit of members. This value is in underutilized skills, shared connections, and shared resources. When those three things are connected there is a synergistic community wealth building effect that occurs as exchanges proliferate. Increasing exchanges grows the community.

    We as a species can do better things with technology than spy on eachother or merely “Like” things on facebook (the only choice.) The same chains of our enslavement can also link us together in self sufficiency. All that is required is for people to look at things a little differently.

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