“All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”
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Author: Redactor
Monopoly control of money is at the root of all kinds of evil.
As the Euro faces collapse, and the dollar’s value becomes increasingly unsteady, central bankers the world over worry about what to do next.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Last Thursday I mentioned monetary experimentation, including Ron Paul’s support for F.A. Hayek’s idea of competing currencies. In my Townhall column this weekend, I noted that Rep. Paul has done more than promote the idea “that government policy should allow all currencies to float, favoring none. . . . Last year he introduced the Free Competition in Currency Act, as Hayekian a piece of legislation as you could imagine.”
Paul’s proposal is not merely a sign of the times, it is a sign of intellectual seriousness — in a politician, no less. In the early 1980s he had introduced a measure to return the United States to the gold standard. But now he is willing to let “the market decide” which monies should circulate.
We may know a lot more about money than we used to, but one of the things we’ve learned is that no one knows for sure how to manage an entire monetary system, the whole kit and kaboodle.
So, just as we don’t need a grocery czar or an “industrial policy” to micromanage either technological production or R&D, centrally managed money is just too hard for any one set of persons . . . to manage.
Competition in money and banking (sans today’s progressivist doctrine of “too big to fail”) would not only work, it would keep politicians from the extremity of irresponsibility.
For yes, today’s politicians rely upon the Federal Reserve. They need to keep the “printing presses” running to supply that special, hidden tax that funds their deficits: inflation.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Don’t Blame Me
Some folks are quick to blame the voters for the mess this country is in. Not me.
In 2008, Americans overwhelmingly opposed the TARP bailouts. Which candidate — Democrat Obama or Republican McCain — represented the majority of us on that central issue?
Neither.
This year, President Obama promises a significant tax increase and more government investment in crony capitalism. Republican nominee Mitt Romney pledges he won’t raise taxes and he’ll reduce at least the growth in spending via Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan.
But who would be surprised were Romney, even given a GOP Congress — especially given a GOP Congress — to fail miserably on his promises?
Voters choose candidates for the right reasons only to see those candidates, from both major parties, jettison their campaign promises, ad nauseam.
We aren’t mind readers. We’re simply not to blame for good-faith decisions in a bad-faith system.
We are to blame, however, for not taking the initiative to change the rottenness in the system.
Yet, how best to get outside this box, to effect real change, to take the initiative?
Why, the initiative, of course!
Twenty-three states have viable processes for citizens to put initiative measures on state ballots. Even in states where no statewide initiative or referendum exists, like Texas and New York, most local jurisdictions have the initiative.
National changes can come from local action.
Increasingly, we must use the initiative not only to change the law, protect freedom, hold government accountable, reform the system, but also to set the political agenda directly from the grass roots.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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George Mason
“That the members (of the three branches of government) may be restrained from oppression by feeling and participating in the burdens of the people, they should at fixed periods be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all or any part of the former members shall be again eligible or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.”
On May 21, 1979, the White Night riots erupted in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.
On May 21, 1981, Irish Republican hunger strikers Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O’Hara die on hunger strike in Maze prison.
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Bobby Sands, Irish hunger striker
“They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn’t want to be broken.”
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Tea & Tyranny
We were not invited. Instead, the presence of 27 of the world’s “Sovereign Monarchs” was properly and politely requested for a lunch last week with one Liz Windsor, in celebration of her 50th year on England’s throne.
Apparently, the Queen didn’t want to spend her Diamond Jubilee hanging out with the 99 percent. Or even the 99 percent of the 1 percent. After all, it’s her party (albeit financed by the common man), and she’ll twist and shout with her fellow blue-blood royals if she wants to. But, while nice ol’ Liz was serving a sophisticated supper to kings, queens, sheiks, emirs, sultans, emperors and empresses, there were detractors.
“Inviting these blood-soaked dictators brings shame to the monarchy and tarnishes the Diamond Jubilee celebrations,” declared human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, pointing to tyrants attending from Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Swaziland.
He missed a few. Why not add King Mohammed VI of Morocco, who still has the power to veto most government decisions, or Sultan Qaboos of Oman, who personally makes all the key decisions in his country?
What level of despotism is just too much? Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s role may be largely symbolic, but citizens remain subject to arrest for any insult to the king.
Granted, most of the remaining monarchs hold their positions of privilege and pomp with little circumstance. They are not the dictators of old, brutalizing the people at whim.
Progress, I guess.
But why continue even the trappings of monarchy? And why dine with the real thing?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On May 20, 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated slavery in the French colonies, revoking its abolition in the French Revolution.
On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, at 7:52 am, on the world’s first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He would touch down at 10:22 pm the next day at Le Bourget Field in Paris.
On May 20, 1932, Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland to begin the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.
On May 20, 1953, Gen. Henri Navarre assumed command of French Union Forces in Vietnam, decaring, “Now we can see [success in Vietnam] clearly, like light at the end of a tunnel.”
On May 20, 1995, President Bill Clinton permanently closed the two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House to all non-pedestrian traffic as a security measure, calling the move “a responsible security step necessary to preserve our freedom, not part of a long-term restriction of our freedom.”
“A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
More about Ziggy?
This weekend’s Townhall column takes off on a subject broached here at This Is Common Sense last week. But there’s a lot more to it, so check it out. And come back here if you want a complete, easy-to-access full list of the column’s links:
- The Next Money: As the Big Economies Falter, Micro-Currencies Rise, by Eric Garland (The Atlantic)
- Andresen on BitCoin and Virtual Currency, Gavin Andresen interviewed by Russ Roberts (EconTalk)
- Josiah Warren (Wikipedia)
- Federal Reserve Act (Wikipedia)
- The Gold Confiscation Of April 5, 1933 (text archived at The Privateer Gold Pages)
- Nixon Shock (Wikipedia)
- Ron Paul 2012 (campaign website)
- F.A. Hayek (Wikipedia)
- Denationalization of Money: The Argument Refined, an Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies, by F.A. Hayek (PDF, Mises Institute)
- Ron Paul, Upping the Ante in His Campaign for Liberty, Hoists the Flag of Hayek, by Seth Lipsky (New York Sun)
- Ziggy Stardust (Wikipedia disambiguation page)
For further reading, please consider:
- State-Tamperings with Money and Banks, by Herbert Spencer
- The Origins of Money, by Carl Menger
- The Theory of Money and Credit, by Ludwig von Mises
- Free Banking in Britain: Theory, Experience, and Debate, 1800-1845, by Lawrence White
- Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821, by George Selgin
- The Mystery of Banking, by Murray N. Rothbard