Topics: Rick Santorum on our “abortion culture”; Legal Tender laws introduced in congress and enacted in Utah; Ron Paul’s candidacy; Libya; Cultural round-up including Atlas Shrugged, Apple, Duran Duran, Radiohead, and Charlie Sheen.
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Regarding transitioning from our current money to some sort of open legal tender, I do think getting us back onto a gold standard for our currency would be a great first step, but it cannot stop there. Eventually, it would be better to have gold and / or silver money — and have it be weighed in ounces and eventually phase out the concept of “the dollar.” In other words, instead of thinking of prices in terms of dollars and cents, we would think of prices in terms of ounces of gold or silver. This would remove the ambiguity of money and have money be firmly gold and silver, and not a manipulative “dollar”. There could still be bills, but the bills would be redeemable at your local bank for ounces of gold or silver. By doing this, the government would have no hand in the currency whatsoever, as it has clearly been shown that they cannot be trusted with money. There only roll would be to insure that a certain marked weight of gold on the bills or on the coins would be that amount in ounces of gold or silver — weights and standards, in other words to prevent fraud.
However, for this to work, since very few people have gold or silver, I do think the gold in Fort Knox would have to be turned back over to the American people. It was stolen from the American people when we transitioned over to the greenback by force, and it would have to be turned back over for us to have a gold based currency. This could be done in an orderly manner once we get back to a gold standard, where there would be a fixed ratio of gold to the dollar, and people could freely exchange their greenbacks for gold at their convenience. Then we could transition to the gold as money I outlined above in an orderly manner.
Oh, I wanted to add that we have an individual right to trade goods and services for whatever we care to have as our units of value, so I am all for getting rid of the concept of “legal tender.” We ought to be free to use whatever we want as money, and the government ought not to have any say in it other than the issue of fraud or force. I don’t know if getting rid of the legal tender laws would help us transition over to gold and silver money, but I don’t think it would hurt. In other words, the US Government would not set any of the terms of the trade — not even the money, and we would be free to trade freely for whatever we wanted as our unit of value. Gold and silver just make the most sense in the long run.
Some people might wonder how we go about getting on a gold standard — it’s quite simple, forbid the Federal Reserve from printing up Federal Reserve Notes: break the printing plates and don’t ever use them again. This is the only way to guarantee that the number of greenbacks out there remains pretty much constant relative to gold.