Be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it!

You slam "dunk" jsambdman for his Zarlenga link, but have you actually read the plan that is proposed?

If you did: you would realize that it proposes that the monetary system be 100% nationalized, and under control of whatever party is in power. That means that our monetary system would be removed from all market influences, and handed over to our elected leaders. The disclaimer is that they would have to adhere to existing law, and that we can 'boot' them out through the ballot box.

How well has that been working?

Inasmuch as government is already too large, can you envision what this means when they have complete control over the economic (read: monetary) scenario? It boggles the mind.... It would be exactly what John Galt ran from.

No natural forces attempting balance...no rewards to enterprising... no 'cream rising to the top'.

To put the cherry on the top of the Zarlenga sundae...he proposes the the government (now in control of the printing of money) places it's new-found wealth into energy alternative markets. Does Solyndra ring a bell?

If you are wary of too much government, than you need to understand that this plan leaves nothing left outside of their control. Nothing left to do but have the last person turn out the Republic's light....

Be careful of what you ask for....

P.S. jsambdman is not far removed from islam badman.

Coincidence? Or are we being propagandized....

Social assistance is only one of the problems. It's the diseases they bring in with them, it's the fanatics/terrorists/jihadists who enter as well, and it's their high rate of procreation. IOW, they're out-breeding us. .

Americans are concerned about illegal immigrants on social assistance. This is the biggest attack today's conservatives make on free immigration. However, if we are truly worried about social benefit spending, then we should be fighting the welfare state, not an individual's right to live where he wishes. Closed immigration also demands that employers give up their rights to employ whom they wish to employ.

Yes I run a family owned bus company. Enjoy your meal with your friends. I enjoyed our discussion.

I'll respond in depth later. leaving for dinner with friends. You run a bus company? Bluebird was manufactured in my home town in Iowa

According to my understanding of bitcoins, when it reaches 21,000,000 in existence the quantity will be frozen. Should the need for bitcoins continue to increase, the price of things in bitcoins will necessarily decrease. I run a bus company, if I buy a bus for $500,000 bitcoins today and I pay that out over seven years and the value of bitcoins is constantly increasing, it becomes very difficult for me to make a profit as the prices I can charge are in a deflationary spiral. This makes the bitcoin models, as I understand it, untenable for large purchases which must be costed out over years. It does work for short term purchases of small items or digital products whose cost of production are very low.
Knowledge is not a physical thing subject to physical laws or limits as a population might be.

there is no such thing as a lack of money. Unless you have restrictions by law in an area. In the US, before legal tender laws and even after for a time, we had 10000 different bank notes used as money.
Company store: Yes, people will take advantage of other people. However, they did not have to take the job. many chose not and many left. It was a risk, and I can understand taking the risk depending. If there was force or fraud, there was a legal remedy. We had bankruptcy laws in place.
I disagree with exponential growth curves collapsing as they do in nature. Not True. I'll give you one example: knowledge.
money is a store of value. I see no reason to believe bitcoin cannot work. Money is an open ended IOU. a way of keeping score. Computers keep score. There is no inherent reason bitcoins should be inflated to destroy value. Bit coin's concern would be govts' jealous concerns.

If you start with the notion that you own yourself, then any action by another that would interfere with your ownership of yourself is immoral and any action by you to do the same to another is similarly immoral. I own my life, to take my life is murder and thus takes from me my future , to take my liberty , my present, is to enslave me, to take the fruits of my labors is to take from me my past and is thus theft. So, when society respects the rights of the individual to life, liberty and property much of the law becomes unnecessary and some of it is exposed as immoral.

Coal mining towns in early America would often pay their workers in Company Script as there weren't enough dollars to pay their workers. The company owned the town and all the stores and workers could buy all that they needed from these company owned stores, the problem was they were also trapped in that they could not buy anything from anywhere else as their moeny would not be accepted. The mining company arranged pricing of wages and products so as to keep the workers in a subsistence state making it difficult for them to leave as well. It was almost a form of slavery or endentured servirtude.

You are correct in that just about anything has been money. In the south during the 1800's there was a deflationary depression because there wasn't enough money in circulation to meet economic demands. People compensated by using whiskey and tobacco as currency, but none of these was sufficient to meet economic demands and a general malaise persisted. Having many different currencies over a large geographical area would be impractical as some people may not accept what you have as currency, necessitating currency exchanges and additional costs of doing so. There are examples of this very thing in history. One of the few legitimate roles of government is to provide for a stable currency. The problem we have is that our government abdicated this role to a private for profit international entity granting them monopoly control in the process. As they seek to make a profit off the creation of money it necessitates the ever increasing supply of money beyond the growth in economic demand for money. Additionally, as our currency is borrowed into circulation and the money to pay the interest is never created, systemically there isn't enough money to pay off debts accumulated. At some point the system must crash as all exponential growth curves do in nature. Having said that, local private currencies, such as Ithaca Hours and other community currencies do have some benefits and may save those communities should the US Monetary system completely collapse. The purpose for a medium of exchange is to be stable. You don't want it to increase or decrease in value. That is why bitcoins will never work for purchases that must be paid over time such as a house or car or a business loan.

deflationary depression: if there were no legal tender laws, there could not be deflationary depression, ever. many things can and have acted as money thru-out history and at the same time. the question should be: why do we have to have legal tender laws? It is no more correct for govts to demand gold as money than paper

You don't create wealth but you do enable economic activity.
The purpose for the money supply is to encourage commerce. If the moeny supply is inadequate for the needs of the community you have a deflationary depression, if it exceeds such demands, you have inflation. It is possible to manage the money supply such that there is neither inflation nor delfation as is the case in the Isle of Guernsey right now and was the case in the colonies in the past here. Gold is a representation of wealth, money is a medium of exchange. Should we go to a gold standard, we would experience a deflationary depression that would dwarf any in human experience.

you cannot create wealth by counterfeiting.

I read recently that the administration is trying very hard to keep Iran from buying gold. Interesting you made this connection

Do you think we have done enough damage meandering on Rozar's thread? Sorry Rozar. I'm thinking I should start a Free for all Friday thread every Friday just to meander and share tunes on... What do you think?

agreed!
there is one time that being fully clothed and perhaps booted in the pool is necessary, and it has to do with lifesaving practices. You are tested over a minimum length of time treading water clothed. As well, techniques used in lifesaving while the victim is fully clothed. but I LOVED said pair of boots-there was no way those were going in the pool

ha ha ha ha ha funny! No boots in the pool!
Nothing in particular with Amazon. I resist putting my information out to more places than necessary. I was hacked just a week ago and had to change my password on one of my e-mail accounts and had to send a notice to everyone in my address book that the spam/dating service link was not sent by me... Spammers and hackers suck!

what is your beef with Amazon, if I may ask?
on the other subject, my apt was at the edge of town, and there was actually a farmer who raised horses and offered riding. If I had saved my tips from the restaurant I worked at, 'The Breadline," I would reward myself by riding. If I mucked out stalls and fed and groomed, I didn't have to pay. :) In the summers, I was a girl scout camp counselor, and although my main duties were to run the pool, I could ride whenever I had free time. You could be more spontaneous if you had boots on-except in the pool

Happy to be of service. I find few women can carry off really short hair to my satisfaction. In those days I had hair longer than many of the girls I knew. Crazy days... Er... well... um... "...ride a stallion."... Okay then.... better leave that one alone. Whatever blows your skirt up!
:) I have a Barnes and Noble card. I order regularly and let them do the driving.
I don’t do Amazon, so I have a problem aquiring one of Walter Donway’s books.
Unfortunately they only have two of his offerings. The Price of Hannah Blake, and Carebrum: The Dana Forum of Brain Science. His works are not the usual material I would choose. What to do???

Speak for yourself. This country has limited resources and we can't keep up the role of Santa Claus. Immigrants should work to fix their own country. Besides, I'm fast becoming a minority in my own country.

Also, the FED is hardly the free market solution. Perhaps if we had legally recognized competing currencies you could say we have a free market, but ask Bernard Von Nothouse what he thinks about that (He started the Liberty dollar and is now in danger of going to jail for it)

As to what gives money it's value, all gold standards had face values exceeding the commodity value of the gold content. This artificial valuation is no different than printing an artificial value on a piece of paper. The only advantage to gold would be it's acceptance outside the national borders. Khadafi in Libya had such a currency system in place before we bombed him into oblivion. Which is the real reason we got rid of him. He was competition for control in Africa against the World Bank and the IMF.

I used to think the same way, until I decided to let go of my biases in the matter and look at what actually happened throughout history objectively vis a vis money. As to the FED you should ask the question differently. Should a sovereign government give over monopoly control of the nations money supply to a small group of international bankers? And then borrow at interest the currency into circulation? The borrower is slave to the lender, this gives control of our government over to a small group of unelected international bankers whose aims will be markedly different from the individuals in the nation. This is why we see a near constant state of war since the inception of the FED as banks have historically profited from wars by backing both sides.
Also, twice in our nation's history we have tried Zarlenga's solution to great affect. As a colony, when we simply printed colonial script and spent it into circulation on infrastructure (It only failed when Britain parked two printer ships off our shore and flooded the colonies with counterfeit script at the cost of the paper, some have estimated more than10 times the then circulating money supply was counterfeit) And again when Lincoln printed greenbacks to fund the Civil War. The banks of the day were offering him loans at 36% interest, he instead printed money and spent it into circulation with no debt. This was perhaps the only time we went to war and had no debt later to pay off. Had he not done this we would probably still be paying off this debt today. From before WW1 to present, the Isle of Guernsey has provided for their own infrastructure by printing Guernsey Pounds and spending them into production, without a debt attached, on items of public necessity. They do not have inflation and they have some of the highest living standards in the world. The Roman Empire ruled the world with "worthless" iron currency, when switched to a gold standard, the economy quickly collapsed into deflation and wealth was concentrated into the hands of a few wealthy families leaving many without homes or jobs. Similarly, the English empire expanded on the back of tally sticks (pieces of carved wood accepted in payment of taxes). Once the Bank of England succeeded in ending the tally sticks and switching to a silver standard, the empire began to collapse into a deflationary depression. There are other examples, but this is getting too lengthy.

Non criminals are welcome, but please become Americans and do not try and turn this country into the one you left.

I'm a late poster with a short attention span so I don't know if this was stated. The legal immigrants that came and now come to this country have to have a skill and a job waiting for them. Back in the early 1900's; it's just fill the needful work force. Now under the libs, they're just pawns and for their vote [PERIOD].