A completely unregulated market won't work. Look at the game Menopoly...

At the end of the game there is one winner and everyone else is wiped out.

by the way - gold has no intrinsic value. It's value only exists due to scarcity and relatively high costs of production. If a mountain of gold were suddenly found, the price would plummet dramatically.
Intrinsic value is always context dependent. Water in the desert has a much higher intrinsic value than gold, while a fur coat may have higher intrinsic value than gold if stranded in the woods in a blizzard.

blarman - you are ignorant of basic monetary economics. Inflation occurs due to more money in the system - period. What would cause the need for more money? Why, more economic activity. As productivity and economic activity creates more goods/services then there needs to be more money in the system to pay for it. Thus, the money supply (and therefor inflation) should properly grow at the rate of economic growth. So you can gage economic growth as a function of inflation (although it is properly the other way around).
Unfortunately, our current governmental leaders seem to believe that monetary growth can drive economic growth (this is basic Keynesian economics). This only works in a very short term and ultimately results in much higher inflation than should have occurred due to too much money existing in the economy.
Mark my words and protect your wealth in some hard assets. Stocks, bonds, cash, etc. are soon to suffer from the effects of hyperinflation.

And, in fact, the tremendous amount of money creation in the past few years guarantees that hyperinflation is in store. It's only a matter of time.

Only if you believe that the Fed is truly independent. It has not behaved in such a manner for a long time. Thus, even if not a formal part of the government, it acts in a manner consistent with the governmental interests, not the interests of the nation.

Eh, it's a decent argument, but it's got a few problems. On the one had, he does correctly recognize that the primary source of all our economic problems is the Federal Reserve. But on the other hand, he ignorantly and wrongly declares that the establishment of the Federal Reserve was was an act of the government getting involved with our money. That is completely wrong. It's exactly the opposite. The establishment of the Federal Reserve did not put control of our money into the hands of the government, it took control AWAY from the government! The Federal Reserve is not a government entity, and prior to its existence our money was printed by the government. Now our money is printed by the Federal Reserve, which is a privately owned organization. Honestly, it surprises me that a self-proclaimed economist would be unaware of that fact.

If you think about it, with inflation, the people who get hurt are the people paid/holding dollars. For example, if you own an apartment building, and inflation goes to 10%, you just raise rents by 10%. But your tenants may not have 10% more, unless their paychecks go up. Correspondingly, anyone on a fixed income is screwed, and anyone with cash in the bank gets taken.

So who owns things like apartment buildings?
And who relies on a fixed income?

I'm thinking people are not being affected the same.

Ah, but without the Federal Reserve, the value of our money would remain relatively constant, rather than constantly losing value at 3% annually.

Fiat money: any currency not backed by gold.

I was enjoying the article until he engaged in ad hominem and drove right off the cliff...

"They are for individualism–except when they are against it. They are against free markets and individualism not only when they agree with the Left that we must have antitrust laws and the Federal Reserve, but also when they demand immigration controls, government schools, regulatory agencies, Medicare, laws prohibiting abortion, Social Security, “public works” projects, the “social safety net,” laws against insider trading, banking regulation, and the whole system of fiat money."

First, this fool is opposed to immigration controls? Just wide open borders? Then why the HELL have a country at all? Oh, no, China, you can't invade our non-existant borders with your army, we'll keep you out. But, if you want, you can infiltrate the hell out of us and thereby destroy our culture, our economy, our political system.

Second, I favor "anti-trust laws" only to the extent of preventing one business from preventing others from doing business. An example; I would break Wal-mart every time they opened a new store and dropped the prices in that one store to drive out competition, *while absorbing the loss by raising prices in well-established stores*.
I think khalling would agree with my other use for anti-trust; to prevent Bob from cloning an iToy and manufacturing a clone at a lower price, while still allowing Bob to reverse engineer the iToy (ie, learn how it works) and coming up with Bob's Toy as his own design.

I support government schools... provided the government in question is local. I don't support medicare. I don't support social security.
I support abortion laws the same way I support murder laws. The one's initiating violence here are the abortionists. This is where pro-abortionists are blind to their own prejudice. THEY conclude that unborn babies aren't human unless the piece of shit that would kill them says they are, and therefore *I* must reach the same conclusion, or I'm opposed to individualism. I have always opposed abortion for the equal protection aspect; if an abortionist can kill an unborn baby for no greater harm than being funny looking and inconvenient, then I should be allowed to kill illegal aliens for the same reason.

I support laws regarding banking regulation to the same extent and in the same fashion as I stated above for anti-trust laws; to prevent bankers from conspiring to close-out competition, nothing further. Public works I support... so long as, again, the "public" is local. What do I care if the people of Waterford, CT all vote to build a 16 lane superhighway in a circle around the local Wal-mart? I never understood the opposition to insider trading; the only way I'd ever get in the stock market is if I had special knowledge of an affect on a given stock. Anyone who "gambles" on the stock market in my opinion might as well go to Vegas.

I don't know what is meant by "fiat money", but I do want us back on the gold standard.

I "challenge" the FDA; the ESRB does a fine job of censoring video games. It is a non-government board. No one has to belong, no one has to comply in order to create a video game, or even be rated. But... if you want to make a video game for the big 3 (Nintendo, Playstation, X-box), it won't be published without a rating. (which borders on anti-trust, anyway). We don't need a government *regulatory* FDA. I'm fine with the EPA and FDA as advisory boards.

All our money should be backed by some concrete material, be it copper, silver, gold, platinum, or diamond.

And I'm about as far "right" as anyone in the gulch.