And why would a company like Apple do what you suggest? I bet they have thousands of patents on software and hardware and they do not feel the same way about it as you do. To them it makes perfect sense to have patents and they want to keep that system in place. What they do not want is to have some piece of GPL3 code in the system being distributed, which would open them to litigation with copyright holders of that code, who could then force Apple to release the patents Apple has in that code/hardware into public domain.
So why would they want to do it? They are not in this business to be nice, they are in it to make money.
Just look through this thread for all the fanboyism of the CAs.
The argument comes up over and over again:
Why are browsers treating self signed certificates over HTTPS as some sort of a plague, while not doing the same for HTTP?
There is no difference between security of HTTP and HTTPS if the certificate is self signed, so just encrypt the traffic, DO NOT display the visual icon that signifies that the connection is secure and DO NOT bother the user with nonsense warnings.
Better yet, display the fingerprint near the address, make it obvious what the fingerprint the HTTPS connection is but for fuck sakes, stop the nonsense of pretending that HTTP is somehow better and HTTPS with a self signed cert for encryption is worse than HTTP.
Stop doing that. It's very counterproductive if you want more HTTPS on the web.
It can be paid with a single banknote and you still have 25 Trillion left for coffee.
Now, you may object that the money is not from US exactly, but don't forget, Zimbabwe dollar used to be 1:1, and I think it's headed there again, so just wait a couple of years....
Dollar is used not just in US, just so that you are clear on this.
Dollar can be Canadian, it can be Zimbabwe. It can be from Hong Kong, Singapore, Belize, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand....
The coin says: Liberty Dollar.
It could say: Canadian Dollar.
--
If somebody does not realize that the coin is gold and has Ron Paul on it and accepts it as payment for face value - good for them, they just made 400%.
If somebody takes the $20 silver to be real $20 US coin... I wonder what they are smoking, but again, they just made money, good for them.
Nobody is buying these dollars who does not understand what they are buying and if they are, so what?
Last thing: this is not about counterfeiting. Counterfeiting is what the Fed does. This is about competition to printing/minting currency and gov't can't have that. So how will they react to Bitcoin, once somebody explains that coins can be bits and can be sent around a series of tubes without gov't overseeing every transaction?
Won't they immediately say: this is a terrorist tool to avoid gov't oversight?
So in 2003, it was possible to get a pound of cotton for 50 USD. OK. So if I am expecting AT MINIMUM to have dollars in my possession today, that are still printed by the Fed, shouldn't I expect those dollars to buy roughly the same amount of cotton as they bought in 2003?
But today the prices for cotton are over 200 USD / pound.
So from 2003 50 to 2011 200. Feels like counterfeit 'money' to me.
However let's now see what that means translated to what I call money.
For an ounce of gold you could buy 7 pounds of cotton in 2003.
Let's see, today gold is around 1430-1440. For an ounce of gold it is possible to buy... wait for it..... 7 pounds of cotton.
-- I can do the same thing with coffee, sugar, copper, grains, etc.etc.etc.
Whatever you think the definition of 'counterfeit' is or should be, it clearly does not protect the value of the fiat against the hands on the printing presses.
This is the reflection of actual inflation. Not the BS that the gov't is feeding you with, this is real inflation, real money expansion. They also have redefined inflation to mean something else, not money expansion but end consumer prices rising.
However they are not being honest their either. They are measuring 'core inflation rate', which excludes things that really matter: food, energy, clothing, housing.
So aside from food, energy, clothing and housing, it's all peachy, their inflation levels are under 2% they say.
OK. What they do not tell you though is this: a country that does not produce much of anything, but lives off credit of producer nations does not need to buy much of raw materials.
Instead it prints dollars (which I call counterfeiting), which are backed by nothing, and then it pays with this fiat for the goods that are coming into the country from productive nations.
Productive nations OTOH have to take in those dollars, exchange them for their own currency, buy raw materials (commodities), add value (production) and then send the made goods to USA.
The real question of course is this: when are they going to come to their senses and stop this madness? When are they going to start enjoying fruits of their labor themselves and realize they do not need to destroy their own purchasing power so that US consumer does not see the levels of inflation his gov't causes around the world.
I think the time is very near now when the world wakes up from this nightmare.
Gold Liberty Dollar - it has RON PAUL on it. Which POTUS are you going to confuse that with?
And that's GOLD.
And it says: "RON PAUL for President 2008" and it says "GOLD STANDARD IN LEADERSHIP"
WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?
Let's do silver - What? Do you normally see silver coins in your wallet that say: "LIBERTY, Trust in god, USA" with Lady Liberty on the face and this picture on the back?
There are plenty of different things that can remotely resemble US coins. Some of them are coins of other countries and some are from other times.
The guy in the story is facing 15 years in jail, 250K in fines and confiscation of $7,000,000 worth of silver/gold and finished coins.
He was selling them ABOVE the face value, obviously, it's called seigniorage.
You can say whatever you like, but his coins are nothing like US dollars in circulation, they are much more valuable than any other normal coin and they are not sold at face value. The guy went quite far out of his way to make sure they are not mistaken for US Mint coins.
I agree with you, and here is my personal belief on the worth of US dollar: 0. I have maybe $50 US in a wallet somewhere, rather than that I don't do fiat. I am one of people, so I also make small part of market. This is my take on the value of the US dollar.
When I say it's 0, what I mean is that it is approaching zero, it's a limit approaching zero, there is no reason to hold it, because I believe it will be in hyper inflation some time in not too distant future. Once it's there, it will be actual 0, so I don't want to get caught with pants down.
Just because you disagree with their policies does not make them counterfeiters.
- true. It's not that. What does make them counterfeiters is printing money that is not backed by any reserves, by any production, by anything useful or valuable. THAT makes them counterfeiters, not my disagreement with policies. --
Dude, he could have minted his own currency and called it anything else he wanted but a dollar, and he could have used any other symbols/representations than that of the United States.
- bullshit.
Many countries call their currencies dollars, dollar is NOT unique to America nor was it invented there.
The guy is from US, so he makes US dollars, he does everything possible on the coin to make sure it does not resemble US Minted coins to avoid this exact argument. His coins do not look like coins minted by US Mint, and they are silver, which is not what US Mint does anymore.
--
Eh? I study governments and international relations, and I have also studied the role of economic manipulation in warfare. That is far from swallowing any party line -- they are just facts. You can look them up yourself, you know.
- you are implicitly supporting the gov't calling this dude a terrorist, this way they can use different sets of laws on him probably, how about throwing him into Gitmo? Why not? Bitcoin developer should be careful, cause he can end up there.
By the way, if the US gov't wants to be paid in US dollars for whatever taxes it wants to collect, then it better not include any transactions that are NOT conducted in the US dollars in calculating the said taxes.
-- And really, this story we are in is exactly about that - people are transacting in some form of a currency in a way, that makes it impossible for the government to collect taxes upon.
Which is always a plus.
But that's why I am telling the Bitcoin developer - watch out.
Random guy trying to make "dollar-like" currency --> Criminal law, especially when that such counterfeiting could undermine the legitimacy of the existing currency and defraud people.
- I don't understand the purpose of the arrows there, is that an implication or something else?
Anyway, the really counterfeiters of the US dollars are US Fed and Treasury.
The guy minting his own silver coins, and going out of his way to make sure everybody knows they are NOT in fact 'legal tender' is now deemed a terrorist, because the people who really counterfeit the US dollars are afraid that their worthless currency won't be staying in use too much longer.
Congratulations, by the way, on completely swallowing the party's line (whatever party you like) on this guy being a terrorist, you are now protecting them in saying that.
It's an elegant system for producing paper "currency" which can be exchanged for products. However elegant it may be, it's also quite naive and/or dishonest to overlook some of it's shortcomings.
Namely, it is the people who got in early, when the purchasing power of those pieces of paper was higher and there were much fewer of them, or they got them at Fed discount window who have most to gain. Latecomers have little to gain and the most to lose. If the system collapses or is regulated out of legitimacy, it is the latecomers who will suffer the most. I would go as far as calling it a pyramid scheme.
How could it collapse? In numerous ways. Various governments might start auditing / taxing people who use it as a form of currency. They might legislate against it, deeming it to be bogus financial instrument. It might get a reputation for money laundering and all the popular exchanges get shutdown along with the accounts. A rival to US dollar might appear which is safer to use or has other benefits, like being an actual valuable asset. Someone (the Fed/Congress) might develop a crack / exploit which allows them to inject "poisoned" transactions into the monetary system in forms of 0% interest on borrowed money, bail outs, stimulus packages, gov't spending items, or worse, just prints so many dollars that wallets are wiped or drained of purchasing power. A large bank may become insolvent once the long term interest rates go above the US bond returns, and then all the balance sheet start bleeding red ink. There might be a run on banks if the system shows sign of collapse / compromise and the stores/merchants stop accepting dollars as money.
All of these scenarios are feasible and I think it only a matter of time before the system is hit by one of them. I have no issue with a paper currency that is fully backed by some form of reserve per se but I do not see the long term viability in the system, which allows politicians to meddle with the monetary and economic policy and print their own ticket.
Well that's the thing. Those who print money have real power.
If all of a sudden whatever it is they print is not recognized as actual money by actual people in real life, they do not have that power anymore.
They are fighting this with the biggest guns they have - terrorism accusations (that's because they can't stick child molestation to it yet) because they are afraid of losing power over what money is and over what they can do by printing it.
In reality they should be MUCH more scared of Bitcoin than of these Liberty Dollars, because while Liberty Dollars are nice (and I recommend people to own gold and silver bullion, just don't pay more than 5% spot price on your purchase,) the real threat comes from ability of people to exchange payments with complete disregard to any governmental body that wants to keep power over what money is, how it's created, how it's transacted, how it's taxed, etc., and in case of Bitcoin and other solutions like that - it's peer to peer, there is no transaction fee, there is no information that can be passed to the government, the money has fixed value, it cannot be inflated (AFAI understand for now) and this is scary stuff for governments.
Governments would have you believe that deflation is bad while they are inflating away. Well, it's bad for them, because they are the biggest debtors and they have no legitimate ways of repaying the debt.
But it's good for actual people, who have actually experienced deflation in 19 century in USA, when prices were steadily dropping over the century and dollar appreciated by a factor of 2.
Imagine your problem being not that prices are going up, but that they are going down, while quality and competition is increasing - just terrible.
So of-course anybody who wants that is a terrorist.
- because there is much less silver in the world than there is even of gold. But silver is not very good at being a monetary metal, the only real money is gold.
However silver is almost as good, but it has too many industrial applications, so that's the only problem.
Of-course this problem is completely non-existent for US fiat - nobody needs them, nobody can buy anything for them. Well, in non-trivial amounts anyway. When some Arabs from Dubai tried getting rid of their dollars to buy an asset in USA - some ports in US, Congress prevented the deal. You think it has nothing to do with the fact that US dollars have no value at all? Japanese, who are in this terrible shape now, printing yen and driving their purchasing power down when they need it most, instead of getting rid of their US debt, you think they don't know that the debt has no value and if they try to sell it, they'll get nothing for it?
They are stuck though, they'll have to cut their losses and just not throw credit at US anymore. And since 40% of US gov't spending comes out of bond sales, that would be fun to observe, how they will squirm in agony, trying desperately not to cut their own preferred subsidies/pay outs, etc.
As to taxes - hey, in all hyper inflationary situations the wheelbarrow that held the pile of cash was worth more than than that paper in it. It's the same freaking thing. US dollar lost 4/5 of value in less than 15 years. Paying taxes in it? For that somebody has to be stupid enough to save and invest in dollar denominated currencies. Nobody is doing it anymore, that's the reason the jobs are gone.
There is a reason we switched to fiat currency, and there is no going back. It simply is not feasible, nor realistic.
- speak for yourself. I have switched and I am not going back.
JP Morgan also understands it now, they accept gold as collateral from their counterparties.
Central banks are buying gold, have been for a few years now.
So you do not understand what is happening - fiat is being deliberately destroyed, and in fact all central banks understand this perfectly, as they keep buying and holding US debt in desperate attempt to keep the value from dropping to 0 in 1 day.
Why am I saying this? Look at Japan - they hold about a trillion in gov't obligations in their Treasury, and now they have this terrible disaster. They need to buy so many things, oil, metal, food, materials, products, everything, yet they are printing Yen instead of selling US bonds. They are concerned that if they start selling, the value will plummet. Well of-course it will plummet. Because there is no value there at all. I am amused how people say: silver/gold have no value. And what, US bonds have value? Dollars have value? Dollars lost 98% of purchasing power since 1913. Even in the past decade, US dollar lost 4/5 of value.
You are telling me: there is no going back? I am telling you: there is no going forward. This game is over. The fiat is being manipulated by the government.
You are commenting on a story about a guy, who wrote software that basically provides competition to the official legal tender. People across the world are buying and holding physical gold and silver and other commodities just to get rid of dollars.
Deutsche Boerse got rid of a bunch of dollars and bought whatever it could put hands on - in this case NY Stock Exchange. There will be more and more people getting rid of dollars to get any assets they can from USA, and you are talking about not going back, away from fiat?
You are getting passed by on your left and on your right. There is a wall straight ahead, turn on the lights.
In any case, any commodity is actually more valuable than the dollar, and the dollar has been on a steady decline since the Fed was created in 1913, as well as the IRS (and the Constitution was subverted for both of those abominations to take place)
The US dollar gained 100% of value over 19 century. It lost 98% of value since 1913. If you think you know what money is, then tell me, what kind of money is that? I'll tell you what kind of money that is - that's the kind of money I do not own.
I don't own any fiat currencies, I only own precious metals. So I have in reality already 'sent' the dollars back where they belong, you have them, you will have them all, with all the consequences of hyper inflation.
As to trademark/copyright violations, etc., he wasn't charged with any of that, just like he wasn't charged with counterfeiting.
As to dollars being close to other US coins - when was the last time you actually held a silver dollar from the old or a 50 dollar coin precisely? People who bought the coins knew what they were getting (though I wouldn't go that way, I prefer spot price, thank you very much.)
The only real counterfeiters in USA are the US Fed, the Mint, and Treasury. The real crooks are in the White House, Senate and Congress.
The real threat to USA is not some guy with silver coins, they are in high positions of power, destroying US economy and currency.
We have a government to protect the people even without specific people claiming damages after the fact. Instead we elect representatives who make laws that protect us from well understood past damages, to prevent and interrupt them.
- the damage is done by the government, which destroys the value of the national currency and drives out savings and investment capital to other nations.
Your elected government officials have failed to protect your best interests, and the person in the story, who is now facing prison time and fines and confiscation is not a corporation, he is a guy, who believed his product has buyers (and it does have buyers) and those are also people.
You don't understand government; you want to eliminate it and take your chances with corporate powers. But we have a government, because we've seen how those autocratic orgs abuse the rights and property of the people.
- you fail at understanding of what America is about. It was build by people who wanted to keep their freedoms, and thus they limited the power of the federal gov't and have only ratified the Constitution of the nation after it was explicitly modified to underscore that the federal powers are in fact limited to very narrow definition.
Your 'elected officials' have usurped the power and subverted the constitution and have turned it into a meaningless document, that is no longer followed. And the States should feel cheated on the contract, that the Constitution was, and they should nullify it, because it has been broken over the last 100 years too much, it's invalid now.
You also don't understand the most basic economics: the ounce of silver in those "dollars" was worth $10-19, averaging about $14, through 1999, but was sold for $20 (legitimate dollars).
- yet they WERE sold, he did not steal anybody's money, though they could have made a more sound decision and bought silver bars with 5% markup instead.
He didn't cheat anybody, the weight of silver is on the coins.
Slashdot Mirror
That's right, and I don't care about the code, I am for individuals only.
And why would a company like Apple do what you suggest? I bet they have thousands of patents on software and hardware and they do not feel the same way about it as you do. To them it makes perfect sense to have patents and they want to keep that system in place. What they do not want is to have some piece of GPL3 code in the system being distributed, which would open them to litigation with copyright holders of that code, who could then force Apple to release the patents Apple has in that code/hardware into public domain.
So why would they want to do it? They are not in this business to be nice, they are in it to make money.
Just look through this thread for all the fanboyism of the CAs.
The argument comes up over and over again:
Why are browsers treating self signed certificates over HTTPS as some sort of a plague, while not doing the same for HTTP?
There is no difference between security of HTTP and HTTPS if the certificate is self signed, so just encrypt the traffic, DO NOT display the visual icon that signifies that the connection is secure and DO NOT bother the user with nonsense warnings.
Better yet, display the fingerprint near the address, make it obvious what the fingerprint the HTTPS connection is but for fuck sakes, stop the nonsense of pretending that HTTP is somehow better and HTTPS with a self signed cert for encryption is worse than HTTP.
Stop doing that. It's very counterproductive if you want more HTTPS on the web.
what do you mean, it doesn't exist?
Now that's why paper money is great - you can put a trillion zeroes after any digit you like onto it, and it still means nothing.
Wow, you are so smart. Were you born that way, or did you train yourself through exhaustive mental exercises?
It's a small secret, but I am sure you can figure it out if you wanted to: spot price + 0.002% commission.
It can be paid with a single banknote and you still have 25 Trillion left for coffee.
Now, you may object that the money is not from US exactly, but don't forget, Zimbabwe dollar used to be 1:1, and I think it's headed there again, so just wait a couple of years....
Dollar is used not just in US, just so that you are clear on this.
Dollar can be Canadian, it can be Zimbabwe. It can be from Hong Kong, Singapore, Belize, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand....
The coin says: Liberty Dollar.
It could say: Canadian Dollar.
--
If somebody does not realize that the coin is gold and has Ron Paul on it and accepts it as payment for face value - good for them, they just made 400%.
If somebody takes the $20 silver to be real $20 US coin... I wonder what they are smoking, but again, they just made money, good for them.
Nobody is buying these dollars who does not understand what they are buying and if they are, so what?
Last thing: this is not about counterfeiting. Counterfeiting is what the Fed does. This is about competition to printing/minting currency and gov't can't have that. So how will they react to Bitcoin, once somebody explains that coins can be bits and can be sent around a series of tubes without gov't overseeing every transaction?
Won't they immediately say: this is a terrorist tool to avoid gov't oversight?
If I were Bitcoin developer, I'd watch out.
First, that doesn't fit the definition of counterfeiting. They aren't trying to pass them as anything else.
- let's look at that claim, shall we?
here you can see prices for cotton, you can zoom out to 10 years time-line Note how it used to be around $50 in 2003.
So in 2003, it was possible to get a pound of cotton for 50 USD. OK. So if I am expecting AT MINIMUM to have dollars in my possession today, that are still printed by the Fed, shouldn't I expect those dollars to buy roughly the same amount of cotton as they bought in 2003?
But today the prices for cotton are over 200 USD / pound.
So from 2003 50 to 2011 200. Feels like counterfeit 'money' to me.
However let's now see what that means translated to what I call money.
In 2003 gold was roughly 350/ounce
For an ounce of gold you could buy 7 pounds of cotton in 2003.
Let's see, today gold is around 1430-1440. For an ounce of gold it is possible to buy... wait for it ..... 7 pounds of cotton.
--
I can do the same thing with coffee, sugar, copper, grains, etc.etc.etc.
Whatever you think the definition of 'counterfeit' is or should be, it clearly does not protect the value of the fiat against the hands on the printing presses.
This is the reflection of actual inflation. Not the BS that the gov't is feeding you with, this is real inflation, real money expansion. They also have redefined inflation to mean something else, not money expansion but end consumer prices rising.
However they are not being honest their either. They are measuring 'core inflation rate', which excludes things that really matter: food, energy, clothing, housing.
So aside from food, energy, clothing and housing, it's all peachy, their inflation levels are under 2% they say.
OK. What they do not tell you though is this: a country that does not produce much of anything, but lives off credit of producer nations does not need to buy much of raw materials.
Instead it prints dollars (which I call counterfeiting), which are backed by nothing, and then it pays with this fiat for the goods that are coming into the country from productive nations.
Productive nations OTOH have to take in those dollars, exchange them for their own currency, buy raw materials (commodities), add value (production) and then send the made goods to USA.
The real question of course is this: when are they going to come to their senses and stop this madness? When are they going to start enjoying fruits of their labor themselves and realize they do not need to destroy their own purchasing power so that US consumer does not see the levels of inflation his gov't causes around the world.
I think the time is very near now when the world wakes up from this nightmare.
Also Liberty Dollars are very different from US coins:
Gold with Ron Paul on it
Silver face
Silver back
Apologist for Liberty dollars?
How about you are an apologist for fiat?
As to government guarantees, and guarantees of banks that are guaranteed by governments, keep them.
As to Bitcoin - it's a competitor to official garbage fiat, so it's good, as long as it works and cannot be faked.
--
Anyway, nice Ad Hominem there.
You are full of shit.
Gold Liberty Dollar - it has RON PAUL on it. Which POTUS are you going to confuse that with?
And that's GOLD.
And it says: "RON PAUL for President 2008" and it says "GOLD STANDARD IN LEADERSHIP"
WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?
Let's do silver - What? Do you normally see silver coins in your wallet that say: "LIBERTY, Trust in god, USA" with Lady Liberty on the face and this picture on the back?
There are plenty of different things that can remotely resemble US coins. Some of them are coins of other countries and some are from other times.
The guy in the story is facing 15 years in jail, 250K in fines and confiscation of $7,000,000 worth of silver/gold and finished coins.
He was selling them ABOVE the face value, obviously, it's called seigniorage.
You can say whatever you like, but his coins are nothing like US dollars in circulation, they are much more valuable than any other normal coin and they are not sold at face value. The guy went quite far out of his way to make sure they are not mistaken for US Mint coins.
Also 'DOLLAR' is not unique to USA.
I agree with you, and here is my personal belief on the worth of US dollar: 0. I have maybe $50 US in a wallet somewhere, rather than that I don't do fiat. I am one of people, so I also make small part of market. This is my take on the value of the US dollar.
When I say it's 0, what I mean is that it is approaching zero, it's a limit approaching zero, there is no reason to hold it, because I believe it will be in hyper inflation some time in not too distant future. Once it's there, it will be actual 0, so I don't want to get caught with pants down.
Counterfeiting is an attack on the state. Why do you think Newton had counterfeiters executed?
So which president are you going to confuse for the likeness of Ron Paul on this gold coin, precisely?
Or maybe you are too daft to realize you are holding a piece of silver that has likeness of 'Lady Liberty' on the face, with a $20 face value on the back, and that you are asked to pay more than $20 to buy one from the guy, because he was making pretty good seigniorage?
Oh, you're one of /those/. Okay.
- I am happy that you and I are in different camps.
Dude, small amounts of money that I do spend I draw from my savings, which are metals. What is difficult about concept of conversion?
Also I have skipped the North American continent 2 years ago, it's not 7/11 for me anymore, it's more Asian/European stuff.
I am a libertarian, correct. I don't believe there is Obama, but that has nothing to do with my economic leanings.
Just because you disagree with their policies does not make them counterfeiters.
- true. It's not that. What does make them counterfeiters is printing money that is not backed by any reserves, by any production, by anything useful or valuable. THAT makes them counterfeiters, not my disagreement with policies.
--
Dude, he could have minted his own currency and called it anything else he wanted but a dollar, and he could have used any other symbols/representations than that of the United States.
- bullshit.
Many countries call their currencies dollars, dollar is NOT unique to America nor was it invented there.
The guy is from US, so he makes US dollars, he does everything possible on the coin to make sure it does not resemble US Minted coins to avoid this exact argument. His coins do not look like coins minted by US Mint, and they are silver, which is not what US Mint does anymore.
--
Eh? I study governments and international relations, and I have also studied the role of economic manipulation in warfare. That is far from swallowing any party line -- they are just facts. You can look them up yourself, you know.
- you are implicitly supporting the gov't calling this dude a terrorist, this way they can use different sets of laws on him probably, how about throwing him into Gitmo? Why not? Bitcoin developer should be careful, cause he can end up there.
By the way, if the US gov't wants to be paid in US dollars for whatever taxes it wants to collect, then it better not include any transactions that are NOT conducted in the US dollars in calculating the said taxes.
--
And really, this story we are in is exactly about that - people are transacting in some form of a currency in a way, that makes it impossible for the government to collect taxes upon.
Which is always a plus.
But that's why I am telling the Bitcoin developer - watch out.
Random guy trying to make "dollar-like" currency --> Criminal law, especially when that such counterfeiting could undermine the legitimacy of the existing currency and defraud people.
- I don't understand the purpose of the arrows there, is that an implication or something else?
Anyway, the really counterfeiters of the US dollars are US Fed and Treasury.
The guy minting his own silver coins, and going out of his way to make sure everybody knows they are NOT in fact 'legal tender' is now deemed a terrorist, because the people who really counterfeit the US dollars are afraid that their worthless currency won't be staying in use too much longer.
Congratulations, by the way, on completely swallowing the party's line (whatever party you like) on this guy being a terrorist, you are now protecting them in saying that.
Have a bad day.
I've used US Dollars and I can tell how it works.
It's an elegant system for producing paper "currency" which can be exchanged for products. However elegant it may be, it's also quite naive and/or dishonest to overlook some of it's shortcomings.
Namely, it is the people who got in early, when the purchasing power of those pieces of paper was higher and there were much fewer of them, or they got them at Fed discount window who have most to gain. Latecomers have little to gain and the most to lose. If the system collapses or is regulated out of legitimacy, it is the latecomers who will suffer the most. I would go as far as calling it a pyramid scheme.
How could it collapse? In numerous ways. Various governments might start auditing / taxing people who use it as a form of currency. They might legislate against it, deeming it to be bogus financial instrument. It might get a reputation for money laundering and all the popular exchanges get shutdown along with the accounts. A rival to US dollar might appear which is safer to use or has other benefits, like being an actual valuable asset. Someone (the Fed/Congress) might develop a crack / exploit which allows them to inject "poisoned" transactions into the monetary system in forms of 0% interest on borrowed money, bail outs, stimulus packages, gov't spending items, or worse, just prints so many dollars that wallets are wiped or drained of purchasing power. A large bank may become insolvent once the long term interest rates go above the US bond returns, and then all the balance sheet start bleeding red ink. There might be a run on banks if the system shows sign of collapse / compromise and the stores/merchants stop accepting dollars as money.
All of these scenarios are feasible and I think it only a matter of time before the system is hit by one of them. I have no issue with a paper currency that is fully backed by some form of reserve per se but I do not see the long term viability in the system, which allows politicians to meddle with the monetary and economic policy and print their own ticket.
Well that's the thing. Those who print money have real power.
If all of a sudden whatever it is they print is not recognized as actual money by actual people in real life, they do not have that power anymore.
They are fighting this with the biggest guns they have - terrorism accusations (that's because they can't stick child molestation to it yet) because they are afraid of losing power over what money is and over what they can do by printing it.
In reality they should be MUCH more scared of Bitcoin than of these Liberty Dollars, because while Liberty Dollars are nice (and I recommend people to own gold and silver bullion, just don't pay more than 5% spot price on your purchase,) the real threat comes from ability of people to exchange payments with complete disregard to any governmental body that wants to keep power over what money is, how it's created, how it's transacted, how it's taxed, etc., and in case of Bitcoin and other solutions like that - it's peer to peer, there is no transaction fee, there is no information that can be passed to the government, the money has fixed value, it cannot be inflated (AFAI understand for now) and this is scary stuff for governments.
Governments would have you believe that deflation is bad while they are inflating away. Well, it's bad for them, because they are the biggest debtors and they have no legitimate ways of repaying the debt.
But it's good for actual people, who have actually experienced deflation in 19 century in USA, when prices were steadily dropping over the century and dollar appreciated by a factor of 2.
Imagine your problem being not that prices are going up, but that they are going down, while quality and competition is increasing - just terrible.
So of-course anybody who wants that is a terrorist.
Why is silver so valuable?
- because there is much less silver in the world than there is even of gold. But silver is not very good at being a monetary metal, the only real money is gold.
However silver is almost as good, but it has too many industrial applications, so that's the only problem.
Of-course this problem is completely non-existent for US fiat - nobody needs them, nobody can buy anything for them. Well, in non-trivial amounts anyway. When some Arabs from Dubai tried getting rid of their dollars to buy an asset in USA - some ports in US, Congress prevented the deal. You think it has nothing to do with the fact that US dollars have no value at all? Japanese, who are in this terrible shape now, printing yen and driving their purchasing power down when they need it most, instead of getting rid of their US debt, you think they don't know that the debt has no value and if they try to sell it, they'll get nothing for it?
They are stuck though, they'll have to cut their losses and just not throw credit at US anymore. And since 40% of US gov't spending comes out of bond sales, that would be fun to observe, how they will squirm in agony, trying desperately not to cut their own preferred subsidies/pay outs, etc.
As to taxes - hey, in all hyper inflationary situations the wheelbarrow that held the pile of cash was worth more than than that paper in it. It's the same freaking thing. US dollar lost 4/5 of value in less than 15 years. Paying taxes in it? For that somebody has to be stupid enough to save and invest in dollar denominated currencies. Nobody is doing it anymore, that's the reason the jobs are gone.
There is a reason we switched to fiat currency, and there is no going back. It simply is not feasible, nor realistic.
- speak for yourself. I have switched and I am not going back.
JP Morgan also understands it now, they accept gold as collateral from their counterparties.
Central banks are buying gold, have been for a few years now.
So you do not understand what is happening - fiat is being deliberately destroyed, and in fact all central banks understand this perfectly, as they keep buying and holding US debt in desperate attempt to keep the value from dropping to 0 in 1 day.
Why am I saying this? Look at Japan - they hold about a trillion in gov't obligations in their Treasury, and now they have this terrible disaster. They need to buy so many things, oil, metal, food, materials, products, everything, yet they are printing Yen instead of selling US bonds. They are concerned that if they start selling, the value will plummet. Well of-course it will plummet. Because there is no value there at all. I am amused how people say: silver/gold have no value. And what, US bonds have value? Dollars have value? Dollars lost 98% of purchasing power since 1913. Even in the past decade, US dollar lost 4/5 of value.
You are telling me: there is no going back? I am telling you: there is no going forward. This game is over. The fiat is being manipulated by the government.
You are commenting on a story about a guy, who wrote software that basically provides competition to the official legal tender. People across the world are buying and holding physical gold and silver and other commodities just to get rid of dollars.
Deutsche Boerse got rid of a bunch of dollars and bought whatever it could put hands on - in this case NY Stock Exchange. There will be more and more people getting rid of dollars to get any assets they can from USA, and you are talking about not going back, away from fiat?
You are getting passed by on your left and on your right. There is a wall straight ahead, turn on the lights.
Silver, not so much, but gold is money.
learn something while you are on /.
In any case, any commodity is actually more valuable than the dollar, and the dollar has been on a steady decline since the Fed was created in 1913, as well as the IRS (and the Constitution was subverted for both of those abominations to take place)
The US dollar gained 100% of value over 19 century. It lost 98% of value since 1913. If you think you know what money is, then tell me, what kind of money is that? I'll tell you what kind of money that is - that's the kind of money I do not own.
No, the stupid ones are those, who believe that whatever crap the US Fed and Mint are releasing is actually money.
How about this:
The US Constitution dates back to 1787
From 1792, when the Mint Act was passed, the dollar was pegged to silver at 371.25 grains (24.056 g), or 24.75 grains (1.604 g) of gold.
How about the Fed and the Mint actually producing reserves, and exchanging all of the dollars that are in circulation already for silver/gold?
Unless they do that - they are the counterfeiters, not the guy who releases a silver dollar.
I don't own any fiat currencies, I only own precious metals. So I have in reality already 'sent' the dollars back where they belong, you have them, you will have them all, with all the consequences of hyper inflation.
As to trademark/copyright violations, etc., he wasn't charged with any of that, just like he wasn't charged with counterfeiting.
As to dollars being close to other US coins - when was the last time you actually held a silver dollar from the old or a 50 dollar coin precisely? People who bought the coins knew what they were getting (though I wouldn't go that way, I prefer spot price, thank you very much.)
The only real counterfeiters in USA are the US Fed, the Mint, and Treasury. The real crooks are in the White House, Senate and Congress.
The real threat to USA is not some guy with silver coins, they are in high positions of power, destroying US economy and currency.
We have a government to protect the people even without specific people claiming damages after the fact. Instead we elect representatives who make laws that protect us from well understood past damages, to prevent and interrupt them.
- the damage is done by the government, which destroys the value of the national currency and drives out savings and investment capital to other nations.
Your elected government officials have failed to protect your best interests, and the person in the story, who is now facing prison time and fines and confiscation is not a corporation, he is a guy, who believed his product has buyers (and it does have buyers) and those are also people.
You don't understand government; you want to eliminate it and take your chances with corporate powers. But we have a government, because we've seen how those autocratic orgs abuse the rights and property of the people.
- you fail at understanding of what America is about. It was build by people who wanted to keep their freedoms, and thus they limited the power of the federal gov't and have only ratified the Constitution of the nation after it was explicitly modified to underscore that the federal powers are in fact limited to very narrow definition.
Your 'elected officials' have usurped the power and subverted the constitution and have turned it into a meaningless document, that is no longer followed. And the States should feel cheated on the contract, that the Constitution was, and they should nullify it, because it has been broken over the last 100 years too much, it's invalid now.
You also don't understand the most basic economics: the ounce of silver in those "dollars" was worth $10-19, averaging about $14, through 1999, but was sold for $20 (legitimate dollars).
- yet they WERE sold, he did not steal anybody's money, though they could have made a more sound decision and bought silver bars with 5% markup instead.
He didn't cheat anybody, the weight of silver is on the coins.
You look like a shill for the government agenda.