I have to say that I find the amount of faith in the current monetary regime demonstrated by many of those here quite touching. Unfortunately it is doomed to disappointment, as has always been the case with every fiat currency in history so far. But of course this is the USA, and so the dollar is special, right? We get special dispensation, we are allowed to violate all the rules with impunity, because we are the chosen country.
Ooooookay.
Several years ago I was reading a collectors' guide to Confederate paper money, and ran across an interesting note. The companies which printed Confederate currency insisted on being paid in gold, according to the author. Seems they had a good idea as to the amount of inflation they were promulgating by running their presses, and wanted no part of it.
So, gold is just one more commodity, and money is digits that are created on a keyboard with no more effort than it takes me to type this post. That my friends is demonstrative of the value of belief. And in fact it is simply that belief which allows the current monetary regime to continue apace. Once it is just as widely believed that "the Emperor has no clothes" then it might come to pass that some new belief structure will arise and the dollar will be just one more footnote to history, joining the many others which were debased beyond survival by leaders who thought style would be an adequate substitute for substance.
It is not my intent to be argumentative, I hope to be merely informative. It may be that some will perceive what I am doing as attacking them personally. Not so, I am attacking a system of belief that, no matter how firmly it has held sway in the past, has always in the end proved a crashing and expensive disappointment to its adherents. I'd hate to see anyone here included among that number the next time around, but it is certainly your right to allow yourself to be deluded by whatever authority figure you choose to embrace. You want to listen to Keynsians, that's fine by me. You want to dismiss the Austrian school and its views, that's fine by me. As the old saying goes, you pays your money and you takes your chances. Choices are seldom without cost in one way or another, after all.
http://www.mises.org/studyguide.aspx?action=subject&Id=11lpl/nc
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http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htmThe Gods of the Copybook Headings
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AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.
