# A Challenge to Modern Liberals Regarding their Fealty to the Principles they Espouse **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 11, 2013, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693 "2013-06-11T02:57:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/141 "2013-06-13T01:30:08Z")
If anyone wants a trip down memory lane, here is [the three-post OP](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=575129) from **jrodefeld** from three years ago. I offer it without comment. > [@jayarod7](#): > > Inflation IS worse. What you have to understand is that the CPI and other statistics the government uses to measure inflation have been continually changed and altered to under report inflation. And they don’t calculate food and fuel prices! How absurd is that? Prices for food and gas could be doubling every year but they would still report an inflation rate of 1%. > > You should check out Shadow Stats: > > [Alternate Inflation Charts](http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts) > > If we calculated the inflation rate the way they did in 1990, it would be around 5% instead of 1%. If we calculate inflation the same way they did in 1980, it would be around 10% not 1%. _Shadow Stats!_ For anyone who doubts that libertarian creationism is a real thing, they give their own artificial data to make the case for us. This is market fundamentalism at its purest. The real data don’t support their favorite conclusions, so they make up their own data to compensate. _Shadow Stats!_ stems from the same mentality that gave us _Unskewed Polls!_ in the last election cycle, where the line between political belief and personal religion vanishes. One great thing about modern econo-data is that there actually are non-governmental price indices out there that we can look at if we doubt the government’s CPI calculation. It is true that the government has played around a bit with the CPI, so it is within the realm of reason to want something objective to verify that the CPI isn’t too badly off. The trick is finding a reliable one. The most famous of these alternate measures has gotta be MIT’s Billion Price Project. Not perfect but at least it’s real data, not fantasy numbers made up for ideological convenience. And the people who created this index were kind enough to create graphs that compare their own findings with the official CPI. [You can see it here](http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/). The two indices hang together quite nicely. The final hilarious nail in this coffin has got to be the cost of a subscription to _Shadow Stats!_. [Seven years ago](http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/index.php?topic=1425.0), the cost of said subscription was $175. Woof! But checking again today, I can see that the cost of a subscription has risen to [an astounding $175](http://www.shadowstats.com/subscriptions). Feel the inflation! ([Krugman did this calculation last year](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/another-alternative-inflation-measure/), and the number still hasn’t changed.) Look at the “data” they provide and they insist on much higher prices, but when we glance at the one number on their entire website that is subject to genuine market forces and we see no change at all. > [@jayarod7](#): > > History has taught us that there are no restraints in spending without a commodity backing the money. The temptation to print money is SO powerful that politicians and special interests cannot resist. They will print until the currency becomes worthless. I will never understand why people who know nothing about history cite the historical record as if it supports their position. Here is the most relevant piece of information from the entire historical record: **Percentage of gold standard monetary systems that failed in history: 100%.** This is a perfect rate of failure, unblemished by any exception. The gold standard is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. As we look around the world today, we see only fiat money systems, of various degrees of success, because literally every gold standard system on the face of this planet went extinct. While it’s true that fiat money systems also fail from time to time, it’s never the case that such a country returns to gold. That literally never happens anymore. To quote an old post from [**Exapno Mapcase**](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13773437#post13773437) that **Der Trihs** referred to earlier in the thread: > [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > Asking how long fiat money has lasted is like asking how long democracy has lasted. > > We don’t know, because the trend is always toward fiat money and toward democracy. They are the de facto standards everywhere, even though they are relatively recent. > > It does happen that democracy does revert to a form of totalitarianism in some places, but those are not staple in the modern world. It does not happen that fiat money returns to a gold standard. Ever. > > Think about that. You can go around the world and find every kind of political system and every range of philosophies, from left to right and off the charts, for the last century or so, and not one of them has ever made the choice to return to the gold standards that proponents claim is infinitely superior to fiat money. How is that possible if the gold standard has even the slightest marginal value over fiat money? > > Obviously, it’s not possible. The gold standard has no value in a modern global economy. So the answer to the OP is that fiat money will last as long as our economic system does. We just don’t know how long because we are presumably in the early days, just as we’re at the early days of democracy. The historical record here is perfectly clear, and the level of self-delusion required to miss it is just breathtaking. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/142 "2013-06-13T01:30:11Z")
> [@jayarod7](#): > > So you are assuming that if the government doesn’t perform a function, no one will? In many cases, yes. In other cases the government is simply much better at it. And as a rule, the federal government does a better job than local governments; it is less corrupt, more competent, fairer, and has far more resources. Given the choice I’d greatly weaken the state/county/city governments and transfer most of their functions and authority to the federal government. > [@jayarod7](#): > > This is absurd. Policemen should be a local institution. Which would make them corrupt mercenaries. > [@jayarod7](#): > > There are plenty of ways for the government to collect revenue that don’t depend on the income tax. There are import duties, toll roads, optional taxes levied against people for engaging in activities they could easily avoid if they chose. I limited Republic could be funded in a libertarian way that does not involve the non aggression principle. In other words, hand yet more money to rich while crushing ordinary people under taxes. And no, you couldn’t fund a functional government of any kind with your silly “non aggression principle”. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/143 "2013-06-13T01:30:49Z")
> [@jayarod7](#): > > So you are assuming that if the government doesn’t perform a function, no one will? > > This is absurd. Policemen should be a local institution. > > There are plenty of ways for the government to collect revenue that don’t depend on the income tax. There are import duties, toll roads, optional taxes levied against people for engaging in activities they could easily avoid if they chose. I limited Republic could be funded in a libertarian way that does not involve the non aggression principle. Really? How are any of those revenues collected without threat of violence or imprisonment? Why is coercion sometimes bad, but not others? ---
**Author:** ![jayarod7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dc4da7/32.png) [@jayarod7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayarod7)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/144 "2013-06-13T01:45:16Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > **jayarod7** , I do hope you understand this point. You may feel that your essential argument is similar whether the amount was twenty trillion or just one, and whether the loans were “secret” or public. > > But if you have the integrity to admit that your sources are bullshitting you, you may achieve enlightenment. > > (\* - Based on my impression of [forbes.com](http://forbes.com) competence, their bullshit number may be less a matter of Machiavellian propaganda then simply some junior reporter told to browse through the PDF and look for the largest dollar amount mentioned. :smack: ) I’ll say this on that subject. I know that 16 trillion dollar figure was widely reported and not just on right wing websites. I admit that I did NOT read the entire GAO report that was linked to earlier. However, if the numbers were misleading, then I was mislead on that (and so were many others). It is certainly not that first time and I try to carefully examine the sources I quote. But, as you mentioned, even if that number is exaggerated, my point is still quite valid. The point is that the Federal Reserve has embarked on an unprecedented experiment with monetary stimulus and there is virtually no oversight. Lets suppose the number reported from this report only amounts to a trillion dollars and some change. The only reason we even know about this is due to the watered down “audit” that Ron Paul and Alan Grayson managed to pass in the house (it was watered down dramatically in the Senate). Are we to suppose that this money is ALL the Fed has passed out in secret? Even Matt Taibbi recognizes the danger and extent of the Fed’s monetary expansion in a new piece: [The Mad Science of the National Debt, page 3](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-mad-science-of-the-national-debt-20130522?page=3) \*\*As is pretty much always the case with modern American politics, people seem to find hobgoblins and conspiracies everywhere in every place except where the real thing, or something close to it, actually exists. In the case of the debt issue, we have a raging national controversy over something as meaningless and routine as raising the debt ceiling, while a genuinely radical experiment in something vaguely like centrally planned economics is going on at the Fed and the other central banks around the world, and the public has mostly yawned in response. . . . Essentially, all of these central banks are creating vast sums of money and thrusting themselves into the world economy as gigantic buyers of stuff, be they mortgages or treasury bonds. In theory, the banks will eventually “sterilize” or reverse the process by selling off all this stuff they’ve bought and draining the economy of its “excess liquidity,” but no one knows when that will be, and for the time being, QE is pure financial steroids. It’s stimulus on a much bigger scale than Obama’s recovery program, it’s open-ended, and it’s not voted upon. In fact, apart from the fact that the Fed chairman is nominated by the president, the actions of the central bank are not merely undemocratic but intensely secret, with minutes of its Federal Open Markets Committee (which debates decisions like the raising of interest rates or QE) only released three weeks after decisions are made. The Fed therefore never has to engage the public in real time about its decisions. Instead, it hands down edicts, and Wall Street watches for clues into its mysterious behind-closed-doors deliberations the way Catholics watch the Apostolic Palace for smoke before papal elections.\*\* Is it only myself who have a problem with the actions of the Federal Reserve? I might have been misled on the figures of that particular sum of money, but this is standard operating procedure at the Fed right now. And it is undemocratic and intensely secret. I don’t mind if you find out factually incorrect statements in sources, but to suggest that a widely (possibly) misquoted figure somehow invalidates my thesis is hardly true. ---
**Author:** ![woodstockbirdybird](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/woodstockbirdybird/32/7905_2.png) [@woodstockbirdybird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woodstockbirdybird)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/145 "2013-06-13T02:40:31Z")
> [@jayarod7](#): > > Thats not the point. The point is you were doing something illegal and it should NOT be illegal. You could have gotten caught. You could have gotten in plenty of trouble. To argue against what I am saying by claiming “I am really good at evading the law” is silly. We shouldn’t have to hide from law enforcement. We should eliminate tons of laws that should not have been laws in the first place. Should it be legal? Most definitely. Could I have gotten in “plenty of trouble” for smoking weed? Not hardly. I guess it depends on where you live. I’m in Oakland. I guarantee you LE here doesn’t give two shits if you’re merely getting high recreationally. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/146 "2013-06-13T02:42:32Z")
> [@jayarod7](#): > > Sigh. Okay, the threat of violence is equally as pernicious as enacting violence if it is threatened against peaceful individuals. If you are a completely obedient person subservient to the State you might get away with never having overt physical violence used against you by the State. But you wouldn’t be free. So the only way to be free is to go on a crime spree? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/147 "2013-06-13T02:49:22Z")
> [@jayarod7](#): > > So you are assuming that if the government doesn’t perform a function, no one will? > > This is absurd. Policemen should be a local institution. So you’re suggesting we have private police forces? People going around with uniforms and badges and guns enforcing laws - but not subject to any government control? This is probably the worst idea you’ve had in this thread. > [@jayarod7](#): > > There are plenty of ways for the government to collect revenue that don’t depend on the income tax. There are import duties, toll roads, optional taxes levied against people for engaging in activities they could easily avoid if they chose. I limited Republic could be funded in a libertarian way that does not involve the non aggression principle. Why are all these other taxes any different than an income tax? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/148 "2013-06-13T02:50:33Z")
> [@jayarod7](#): > > What is this link supposed to prove? It seems to say that secession might be a reasonable principle but that libertarians shouldn’t support the Confederacy in the Civil War. Fine. Sign me up for that. I certainly don’t support the Confederacy. > > But I am saying that our nation did quite well **with a dollar pegged to gold**. What does the Civil War or the principle of secession have to do with that? That was not what you claimed, the claim was that we did exceptionally well, no conditionals. > [@jayarod7](#): > > Of course, slavery was the most abhorrent violation of libertarianism and the non aggression principle imaginable. > > Can you please respond to the totality of how the United States evolved and became more prosperous and built a large vibrant middle class with a dollar pegged to gold? Eh, He don’t know me very well, folks, do he? 🙂 It seems that you are not aware of another connection the civil war has to this discussion. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/house-divided/post/untold-civil-war-stories-goodbye-gold-standard/2011/10/07/gIQAMAU0VL\_blog.html](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/house-divided/post/untold-civil-war-stories-goodbye-gold-standard/2011/10/07/gIQAMAU0VL_blog.html) > [@](#): > > Very early in the conflict, the Union faced the need for a then-staggering amount of resources. The United States in 1860 had a gross public debt of $64.8 million; by December 1861 it had ballooned to $270 million. Without a national paper currency, the government funded the war to that point primarily through bonds and Treasury notes. > > The disaster at Ball’s Bluff and friction with Great Britain over the United States seizing the British ship Trent helped erode public confidence and, coupled with financial insecurity, eventually sparked a run on the banks. In response, the banks of New York on Dec. 30 suspended the payment of the gold and silver that backed various financial vehicles. > > One solution to the crisis involved taking the country off the gold standard and creating a national paper currency. The Legal Tender Act of Feb. 25, 1862, put into circulation what became known as greenbacks — fiat money that was considered as good as gold. Republicans who had doubts about the constitutionality of the measure realized that the alternative of an empty treasury was far worse. So, logically by the Libertarian playbook, it should had led to disaster no? > [@](#): > > Most general works focus on these acts and the bond drives by the government, but the concern over the national debt outlasted the war. It became an important political issue in Reconstruction. Vigorous debate occurred over whether to repudiate the obligation — essentially, to default on the loans — or to honor the arrangement. In the end, the government paid up, and it became a point of national pride that the United States could carry and retire its war debt, providing a symbol that the country was ready to take a more expansive role on the international stage. By the late 19th century, the government was running a surplus. Uh, it turns out fiat money also defeated slavery, that was the most abhorrent violation of libertarianism. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/149 "2013-06-13T02:56:22Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > The historical record here is perfectly clear, and the level of self-delusion required to miss it is just breathtaking. David Brin once pointed out that there were no constitutional democracies prior to the eighteenth century. And people weren’t living in some libertarian paradise before the eighteenth century. So why would anyone think eliminating constitutional democracy would produce a libertarian paradise now? ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/150 "2013-06-13T03:29:55Z")
> [@jayarod7](#): > > Okay this is very important and I want you to remember this. The non aggression principle only means that neither private citizens nor the government should \*\*\*initiate \*\*\*force or violence against peaceful individuals. > > Got it? Initiate. That means that laws that punish criminals and use force in defense or to protect the victims of violence are permitted in a libertarian society. > > These types of laws do NOT violate the Non Aggression Principle. Sorry mate in what world could we stop mans’ natural tendency to gain advantage through any means possible? I mean it would be great if we could all just get along but it I have not seen any evidence that this can happen beyond small groups. Dont we have non aggression principles today? I mean I cant just go and punch someone in the mouth and police officer cant just beat me up if he wants? ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/151 "2013-06-13T04:14:00Z")
Faced with a world model as astounding as OP’s, one asks: Is he sincere and intellectually honest? Does he have an open mind? We have our answer. Twenty trillion in secret loans turns out to be a single trillion in public loans? But … \* It doesn’t matter! The false figure was “widely quoted.” \* :smack: Before we move on, let me ask for a cite on that. Forbes’ $16 trillion figure is obvious bullshit, concocted to delude. Who exactly are the other sources that fell for this lie? Come on, **jayarod7** , don’t wait for the consecutive translation; you wrote “widely quoted”; are there any quoters besides other idiotic right-wing sites like Forbes? … And then, to defend himself, OP writes “Are we to suppose that this money is ALL the Fed has passed out in secret?” – Oops! It looks like I was right after all. OP, I suggest _Illuminati Rothschild_ as search terms if you want to “research” this idea on YouTube. … and trots out a piece by Matt Taibbi, of which the only relevance is that it also tosses out “trillions of dollars” in a scary fashion. The names jayarod7 and jrodefeld are similar enough as to make one wonder. **jayarod7** , what do think about forced vaccination? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/152 "2013-06-13T04:40:47Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Faced with a world model as astounding as OP’s, one asks: Is he sincere and intellectually honest? Does he have an open mind? I dunno. I think he’s sincere. Just misinformed. I’m guessing he’s young and he got a hold of some libertarian literature and he had that epiphany of having The Answer suddenly revealed to him. A lot of nonsense like libertarianism or marxism or objectivism or anarcho-syndicalism can sound credible as long as you present it in isolation and avoid the counter-evidence. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/153 "2013-06-13T05:26:54Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I dunno. I think he’s sincere. Just misinformed. I’m guessing he’s young and he got a hold of some libertarian literature and he had that epiphany of having The Answer suddenly revealed to him. A lot of nonsense like libertarianism or marxism or objectivism or anarcho-syndicalism can sound credible as long as you present it in isolation and avoid the counter-evidence. Yes. What’s amazing is what a mish-mash his ideas are. He hates government … but somehow focuses on fiat money and fractional-reserve banking as the enemy. :smack: But he can’t actually articulate any economic ideas. I don’t bother clicking to his crackpot sites – I’ll bet they start with loud gesticulations about the rising price of gold. At one point he seemed to associate the decline of America’s middle class with the FRB. :smack: I’ve written the following 5 times before at SDMB, but will write it a sixth time: _The average man’s understanding of economics would improve ten-fold if he just forgets everything he thinks he knows about “money” and focuses on the real economy, pretending all trades are barters if that helps._ One thing I did figure out is that endorsement of civil rights, etc. in OP was just a subterfuge, trying to draw “progressives” in. His only three real themes are [ul] [li] Unreasoned hatred of government and fiat money[/li][li] Unreasoned hatred of government and fiat money[/li][li] Unreasoned hatred of government and fiat money[/li][/ul] It’s hard to argue with fuzzy inchoate philosophic musings. That’s why I focus on his specific factual allegation about “$20 trillion in secret loans.” This has now been completely debunked. I won’t address **jayarod7** again unless he demonstrates the intellectual honesty to write, in no uncertain terms: _“Forbes’ headline about $16 trillion was total bullshit and I regret inflicting their lie into this thread.”_ If he lacks the gumption to do that … ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/154 "2013-06-13T06:17:23Z")
Hello there. You’re better off foregoing the essay approach and having them focus on one point at a time. I suggest starting a thread on the empirical case for sound money or the irrational fear of deflation. They all claim to be pragmatic empiricists, so use that to your advantage. I’d do it myself if I had the time and patience. Good luck fellow. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/155 "2013-06-13T07:13:51Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > I suggest starting a thread on the empirical case for sound money or the irrational fear of deflation. There’s no such case, and it’s not irrational to fear deflation. > [@WillFarnaby](#): > > I’d do it myself if I had the time and patience. And were…actually right. That _does_ help. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/156 "2013-06-13T07:37:15Z")
Okay, rather than argue over ideology, let’s talk practice. Perhaps the OP would like to outline the fundamental principles upon which he feels society should run. Would there be some form of government in your society? How would the officials in your government be chosen? Would there be ongoing legislation in your government? How would legislation be enacted? To what degree would individuals be allowed to refuse to recognize the authority of the government over them? In what circumstances would the government be allowed to override the wishes of an individual? Would there be powers that the people would be prohibited from giving to the government? How would controversies between people who have different views on what the fundamental principles are be resolved? I realize the OP has already written things that suggest some of his answers to these questions but I don’t want to speak for him. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/157 "2013-06-13T09:57:56Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > So you want to disband the monetary systems of the entire world and end any kind of government assurance of the maintenance of organized society in favor of the right to enjoy drugs, games and hookers?  Fine! I’ll start my own civilization! With blackjack! And hookers! ---
**Author:** ![PigArcher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@PigArcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PigArcher)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/158 "2013-06-13T12:53:49Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Fine! I’ll start my own civilization! With blackjack! And hookers! Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “Going Galt,” e.g., “I really Galted it up in Vegas last weekend.” ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/159 "2013-06-13T16:37:25Z")
Once again… “Money” does not exist. “Money” is simply a concept for a medium of exchange between various goods and services. People who scream about Gold and Fiat Money do not understand this. They think “Money” actually is something, when as I said, it is only an idea. Nothing has any value except within the Illusion of the World where we decide that since we need it to live, or it can be used for something, or that it is Cool, or that other people want it for whatever reasons, it then has ‘value’. Given that this ‘value’ is fluid and ever changing, and that there are a nigh infinite number of things that need to be exchanged for other various things on a daily basis, the concept of “Money” comes into play as being a **Common Means of Exchange**. Money allows us to exchange Beans for Automobiles for Hours of Labor. And yet again, NOTHING IS MONEY. Money is only that concept of exchange, for which we in this current Illusion long ago decided to use bits of paper with numbers on them (rather than bits of metal, which we still use to a lesser degree). With progress, we are even moving beyond the need for a physical medium and money is becoming only numbers stored in computers. Ephemeral electronic scoreboards saying that you have N amount of Money. “Fiat” money? All money is fiat money. Even Gold. You’re just declaring (by the fiat of the shared illusion) that Gold is actually worth something. Something more valuable than food or fuel or sometimes, even people’s lives. ---
**Author:** ![jayarod7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dc4da7/32.png) [@jayarod7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayarod7)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2013, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693/160 "2013-06-13T21:05:27Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > If anyone wants a trip down memory lane, here is [the three-post OP](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=575129) from **jrodefeld** from three years ago. I offer it without comment. > _Shadow Stats!_ > > For anyone who doubts that libertarian creationism is a real thing, they give their own artificial data to make the case for us. This is market fundamentalism at its purest. The real data don’t support their favorite conclusions, so they make up their own data to compensate. _Shadow Stats!_ stems from the same mentality that gave us _Unskewed Polls!_ in the last election cycle, where the line between political belief and personal religion vanishes. > > One great thing about modern econo-data is that there actually are non-governmental price indices out there that we can look at if we doubt the government’s CPI calculation. It is true that the government has played around a bit with the CPI, so it is within the realm of reason to want something objective to verify that the CPI isn’t too badly off. The trick is finding a reliable one. The most famous of these alternate measures has gotta be MIT’s Billion Price Project. Not perfect but at least it’s real data, not fantasy numbers made up for ideological convenience. And the people who created this index were kind enough to create graphs that compare their own findings with the official CPI. > > [You can see it here](http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/). The two indices hang together quite nicely. > > The final hilarious nail in this coffin has got to be the cost of a subscription to _Shadow Stats!_. [Seven years ago](http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/index.php?topic=1425.0), the cost of said subscription was $175. Woof! But checking again today, I can see that the cost of a subscription has risen to [an astounding $175](http://www.shadowstats.com/subscriptions). Feel the inflation! ([Krugman did this calculation last year](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/another-alternative-inflation-measure/), and the number still hasn’t changed.) Look at the “data” they provide and they insist on much higher prices, but when we glance at the one number on their entire website that is subject to genuine market forces and we see no change at all. Are you suggesting that Shadow Stats is making up these numbers? The creator of the website, John Williams is highly qualified to evaluate economic data and is far from the charlatan you seem to be suggesting he is. From the main page of shadow stats: \*\*Walter J. “John” Williams was born in 1949. He received an A.B. in Economics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1971, and was awarded a M.B.A. from Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1972, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. During his career as a consulting economist, John has worked with individuals as well as Fortune 500 companies. Although I am known formally as Walter J. Williams, my friends call me “John.” For 30 years, I have been a private consulting economist and, out of necessity, had to become a specialist in government economic reporting. One of my early clients was a large manufacturer of commercial airplanes, who had developed an econometric model for predicting revenue passenger miles. The level of revenue passenger miles was their primary sales forecasting tool, and the model was heavily dependent on the GNP (now GDP) as reported by the Department of Commerce. Suddenly, their model stopped working, and they asked me if I could fix it. I realized the GNP numbers were faulty, corrected them for my client (official reporting was similarly revised a couple of years later) and the model worked again, at least for a while, until GNP methodological changes eventually made the underlying data worthless. That began a lengthy process of exploring the history and nature of economic reporting and in interviewing key people involved in the process from the early days of government reporting through the present. For a number of years I conducted surveys among business economists as to the quality of government statistics (the vast majority thought it was pretty bad), and my results led to front page stories in 1989 in the New York Times and Investors Daily (now Investors Business Daily), considerable coverage in the broadcast media and a joint meeting with representatives of all the government’s statistical agencies. Nonetheless, the quality of government reporting has deteriorated sharply in the last couple of decades. Reporting problems have included methodological changes to economic reporting that have pushed headline economic and inflation results out of the realm of real-world or common experience. Over the decades, well in excess of 1,000 presentations have been given on the economic outlook, or on approaches to analyzing economic data, to clients—large and small—including talks with members of the business, banking, government, press, academic, brokerage and investment communities. I also have provided testimony before Congress (details here). An old friend—the late-Doug Gillespie—asked me some years back to write a series of articles on the quality of government statistics. The response to those writings (the Primer Series available at the top-center of this page) was so strong that we started [ShadowStats.com](http://ShadowStats.com) (Shadow Government Statistics) in 2004. The newsletter is published as part of my economic consulting services. — John Williams \*\* The numbers are not fictitious. All John Williams is doing is using the governments own method of calculating the rate of inflation. The government changes the methods of calculating inflation every decade or so to under report the true extent of inflation. So all John Williams is doing is using the CPI calculation method the government used in 1990 or 1980 to calculate todays inflation rate. Therefore, if the government did NOT change its method of calculating the CPI, the governments own statistics would correspond precisely to what Shadow Stats is reporting. What leads to you think that the government would NOT want to misrepresent its economic statistics? Unless you work for the government you would be happy to see its misrepresentations exposed. And it seems you have a terribly poor understanding of economics if you think it somehow discredits those of us who think that inflation is higher than reported that ShadowStats subscription is $175 and it was $175 seven years ago. Anyone who knows anything about the effects of inflation know that prices don’t rise uniformly throughout the economy. Some areas have experienced tremendous price inflation over the past thirty years, like medical care and college tuition, some areas (like consumer electronics) have actually seen falling prices due to the competition and relative lack of government intervention. ShadowStats subscriptions cost $175 because that is what John Williams chooses to charge. If you deny the tremendous price inflation in medical care, college tuition, fuel and food prices (incidentally some of the most critical areas of the economy) then you are really lying to yourself to avoid having to reassess your ideological persuasion. > [@Hellestal](#): > > I will never understand why people who know nothing about history cite the historical record as if it supports their position. > > Here is the most relevant piece of information from the entire historical record: **Percentage of gold standard monetary systems that failed in history: 100%.** This is a perfect rate of failure, unblemished by any exception. The gold standard is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. As we look around the world today, we see only fiat money systems, of various degrees of success, because literally every gold standard system on the face of this planet went extinct. > > While it’s true that fiat money systems also fail from time to time, it’s never the case that such a country returns to gold. That literally never happens anymore. To quote an old post from [**Exapno Mapcase**](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13773437#post13773437) that **Der Trihs** referred to earlier in the thread: > The historical record here is perfectly clear, and the level of self-delusion required to miss it is just breathtaking. First, to claim that no nation that was on a fiat currency ever returned to a gold standard or other system of sound money is astoundingly incorrect. What about every instance of hyperinflation in world history? In every case of hyperinflation, following the turmoil and chaos caused by that upheaval, the only choice for such a society is to return to a sounder basis for their money. In the United States, our founders had the Continental Dollars which were used during the Revolutionary War. They printed too many of them and they became essentially worthless, hence the expression “not worth a Continental”. From that experience, the founders make clear in the Constitution that only gold and silver should be legal tender. We went from a fiat currency to a gold standard. We also abandoned the Gold Standard during the Civil War and printed paper money to fund the war effort. Following that war, we resumed the Gold Standard. You have to remember that no libertarian today is advocating a gold standard like what we had in the 19th century. Rather we are advocating Free Market Money. “A Free Market Money System”, by Friedrich Hayek: > **[Mises Daily | Mises Institute](https://mises.org/mises-daily)** Don’t allow the government to print money, allow the people to choose what they desire to use as money. No legal tender laws. No monopolistic bank practices. Back to your comments, it is patently absurd to look at a snapshot in history and observe that no nation has a currency backed by gold and thus declare that sound money has “failed” disregarding the fact that historically societies have thrived on a gold backed currency for centuries at a time. One might as easily claim that “peace” has failed and thus is not worth advocating for since politicians keep taking nations to war against one another. It is especially absurd that you dismiss honest money by looking at the world today, enmeshed as it is in a worldwide economic crisis brought about in large part by the business cycle caused by fiat money creation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-challenge-to-modern-liberals-regarding-their-fealty-to-the-principles-they-espouse/660693.md?page=9)