Well, I assume by then the vast majority of transactions will be electronic, so paper money will be quaint, if not obsolete. Possibly “gold bugs” will be replaced by “paper wasps”; people who determinedly maintain that a non-paper currency will doom the economy, someday, and the electonic transactions are symptoms of mass delusion or whatever.
Still, a banknote issued today should still be worth its face value in 2063, assuming the United States still exists in some form.
And even if it doesn’t – or, come to think of it, even if it does – then that banknote will be worth more than its face value to collectors, like Confederate money.
The Internet is filled with cliched “takedowns” of Rothbard that provide no cite, link or quote of his work. Thanks for digging one of them up.
Slaver racists were not the only victims of the civil war, but statists’ delight for events in which the slaughter of innocents took place is often overlooked.
Is the desire to point guns at people and make them help the less fortunate the same as the desire to help the less fortunate through sweat and toil? Statists often conflate the two as evidenced above.
With impeccable comic timing BG links to a series of silliness in which a statist makes an argument (?), pretends nobody has destroyed that argument, and proceeds to label libertarianism a cult.
Actually only your first link offers some examples, but unfortunately it has to use specific policies from places like Mauritius, so no, no one has really destroyed that argument, no country is really Libertarian, the best Libertarians can do is lists of “most libertarian”.
I did found the links and reports of what Rothbard was doing, so, you are welcome. The point stands.
Nonsense. That is a false choice.
The question isn’t “what countries are libertarian?” The question was why aren’t any countries libertarian?". Apology accepted.
You made the unfounded claim that libertarians don’t want to help the less fortunate. They simply just don’t want to use he force of government to make people help the less fortunate.
Which means they don’t want the less fortunate to be helped, since that’s exactly what happens when the government doesn’t “force” people to help. That after all is why the government has stepped in; because individuals and non-government institutions have never been willing to do the job.
The libertarians just want to make their selfishness sound noble.
What apology? I’m afraid you can not follow points. The point you are referring was made by **septimus **and then **BrainGlutton **posted a related one. Not the same, but I’m dealing with the last item and you **did **reply to BrainGlutton posted with no conditional that you where “dealing with a different question”.
I’m dealing with the question presented by BG’s links. That’s why I quoted his post. Thought that was pretty straightforward.
A libertarian says he wants the less fortunate to be helped. However the evidence shows that depending on private donations means that only 50% will be helped, versus 95% if the government steps in. Can you still say that the libertarian really wants to help the poor? Or is he willing to sacrifice 45% of them on the altar of small government?
There is that, and the real world, in Mauritius, that was pointed as a most Libertarian like, there is universal health care provided in large part by the government.
Before the Government was doing it, most were suffering horribly. Churches and charities didn’t make a dent. There’s an entire Economy of Scale thing that Government does best.
Government isn’t “forcing” you to help. They’re saying “This is our budget, here is what we as a people have agreed to spend money on. Here is the bill for your share.”. You do not, never have, and never will get a specific personalized say in where that money goes. If you do not like it, tough titties. No government on Earth gives you that option, and no government on Earth EVER WILL give you that option. Cry and whine about it and wave around unrealistic fantasies, or man up, accept the FACT and then move on to more important issues in life. What you DO get is a VOTE in choosing those representatives who make these decisions.
Seriously, this is just the same as the Sovereign Citizens bullshit. “I don’t want to participate in the Responsibilities of Society and you can’t make me! (but I’ll continue to benefit from all aspects of that society, thank you very much)”
According to the World Gold Council (which I found via Wikipedia), total gold mined stood at about 174,100 tons at the end of 2012.
Today, at 1,292 an ounce (and 32,150.75 troy ounces to a ton), the total value of gold mined would be at around 7.2 trillion USD. Of course, this is a volatile number. The total value of all gold was much higher when gold prices stood at more than 1800 USD an ounce, and much much lower when gold stood at less than 300 USD an ounce in 2001.
You have made assertions.
Since deflation ruins the economy and leads to depression if it leads to a decline in nominal income, a “controlled” deflation is extraordinarily hard to pull off. Deflationary periods which are characterized by dropping nominal income lead to huge problems for any given economy. Haven’t found an exception yet. If you know of any exceptions, that would be the kind of good evidence that you could cite to make your case. Just be sure to read that sentence very carefully before you hastily reach for the first thing you think of. I’m making a very specific claim. It would require very specific evidence to refute it.
On this side of the argument, no one is saying that massive inflation is good for its own sake, since it’s also fairly easy to see that any inflationary periods that lead to nominal income growth of more than 5% or so lead to problems for a developed economy. (There are exceptions to this in the developing world, since they’re playing the game of catch-up and can have stronger growth as they industrialize.) The point is simply that mild inflation – or even better, small but steady growth in nominal income – helps the markets clear which leads to a better economy. Not too much, not too little. Money has a Goldilocks zone.
But you’re making a claim about which classes benefit, and which don’t. So let’s take a small look at some evidence. We can look at the Gini coefficient for income in the US over those time periods to get some flavor of inequality. Not a perfect measure of how the middle and lower classes are doing, but a decent comparison of how they’re doing relative to the upper classes. Here’s a picture.
Income inequality increased strongly during the 1920s when inflation was fairly subdued. The highest inflation rate was around 2.3%, and the 1920s were even deflationary at times but income inequality increased. It reached its peak during the massive deflation of the early 30s Depression: This was not a time when the poor were doing well. Then in 1933 when FDR dropped the gold peg, at the exact same moment that the economy started its first reflationary recovery from Depression, income inequality dropped. Inflation was marked by both a stronger economy and less income inequality, meaning the poor were doing comparatively better than the rich during the reflation. There’s an interesting hiccup in the inflation data from the 1930s, when the government decided to stop its expansionary monetary and fiscal policy and start to contract. This coincided with a contraction of the economy. It’s interesting to note that in the Gini data on inequality, we can see the same hiccup in the data from 1937.
Turning to the 1970s and early 80s, we enter a period of high inflation. Carter nominated Volcker as chair of the Federal Reserve, and Volcker hit the brakes hard under Reagan to stop the inflation. We can see that the disinflationary era of Reagan, which lead to the steepest downturn in the economy since the Depression, also lead to a huge increase in income inequality. The rich did comparatively better than the poor when Volcker was fighting inflation, not encouraging it. Inflation went from around 13% in 1980 to averaging less than 4% at the end of Reagan’s term. Not outright deflation, but strong disinflation. (By the way, I think Volcker did the right thing by fighting that inflation and putting the economy into recession.)
The rich do better under inflation? A quick glance at some data seems to strongly contradict this assertion. Inflation is not a cure-all, it has negative effects, but it does sometimes to stimulate the economy while giving the poor a bigger share of the pie. This is not an absolute relationship, but it is a clear counterexample to your own evidenceless assertion.
For example, during the Depression, when government was destroying literally tons of foodstuffs while people were starving.
Astoundingly naive statement. Government got involved because opportunistic politicians saw a chance to consolidate power by promising aid and propping up established consumer industries.
The statists just want to make their extortions sound noble.
Because in large part they still followed the ideas that the government shouldn’t help the economy and shouldn’t help the poor. The ideas that libertarians support. The doctrine of national sociopathy.
Garbage. The private sector had literally thousands of years to solve those problems, and failed. In most cases they failed even to try. It took the government to do anything useful. Those “established consumer industries” aren’t that old, by far.
Making the parasites pay their fair share isn’t extortion.
And since the libertarians keep going on about the “force” of “statists” and how the libertarians stand for freedom, it’s important to note the opposite is true. In the real world libertarianism requires a state, and one that’s both powerful and undemocratic in order to enforce itself. Most people don’t want what libertarians are trying to push on them, and only massive amounts of force will make them cooperate. And the state that applies that force can’t be democratic because otherwise the people enforcing libertarianism would be voted out.
A real world libertarian society would be like real world Communist nations; an ideology imposed by totalitarian force, with empty promises that the State will “wither away” eventually.
Not sure who has the naive statement here, when the ones mentioning that forget that there was a drought then. The reality was that many farmers would had gone bankrupt if there had been no intervention from the government and I have to wonder if a lot of what has been reported in libertarian sources has avoided to mention “small” items like the drought.
http://teachers.sduhsd.k12.ca.us/tpsocialsciences/us_history/greatdepression/pigs.htm
Real easy to throw around assumptions like that with zero basis in fact. Why don’t you provide some form of proof that that was why it was done?