what is up with this?
pyramid? mlm? good idea?
Goes to show, you can fool a shitload of the people, way too often. Or something like that.
Some people have never gotten over the fact that our currency is not linked to precious metals any longer. Seems like your link just preys on those types.
Sure, you can try to use them. You can also try to pay your mortgage in pigs and sheep. Good luck finding anyone who will take anything than US currency (in the US, of course).
So…instead of having my money backed by the most stable government in the world…I can have money whose value is theoretically tagged to two completely different metals and backed by an organization whose understanding of economics doesn’t allow them to see any problem with this? Sign me up!
I particularly like how they deliberately set the actual value of their dollar as less than that of a U.S. dollar but expect people to accept it as equal in value. Oh yeah - and the blatant pyramid scheme for signing up new “Liberty Associates”.
A mule and his funny are poon sarted!
Beware of the Cog
Actually, I don’t see anything illegal with it. As long as you don’t try to pass it off as ‘official US currency’ and don’t get upset when someone refuses to take it.
But if a group of business and people decided they would accept it in trade for goods and services I don’t see the problem there.
Would there be one…other than the IRS requiring one to convert it somehow for tax purposes?
And OK…
I love this quote:
As in “If these people want to play pretend with their monopoly money, so be it.”
and they also imply that if you use federal currency in a way other than the use it was inteded for, you could go to jail. This is in opposition to the law posted on the penny-mangling…err, pounding machines that create a souvenir out of your penny. Namely, that defacing currency is only illegal if it is done with fraudulent intent (i.e. coin-shaving, mostly. Which is sort of ironic, because it would be more possible to do this with liberty coins!)
Of course, it is possible that the penny is an exception and that defacing bills is illegal, but considering that the coin-souvenir machines cite actual laws and law numbers, and this website does not, I judge in favor of the machines 
“Not Counterfeit”
Neither is a wooden nickel. But don’t take any.
I want a list of names of people who fall for this.
BCS stands for (illegitimate child) + (crowing rooster) + (Tootsie Pops)
Several replies…
Exactly. One publishing house I worked at was a member of some ‘in kind’ group. A firm would contribute something into the kitty (in our case advertising in the magazine) and get a certain amount of ‘in kind dollars’ in credit which we could then use with any of the other firms that were members. How would that differ from the above?
Also, I am an avid collector of squished pennies (as mentioned by Ludovic above). In the United States it is not illegal to deface or mangle (or even squish) US currency provided one doesn’t later attempt to pass off that currency as legal tender. In other words…“Squish all you want! We’ll make more!”
No kidding.
So seriously, is there any legal objection to printing your own money, backing it with precious metals, then convincing merchants to accept it?
Well, with regards to the IRS, there was(still is?) a “funny money” example in Ithaca, NY called “Ithaca Dollars”. It is sort of like the “in kind” pool Jonathan mentioned, except rather than an industry thing it is town-wide, and you can/could spend the bucks on any of the places that accepted them.
However, you needed to treat these dollars as income when you filled out your year-end taxes! (IIRC they were exempt from NY state taxes, though.) So I would think these “Liberty Dollars” would be treated the same way as well.
Actually, the program in Ithaca is called “Ithaca Hours.” An hour of labor is given the worth of $10. In Ithaca, they print eighth, quarter, half, one, and two hours (that is, $1.25 to $20 denominations).
Much info is available on Ithaca Hours at www.ithacahours.com. Though I was only familiar with this undertaking in Ithaca, the web site also includes a listing of other places taking up the Hour (http://www.ithacahours.com/otherhours.html). To my surprise, both Philly (http://www.rhd.org/equal.html) and Bawlmer (http://www.geocities.com/baltimorehours/) have their versions.
Personally, I find the Ithaca Hours program to be interesting and a good community program…while the Liberty dollar seems freakish and obsessive?
Yeah, liberty dollars don’t present any problems for tax purposes because the value of property a person receives is included in taxable income. That is, if your boss pays you one chicken each day you work and you work for 250 days a year, then you’ll owe income tax on the value of 250 chickens.
Also, foreign currency is generally treated as property for tax purposes, so Liberty Dollars don’t really present any novel tax problems.
Never trust money advertised as “fun”.
I’d say it all comes down to the warehousing and redemption process. For it to be all that they claim, they have to be willing to redeem the “money” in gold. They also have to demonstrate convincingly that they have on hand enough gold to back up all the outstanding notes.
Bernard Von NotHaus, the founder of this outfit was on a show about money on TLC tonight, and they showed a number of people and merchants in, among other places, Berryville, AR, who use and accept this stuff.
But what bothered me was they showed Von NotHaus in Washington, DC, buying food and souvenirs, offering a large silver coin to these clerks and saying, “This is the new $10 silver piece,” as though it were official money. So they took it. I guess they (or their employers) were just in for an unpleasant surprise when they went to deposit it.
Now this was television, so he may have explained it to them in detail, and they may have agreed to take it as a novelty, the way J.S.G. Boggs does, and we just didn’t see that part. But on the surface, it looked like he was just unashamedly lying and defrauding these unsuspecting minimum wage workers. Wouldn’t that be an illegal fraud?
It was also a little annoying that TLC would give this scheme the publicity and prestige of a prominent place on one of their shows, without a trace of a contrary view.
Oh, wait…this is the TLC of “Ancient Egyptian Alien Astronaut Secrets” and “Ancient Mayan Egyptian Immigrant Secrets” and whatnot, no?
Interesting question. I take a printed form, fill in the name of somebody as payee; an amount to be paid; date and sign it. I then convince a merchant to accept it. All that is backing it is my word that there is legal money in a bank somwhere that the merchant can get in return for the form I give him.
I suppose if you can convince someone to accept your stuff on your assurance that you will give him precious metal in exchange on demand there isn’t anything different than writing a check.
It’s like a “Quiznos [subs] Card”. It essentially a form of currency thats pegged to sandwiches and subs instead of gold and silver. The only people who will accept it is the merchent who issued the card and people who like sandwiches. Best of all, its guaranteed to appreciate in value (buy 5 get 1 free).