Economics Questions

Re: Specie as currency question

krazy kaju — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 03:51:53 GMT

The government could simply specify in what currency it wants its taxes in. We should be looking forward towards making government tax collecting less efficient, not more.

Re: Specie as currency question

Doubtus — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:14:57 GMT

In order to move away from a state currency, all that you need is the government to allow competing currencies. The government would just have to require full reserves and print the difference to prevent a severe depression. It could then sell all of its precious metals to ease the transition for private banks and mints from paper to metal currency. The government could then maybe create a non-precious metal exchange standard for its currency by purchasing massive amounts of copper, zinc, etc.

Would it be possible for the govt to collect taxes if there were competing currencies? It would require a certain degree of uniformity between all the currencies for that.

Re: Specie as currency question

krazy kaju — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:36:13 GMT

In order to move away from a state currency, all that you need is the government to allow competing currencies. The government would just have to require full reserves and print the difference to prevent a severe depression. It could then sell all of its precious metals to ease the transition for private banks and mints from paper to metal currency. The government could then maybe create a non-precious metal exchange standard for its currency by purchasing massive amounts of copper, zinc, etc.

Re: Specie as currency question

Luis Buenaventura — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:22:06 GMT

herzen:

I have been speaking with friends for awhile about moving away from a state-controlled fiat currency, and towards using specie as currency. Gold always comes up, what with the historical fact of the gold standard.

One complaint I have heard, that I don't exactly know how to deal with, is that at 900$ per ounce, there is only enough gold in the world to cover something like 9% of the current U.S. currency in circulation. How would we deal with this problem? Is it even a problem? Why not?

Not really a problem I take it, it could just be a gold standard that is some relatively large number of dollars per gold ounce.

Specie as currency question

herzen — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:10:58 GMT

I have been speaking with friends for awhile about moving away from a state-controlled fiat currency, and towards using specie as currency. Gold always comes up, what with the historical fact of the gold standard.

One complaint I have heard, that I don't exactly know how to deal with, is that at 900$ per ounce, there is only enough gold in the world to cover something like 9% of the current U.S. currency in circulation. How would we deal with this problem? Is it even a problem? Why not?