Gold Standard Good? ... or Another Power Elite Meme?

Let's return to the gold standard ... It might be said that a simpler approach than Mr. Lehrman's might be the most likely way to get back to a gold standard. The Ron Paul strategy is more direct, but at the same time more subtle. In early 2011, the Texas Congressman introduced H.R. 1098, a refreshingly short (three pages) bill which he called "The Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011." It would repeal the legal tender laws of the United State Code which give the Federal Reserve a legal monopoly on money creation. – American Spectator

Dominant Social Theme: A gold standard is good! Let's build another Bretton Woods?

Free-Market Analysis: The American Spectator, an often truculent, right-wing publication that sees American enemies everywhere in the world, is out with an article on an impending return of a gold standard. (See excerpt above.)

The article focuses on gold-standard prescriptions of "gold bugs" Ron Paul and Lewis Lehrman. When these two served (with many others) on a US Gold Commission to evaluate the role of gold in the monetary system during the Reagan years, they wrote a minority report recommending a return to some sort of gold standard for the US and perhaps the West.

The Spectator article is written by George Melloan, who, we learn, is a "former columnist for the Wall Street Journal and author of The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism." He recommends a return to a global gold standard in the process of profiling the ideas of Paul and Lehrman.

The question is ... what kind? The answer (if "Austrian" free-market logic is to be adequately and logically extended) is one WITHOUT CONSTRAINTS. This is a logical outcome of the modern anarcho-capitalism movement founded by free-market economist Murray Rothbard himself. Ron Paul, a longtime gold backer, admits these days that money ought to operate in a competitive environment.

Murray Rothbard, who helped invent the modern Libertarian movement, was a proponent of a full-gold standard for most of his professional life. But even he was moving toward a similar viewpoint (competing monetary units via free-banking) before his death.

Rothbard apparently hewed to a full-gold standard in part out of loyalty to his teacher, Ludwig von Mises. But von Mises himself was no free-market slouch. He was the modern proponent/author of two of the most significant monetary theories in the world, "human action" and the central-bank driven business cycle.

Human action shows us definitively that government cannot mandate behavior because people will take their own actions to contravene or respond to those mandates. That's why laws are for the most part useless or result in what can be considered anti-social behavior.

As a result, American regulatory democracy now houses up to six million prisoners under lock and key. Up to 30 percent or more of all US citizens have had some sort of criminal legal interaction by the time they are in their early 20s. You can see our article on this astonishing fact here: Is It a Prison Planet? ... One Out of Three Now Face Arrest in US.

The theory of the business cycle shows us that central bank monopoly money printing eventually causes tremendous booms and then ruinous busts. It is impossible for anything other than the market itself to mandate the amount of money an economy needs.

Anything else is just a price fix. When human beings themselves print and distribute monopoly money (rather than allowing the market to create and distribute it), inevitably this leads to a transfer of wealth from those who create it to those who haven't and are not apt to utilize it efficiently.

All schemes that suggest human beings can print and distribute monopoly money using various mathematical or demand-based formulas are likely doomed to failure. If money is not market-based, it is likely distortive and ultimately ruinous.

Of course, even within a market economy, money can distort dependent on supply and demand. But at least within a market environment, people have the ability to respond quickly and are not constrained by the force of laws. That's why during the free-banking era of the United States in the 1800s there were often varying interest rates on money from region to region.

There were numerous different kinds of money ratios during the American free-banking, "wildcat" era. The trouble with free banking, as Murray Rothbard showed, was that many banks were forced to purchase municipal bonds as part of their larger charter.

These bonds often lost considerable value due to the corruption of town affairs, collapsing the bank as well, and causing bank runs. Additionally, many banks were apparently forbidden from setting up more than one branch, introducing artificial fragility into the system.

We can see from this quick summary that modern Western environments have rarely if ever been divorced from some sort of artificial restraint. Lehrman's prescriptions would seem to continue this trend.

According to Lehrman – the rich Rite Aid scion apparently involved with the Bilderbergs – a kind of reverse Bretton Woods is called for. He has it all worked out. The elites will set the price of gold convertibility and central banks will continue to exist, though only to print currency linked to gold at a pre-set ratio. They will be constrained, in other words.

Melloan is less expansive about libertarian congressman Ron Paul's vision of a gold standard. He mentions that Ron Paul has sponsored legislation that would "reinforce the Constitutional mandate in Article 1, Section 10, that forbids states from making anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts."

In other words, H.R. 1098 would make Federal Reserve notes subject to domestic competition. Should it become law, who knows what would happen, but most likely Americans would gravitate toward a more reliable form of money, quite likely based on a precious metal.

OK, so more competition would be the result and perhaps metals-based money. But ironically, as we've just noted above, even in the US money has not operated without constraints. The US Constitution itself apparently created various restrictions when it came to gold and silver along with what was called the "Spanish Dollar." Such a dollar was to contain a certain amount of silver. 

Even when it comes to the US – perhaps a country with some of the freest [Ed. Note: historically speaking] modern money – we can see that money was still subject to certain monopoly laws. In fact, as modern, neo-Austrian free-market economists have observed, money is whatever people choose to make it.

Throughout history, for various reasons, cultures have often chosen silver and gold as money. Silver and gold (fungible, portable and beautiful) have floated against one another so that if the ratio becomes distorted, the average person will know that the powers-that-be are fiddling with one metal or the other. It's a free-market solution against insolvency.

The logical extension of modern anarcho-libertarianism is competing money without ANY government constraint. Anything else is a price fix and inevitably distortive, though certainly a convertible gold standard might damp the destructive inflation that is such a feature of the current ruinous system.

A metals standard would surely help constrain the current criminal, Anglosphere power elite that is driving the world toward global governance using the resources of central banks that it controls. Put limits on money and Money Power itself will begin to wither.

That's because the power elite has shown us historically that (for one thing) IT WILL NOT SPEND ITS OWN MONEY, certainly not within the context of creating world government. Constrain central banking and Money Power itself will gradually become increasingly impotent.

When those great Anglosphere families that apparently run central banks try to manipulate the market within a free-money environment, they will find it increasingly difficult. They will try to reduce the circulation of gold to raise prices and people will dishoard, as Murray Rothbard has argued. Or mines will open back up.

It is seemingly impossible to maintain a coercive monopoly in a free-market environment. Some have argued that the monetary elites will then turn to force. But the Anglosphere cannot even win in Afghanistan. Those involved with the current horrible system will likely surrender to the inevitable if a real free market in money were somehow to be implemented.

These shadowy forces only survive based on the dominant social themes they have disseminated through such agencies as Tavistock. By brainwashing people into believing that government – especially expansive government – is necessary to civil society, they create the necessary conditions for the mercantilism they need to control whole societies. Kill expansive government and you kill mercantilism.

Government is dangerous and powerful as fire. There are few examples in later Neolithic history of minimalist governments that existed for long periods of time. Nevertheless, minimalist government (not involved in money at any level) is devoutly to be wished for. It allows people to exercise the human action necessary to live confident and increasingly comfortable lives.

Just as importantly, free-market money (perhaps a free-market gold and silver standard) would reduce the violence of price inflation. As Rothbard showed clearly, technology gradually reduces prices while expanding savings.

Gentle deflation within the ambit of a prosperous, free society is perhaps the best of all worlds. It is unfortunate that there is so much ignorance about money and that so many these days are floating various manipulative schemes that ultimately will involve government coercion. There are those, too, who conflate depressions with deflation. Historical bunkum?

Lehrman's schemes are yet coercive, in our view. A new Bretton Woods gold-standard conference and an additional role for central banks provides Money Power with yet another opening. Austrian, free-market academics generally, to the extent they move toward a model of competing currencies and free-market money, are on the right track.

Set money free. Let people use the monies they wish to use. All of them. Gold and silver will likely be a feature of such a system anyway. Would such a system work? We would tend to believe free-market money will be Western society's default position if the current system is not "rescued" by a new Lehrman-like Bretton Woods.

Of course, we don't want it rescued. The dollar reserve has ALREADY failed, as we've pointed out numerous times. When central banks are printing and disbursing some US$50 TRILLION to re-liquify a frozen system, there's really not much left to salvage. We certainly don't want the same powers-that-be inventing a NEW system. What credibility do they have at this point?

Some have suggested the natural price of gold is ALREADY US$10,000 per ounce, absent the shenanigans of central banks and the commercial banks they control. Whatever it is, the current system is on its way out If the elites themselves are not able to create a new, international "consensus" then perhaps it will crumble as it should and a new, free-market money will emerge.

Freedom! Free our money. There is nothing to fear from it. Those in Iceland overcame their fears. It's strange that so many people have such a hard time conceiving of it. Perhaps, as we have suggested previously, it has something to do with damaged childhoods.

What we call the Internet Reformation has provided the world with an ideal opportunity to start over with free-market money. The Internet is a great educative device. Absent those who are distorting the history of money (intentionally or not), the Internet will provide people with a great education about how money REALLY works.

It's not complicated. Money is what people to choose to use in order to trade and save. Throughout history people have used free-market money freely within a free-market environment and hopefully, as the Internet Reformation continues to unfold, such environments shall spring forth again.

Conclusion: The need to suggest schemes that control people's behavior seems overwhelming to some. Too bad. It is keeping us from realizing our dreams, our destinies, our true desires – the ability to build authentic, happy lives for ourselves and our families.