What’s Wrong with Our Money?
What’s wrong with our money? Well, for one thing it makes us exchange something of value — e.g. a house to live in, a book to read, gasoline to get you somewhere — for something that has no intrinsic value, in our case, paper.
What paper money does to a society over time is well documented. The 1912 classic FIAT MONEY INFLATION IN FRANCE How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended by Andrew Dickson White, LL.D., Ph.D., D.C.L., tells the story well. Here is an excerpt from his Introduction as published in Project Gutenberg’s EBook:
In 1876, during the “greenback craze,” General Garfield and Mr. S. B. Crittenden, both members of the House of Representatives at that time, asked me to read a paper on the same general subject before an audience of Senators and Representatives of both parties in Washington. This I did, and also gave it later before an assemblage of men of business at the Union League Club in New York.
Various editions of the paper were afterward published, among them, two or three for campaign purposes, in the hope that they might be of use in showing to what folly, cruelty, wrong and rain the passion for “fiat money” may lead.
It can be hard to be aware of what paper money is doing to your world when you are focused on just doing your best to get by, even though just getting by is getting harder every year. Life seems normal, so you don’t complain.
Then someone comes along and says “hey, things could be better.” One such person is Ron Paul. From The Case for Gold which he co-authored with Lewis Lehrmann:
Having a unit of account that has no definition or one that changes continually produces a situation equivalent to a carpenter using a yardstick that on an hourly basis changes the number of inches it contains. It is easy to see how foolish it would be to have any other unit of measurement changing in definition on a constant basis, yet many believe that a whole nation’s economy can operate with a monetary system in which the “dollar” has no definition and its measurement and value depend on politicians and bureaucrats. (page 158)
For an excellent review of the gold standard as a political issue in American history please read Howard Katz’ Report from New Hampshire of November 30, 2007, in which he points out that whenever this issue is fought out in the open the gold standard wins. By bringing it out in the open Ron Paul has started the ball rolling back to sound money.
The damage caused by paper money escalates in exponential fashion. It is only a matter of time before the house of cards collapses. However, just as paper money has damned mankind throughout history, so has gold always redeemed these most dire of situations. And so, quoting from the Constitution of my Commonwealth, Massachusetts, I look forward to a future when the “principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people” will be simply a matter of course.
