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Whose Money?
Bad ideas have a way of spreading. And “progressives” in America often turn to the Scandinavian countries for their cockeyed Utopian dreams and this one is a doozy – the Danes have put forward a proposal to allow brick and mortar retailers to refuse cash.
On the surface this sounds like a great convenience to the retailer. An all electronic system would help them cut costs and would certainly eliminate the threat of armed robbery, however much it increases the odds of cybercrime. But the real danger here is that it is the first step in achieving the dreams of Trond Andresen in creating the first cashless society.
Andresen is described in the press as being a “Norwegian academic” which is true to a point. He does make his living as a professor of electrical engineering but he’s more widely known as a communist activist.
His scheme is to totally replace money with credits. With no currency there is complete government control, no greenbacks under the mattress and certainly no underground economy. Everything is traceable, taxable and open to confiscation.
“Wait! Confiscation? That’s conspiracy talk and a serious C-O-C violation, bub!”
Andresen insists it’s just a way to avoid the booms and busts of capitalism. See, instead of stimulus packages and tinkering with interest rates, governments could simply start taking away your savings, forcing you to spend it or lose it. And during boom times when some bureaucrat decides you shouldn’t spend they can place a massive tax on every transaction.
Of course they couch it in terms of “negative interest” and “modest penalties” but it is what it is: confiscation.
On every US coin is stamped the word “Liberty” and a truer expression could not be uttered. As long as you have the coin in your pocket you have the freedom to keep it or spend it as you wish.
Published in General
Lego sets. No, I am not kidding. They’re as solid as gold. They’re being found during drug busts. I found this out when my brother married a woman with an eight-year-old son. New nephew wanted a certain Lego set for Christmas. Couldn’t find one. Started doing searches to try to find them, found articles about drug busts instead.
People do and have done. US $100 bills are a popular medium of exchange worldwide. Cigarettes were the currency in Germany immediately after WWII. Deutsch Marks were popular in the former Yugoslavia in the 90s. Local scrips served the purpose in many places during the Great Depression and made a reappearance here in the Great Panic of aught eight. Islanders in the South Pacific use large rocks.
The only advantage a government has is that it can demand taxes owed it be paid in its currency. People then do as much as they can under the table– in whatever currency they can agree on–if they’re annoyed enough at explicitly negative interest rates (note that everyone effectively is accepting a negative interest rate now on bank deposits at the current inflation rate) or become mistrustful of the currency. Misrule without the application of massive force is…difficult.
edit: Gold has been popular for millennia (limited supply, doesn’t degrade chemically, cheap to test for purity). Also forget to remind everyone to read Chapter 15 of Erewhon. Why Marxists (in the link title) read it, I don’t know. Marx thought you could eliminate money entirely through proper planning.
I’ve often said that the reason the Soviet system worked as well as it did (not that it worked very well) was that it wasn’t run by American university leftists. Maybe I should add Norwegian university leftists to that list.
Amazing.
So in reality we would all be dependents getting an allowance from Leviathan…..
There is a good reason why governments want to do this. Cash is a token of value, much more concrete and real than some numbers in a computer somewhere. For it to maintain value requires stewardship. It has to be seen as valuable in itself. When government stewardship falls short, evidence quickly shows up in how cash is valued; vendors refuse to take it in exchange for goods, it is substituted for something else such as another more stable currency.
Those who want money to have no value except what they say, who wish to take it or give it away as they please really want cash to go away.
That being said, I use very little of it. My customers who do use it are all well off and very independent in every way.
I went to the store the other day, and the cashier asked if I could pay in a real currency, like the Mexican Peso.
What I would like to know is whether it would be Constitutional to abolish cash. I have searched this issue but have not found an answer. The congress (sic) “shall have the power to coin money” does not necessarily mean that is must coin money. Anyone know about this?
The Congress has abrogated so much of its power and authority, so who knows?
You notice the word “coin?” It does not say “print.” The Fed prints the money. So, technically, the US government is only responsible for the hard cash in coins in your pocket. They farm out the printing to a corporation, a type of bank.
Just don’t try to use your Republic credits on Tatooine. They’re useless out there.
So he wants a robust black market in silver and gold and wants to encourage adoption of Bitcoin. I mean, he doesn’t think he does, but then, to be economically left wing, in particular, is to not be in touch with reality.
Technically, the Fed prints “bills”. The idea was that you could go to the bank, present them with their bill, and they would have to pay it with real money (minted by the US government). Those days are long gone.
Like the value of the dollar. Last I checked, it was worth what used to be a bit over four cents.
Note that the power is set alongside the power to set weights and measures. In the early republic, there were many different currencies in circulation. At the time, coins were just a fixed measure of precious metal. The Congress set the dollar equal to a certain number of ounces of silver. People could trade with US coins, or Spanish coins, or English coins, as they chose.
Banks could also offer paper notes. These paper promises could be traded, and redeemed for currency, but they had value only as long as the bank was solvent. Often their traded value was less than their face value.
If you’re going to turn this into the inflation/gold discussion, I’m out. I’ll sooner discuss SSM.
Does it get THAT bad SoS?
SSM for gold and silver coins?
But, no, I was not going there. Gold has its own problems as a currency.
Yes! Don’t go there.
People talking past each other, dismissing each other’s frames of reference, insulting each other’s intelligence, [EDIT: ascribing moral deficiencies to each other,] and thus never changing anyone’s mind? I’m inclined to say yes.
Maybe Uncle Max has an opinion on such threads?
What’s that? Ah, right: A column addressing such threads would turn into such a thread.
nevermind
I find Andresen’s scheme amusing as so much of what he’s proposing has already been done.
Gov’ts already tax your savings: it’s called inflation.
It’s called raising interest rates. Price-fixing at its worst.
Check, been there, done that.
But, like any Communist plan, it would hit the poor hardest—assuming Denmark has the same dynamic as the US:
So getting rid of cash is not necessary in order to accomplish his goals.
The Feds limited by the Constitution! How 19th-Century of you!
We’ve moved well beyond that.
Sterling Silver Money? Who wants to talk about that? Did William Devane just show up?
It’s been argued here that there’s no inflation.
Show me an actual source or quote where anyone said inflation is zero. Actually, never mind. I’m not going to get sucked in.
I do not want to get into the value of money here, either. Others have observed that congress has the power to coin money. As in other areas, the supreme court has interpreted this to mean that it may issue paper money, initially redeemable for coined money. With further slippage from the Constitution’s reference to coin, paper money became fiat money.
I again ask the question: Must congress issue money? Can the federal government simply eliminate cash? Generally, in Constitutional construction, courts distinguish between “permissive” (may) and “mandatory” (must). On its face, the Constitution says congress has to power to do so. It does not say it must do so. I can find no cases or editorial opinions on this. Anyone?
Civil – I would assume that item in the Constitution is to keep the power away from the executive branch.
You know what happens when you assume, don’t you EJ (especially with the current executive branch)?
MLH – After all my years in TV… I’m already there.