st434u

Democracy is the worst possible form of government. That the US is not a total democracy is why there isn't total chaos and there still exists some semblance of civilization. Cuba is a lot more democratic than the US, for instance. So is South Africa. And North Korea.

What did you expect? This is what schools were designed to do. You might as well get outraged when someone gets raped or murdered in prison. Everybody knows this is really what these places are for.

You may find this other thread interesting, it was active until a couple weeks ago. http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/38337-bitcoin-intrinsic-value-and-mises-regression-theorem/

So many over the top generalizations in this thread... And I thought I was always the one being accused of being sexist, lol.

I like statelessness. Voluntaryism is also good, although it tends to be confused with volunteerism. Other good terms include things like "pure private law society" or "pure private property system". At the end of the day, though, I'm not so much concerned with labels as I am with getting the message through without misunderstandings. So if someone (like Stef, or most people here) uses terms like "anarchy" and explain what they mean, there's no problem. The only problem is when these are used in titles, and most people never get to read the content because the title drives them away thinking they already know what that's all about. We all do that to some extent.

I don't think drunk-driving in and of itself is evil, not in the slightest. I think people who regularly get drunk tend to do risky things, such as driving recklessly just because they're drunk, and to impress their friends. The fact that alcohol also reduces their reaction time and perception of reality just makes it worse. This is why so many people that get into accidents turn out to be drunk. It's not necessarily the drinking and driving that's the problem, it's how they drive when they're drunk. Someone can be aware that they've had a few too many drinks, and simply decide to drive more slowly for precaution. Significantly more slowly if they're really drunk. But guess what, if they do that, cops will notice and bust them for drunk driving. So even if the driver wants to drive in a way which is safe for his level of intoxication, he can't do that because he's running a much larger risk of being caught and punished severely. While we're on the subject of risky driving, what about sleepy driving? Now that is very scary. Falling asleep at the wheel or even closing your eyes for a few seconds is a hundred times more dangerous than driving drunk. Should there be a law against sleepy driving? How could it ever be enforced? I think States all over the world use drunk-driving as an excuse to be able to set up checkpoints everywhere and say "papers please". While they're at it, they can say they smell some drug, and search your vehicle for any possessions that don't meet their standards and have their seal of approval.

I'm from Argentina and this is without a doubt the worst Pope in my lifetime. Of course being an almost entirely Catholic country, everybody here is super excited about him being the Pope. He's a hardcore socialist (which is to be expected coming from Argentina), and he loves all kinds of theft, not just by the State. He loves to defend the rights of common criminals but couldn't care less about the rights of the virtuous.

You may be right, and I don't regard the word as an enemy, I just ignore the word and choose to frame things differently. Like: No, I don't want chaos, I want law and order, just the kind that the market would provide as opposed to the kind that the State provides, which is already quite chaotic. Well it's different because to the statheist atheist, atheism is at most an opportunity to attack religious people, but it's not the basis for why he worships the State. For most self-described anarchists, the anarchistic ideology is to steal and destroy, and their ideal system is one of total communism, which they call anarchy. And to make things worse, for most non-self-described anarchists (just about everyone else), the word means exactly the same thing! So you have a situation where the word means chaos for 97% of people, and it means communism (which leads to chaos) for 2.99%... And it only means something else for the remaining 0.01%... You guys may be right that the etymological root of the word suggests something closer to what we want... But at a certain point, I think you have to admit that linguistics is based on consensus, and even if a word was originally used to describe one thing, if now everybody thinks it means something else, there's no point in continuing to try and convince them that their usage of the word is wrong. For instance, gay used to mean happy. But if a guy goes around telling everybody that he's gay, with a big smile on his face, they're gonna assume something weird is going on.

Having this in his possession should no more be a crime than someone having a video of a real murder, or even an assault or beating.

If you find a dictionary that was printed before 1983, you will see that the original definition of inflation was an increase in the money supply, which tends to, but does not necessarily lead to general prices rising (it could also lead to prices not falling as much as they otherwise would have). Nor do austrian economists say that it does. Well most didn't expect hyperinflation (you mean general prices rising more than 50% a month, or 1000% a year), at least not right away.In any case, there have been significant general price rises since before '08, and continuing and accelerating until today. It's just that governments make up their own statistics, and pretend to show that prices are not rising as much as they really are. They use all sort of tricks and gimmicks.The first obvious one, is that the measuring stick is not a fixed basket. The basket changes from year to year based on all sorts of things. But one of the most revealing is that the composition of the basket changes based on how much people have bought of each component. But what this immediately shows you is that if prices have gone up a lot for one thing, and not so much for another similar thing, people will tend to buy more of the latter. But the governments see this and say, "oh, so the consumer wants more of THIS... therefore the basket should be more heavily weighted towards considering the price changes in this". The same goes for calculating the cost-of-living. Since in an environment where people are getting poorer due to rising prices, they will substitute higher quality products for lower quality ones, the governments say that the cost of living hasn't risen much, when in fact it has, it's just that people's standards of living have gone down.Then come the adjustments for quality, and here they excel. For instance, they can say that cars are safer this year than the year before, because they're adhering to some government safety guidelines that didn't exist the year before (and that probably don't add any real safety anyway), and they say that this constitutes an increase in quality of 30%, so even if cars went up by 20%, that's really a reduction in price of 8%. Even if now cars are made with lower quality materials and will start to break down sooner than last year's cars. Maybe last year the cars had really nice leather finishes, and now it's all synthetic; the govt just never counts that as a quality decrease.If in order to board a flight you have to go through extra cancer-causing radiation scans and/or sexual abuse, they force you to throw away perfectly good food and beverages and make you pay for the garbage that they serve (which used to be free), all in the name of safety, courtesy of the govt, why of course that is a quality increase. But if the seats are getting smaller and there's less leg room and they constantly lose your luggage, well that just doesn't count. Anyways, even if the velocity went down or debt was repayed, the additional money (reserves, the monetary base) is not gonna come out of the system and be destroyed, so when velocity picks up, or everybody starts leveraging up again, prices will start rising a lot faster, and there's nothing anyone will be able to do to stop it. Austrian economists are well aware of the fact that banks pyramid bank credit several times on top of all new monetary reserves that the Central Bank creates. But the blame should still be placed on the State. It's the State that forces everybody to use their monopoly money. It's the State that creates new notes and reserves. It's the State that promises banks perpetual bailouts if they were ever to experience the early stages of a run, and these bailouts are delivered regularly, not just when a big one makes the news. Without the State doing all of this, the commercial banks would never be able to get away with what they do.

Again, this is irrelevant because you're comparing one investment to another. So you know that the stocks outperformed gold 10 to 1. You seem fixated on whether each investment earns a profit or not. It's more important to know how much you get by doing Y as opposed to doing Z. Uhh, no, I just look at the total growth over the long-term, and then use compound interest to calculate the average annual rate of growth. I don't know if that's called using the geometric mean or what. I admit that I don't know much about how these calculations are done, but this sounds like a bunch of financial hocus pocus to me. Sure, but what if the companies go bankrupt too? I mean take a look around, companies are going for 100+ times earnings, IPO's are coming out left and right from companies who've never made any money, they only lose money but hope to make some in the future, with no reasonable business proposition for doing so. There is a huge bubble in stocks, especially social-media stocks and the like, and especially in the US. Also, I don't think the USD collapse will take decades to materialize. I think it's probably just around the corner. There really is no longer term when it comes to gold and silver. They've been made illegal to use as money in just about every country in the world, for the past 43 years, and to some extent since the early stages of World War I, and increasingly the early stages of World War II.At least from the 18th century until 1910, prices in gold continuously fell. This means that gold's purchasing power was going up, not just "keeping up with inflation" (I assume you're talking about general price rises). But I guess using your definitions, you would be right, because gold was "keeping up with deflation"... The thing is, there was "deflation" (general price decreases) and not "inflation" precisely because the money was gold.From 1913 increasingly and to this day, States all over the world have not only made gold and silver illegal to use as monetary instruments, but they have led a coordinated effort along with the major banks and megacorporations to suppress their value, so as to not awaken too many people to the monumental scam of unprecedented proportions that is the fiat currency system.This won't last forever. And when the tide starts to turn around, what you will see is 100 years worth of value suppression finally floating to the surface, and once it picks up speed, it will come up like a rocket exiting the earth and heading for the stars. Eventually, it will settle at some very high value, and then continue to rise more slowly, as it was doing before the coordinated world States/banksters/megacorps intervention began.This is why it went up so much over the past decade and a half, it's starting to catch up for lost time.If the entire world ditched fiat for gold sometime in the near future, you would be able to buy a good car for an ounce of gold. A nice house would probably cost you a couple ounces (thanks partly to the almost universal housing bubble, which would pop without fiat currency to prop it up). A decent job, like driving a tractor around, would pay about an ounce of gold a year. A good job, like being an engineer for the company that makes that tractor, would pay two or three ounces a year. A great job, like being the guy coordinating and managing the team of engineers at that company, would pay about 10 ounces a year. I'll check it out, thanks.

You can have them physically stored for you in a location that is safer than your own property. It won't be a secret that you have them, but at least you know that it will take a lot of firepower to steal them. And as long as you have it in a country with a somewhat stable political situation, you should be fine. Also, you can count on being able to get the money anywhere in the world you happen to be in, if you have to flee across borders.Another option is to own mining stocks. While the whole exchange market could collapse along with the currencies and banks (and I don't think that will happen necessarily), companies will likely still remain true to their shareholders. And while owning a gold mining company is different than owning gold, and there's always regulatory risks involved, it's close enough. And it has more earning potential, as you can not only gain on gold's appreciation, but potentially get a positive return in gold, considering your initial investment as gold also. I'm not against physical ownership. It's a good idea to have a few ounces around that you know will come handy in covering basic necessities for a bit or paying for a trip out of the country. It's different to plan on saving for your retirement by stocking 50 kilos in your own property. Even if they are very well hidden, it's a pretty large risk to be taking. Assuming these are your only savings you could be wiped out if something were to happen. And you're unlikely to be able to get insurance against this kind of risk.Not to mention, if you do decide to do that, blasting it all over the internet for the raging zombies to be able to look up 10 years into the future, when things have really hit the fan and the relative value of gold to everyday items has skyrocketed, may not be the safest thing to do.ETFs and other financial instruments have another benefit (and risk, if misused), in that they allow you to leverage. It's true that the exchanges could go bust entirely, but again, I don't think that will happen necessarily just because the currency has. I'm not saying you should avoid stocks altogether. Just know that opening the financial times, closing your eyes and waving your finger until it lands on something is a terrible idea, even if you plan on holding it for 30 years, and even if you diversify.I would just avoid stocks from countries/sectors that will be hit hard by the coming economic Armageddon, and instead choose countries/sectors that will do well in the turmoil, and within those, don't just pick at random, but try and know the companies you're investing in, or at least have someone who's judgement you trust recommend them.

With stuff like this it should become obvious why claiming that you are an "anarchist" or that you support or want "anarchy" is a terrible idea... But I guess this is not the place to start a semantics discussion about the word.

When you are talking about real money, i.e. gold, this is correct. I quote from Murray Rothbard: The Mystery Of Banking, page 48: "It might be objected that even a small annual increase in gold production is an example of free market failure. For if any M is as good as any other, isn't it wasteful and even inflationary for the market to produce gold, however small the quantity? But this charge ignores a crucial point about gold (or any other money-commodity). While any increase in gold is indeed useless from a monetary point of view, it will confer a nonmonetary social benefit. For an increase in the supply of gold or silver will raise it's supply, and lower it's price, for consumption or industrial uses, and in that sense will confer a net benefit to society." Notice that the above analysis does not apply to things like Bitcoin

You don't touch fiat currency or have any in your bank account at all? Because if at any time you hold any of it whatsoever, you are getting robbed by inflation. Assuming you are like most people, you keep an oscillating, but constant holding of fiat currency at your disposal, ready to be spent on the things you need daily. All you have to do is figure out what your average holding is, then figure out the inflation rate, and that's how much you're getting stolen off you.Also, even if you avoided fiat currency entirely, but you have significant costs in doing so due to everyone else around you being forced to use it, you are still being robbed indirectly, due to the State forcing you to spend all of these resources in order to avoid fiat currency. Well if the banks were loaning you their own currency, the inflation rate would already be calculated in your interest payments. The private creditors of banks are generally people who don't know what to do with their currency, and they may be aware that inflation is making them lose more than the bank pays, but they have no other option available to them. In this case you would just be benefiting from the fact that the State steals from them.In most cases, however, banks are either loaning currency that the Central Bank created out of thin air and loaned to them at a super low rate way below inflation (or gave it to them by overpaying immensely for something useless or close to useless, like non-performing mortgages or treasury bonds), or they are loaning you bank credit that they themselves created out of thin air, and doesn't really exist even as fiat currency. In either of these cases, you are simply benefiting off of the fact that others (and you yourself as a holder of fiat currency) are getting their wealth stolen, in order to provide a somewhat lower interest to you (but the State and/or the banks keep most of the loot).

Inflation of the supply of credit of the money that everybody is forced to use is theft on top of theft. By expanding the credit supply, the State through the Central Bank steals resources from everybody by making new money which devalues the money already in existence, and the commercial banks (banks licensed and allowed to operate as oligopolies, by the Central Bank) pyramid this new money to several multiples more in new loans that they make with money that doesn't even exist, maximizing the process. Furthermore, while prices do eventually adjust, it takes time for them to do so, and in the meantime, it can appear to entrepreneurs that more resources than those that actually exist are available for investment in long-term business ventures. It can also affect the relationship of relative prices of one good to another while the new credit makes it's way through the economy, bidding up individual prices as it moves along. This creates a misallocation of resources or "artificial boom" that must necessarily bring about a corresponding bust down the line.

Not necessarily. If you are comparing various different investment propositions, it's just as good to adjust all of them as to adjust none of them. You lost me there. But weighted how? Equal amount of investment in all companies, investment based on earnings, based on market cap at the time, in a particular index, what is it?I think significant amount of meddling with the data would be necessary to come up with numbers like the ones quoted above. Well you're assuming that the inflation statistics provided by the UK government are legit, which I doubt. In any case, this says nothing about the return investing in gold. Over the past 14 years gold and silver have both gained about 11% per year in USD and GBP. Also I would again like to know how this "stock market as a whole" thing is calculated. There are other ways to be invested in precious metals besides ETF's / 401k's that do not require you to take possession, and have other benefits.The safety in physically holding the metals doesn't come without it's own risks, because what if you get robbed? Or what if you have to leave the country and can't make it past borders carrying your metals? Surely you can find a way to sell them on the black market and re-buy on the other side, but that has it's own additional risks and costs. Oh it's not just likely, it's a certainty.

Oh, those stats are adjusted for CPI, that's why gold is worth less, ok.

Sowell is a socialist, and of course if you pick a stock that is one of the few that's still around in 1998 and has existed since 1801, it will be worth a lot, but what about all the tens of thousands of companies that went broke along the line? Also, the gold one doesn't add up at all. In 1801 a dollar was defined as 1/20th of a troy ounce of gold. In 1998 that same amount of gold would've costed you $14.50. Today it would cost you $65.

ribuck, stocks are often in huge bubbles and even if the company itself is productive (which sometimes it isn't), the valuations can be so high that in the long term you can pretty much only lose. If you can pick good stocks and good sectors, then it can still yield a profit, but you should be careful when assuming that you can't go wrong with stocks. There is a lot of manipulation to keep precious metals prices down, and the general sentiment is too bearish when it should be the opposite. So they're the opposite of a bubble, and in the long term you can pretty much only win (beat general price rises by a lot).

Take it out if you're afraid that the State may steal it in the future. Otherwise call Europacific Capital or your favorite brokerage firm and tell them you want to transfer it to them and have a portfolio heavily weighted towards precious metals, mining stocks and agriculture. If you do take it out and pay the penalty, don't put it in bitcoin.

Again, this all requires that bitcoins have value in the first place. So on the one hand bitcoins are not consumed for ANY purpose (and never will be); and with gold, you believe that it's consumption uses "don't fulfill any basic human needs", whatever that means. That doesn't make the two equal. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I don't know all the uses it served back then, but one of the main ones was ornamental. That doesn't make it any less important. You can't equate bitcoin with gold by attacking the consumption uses that people give to gold, and then say -hey, I don't find that use to be important, therefore it is the same as bitcoin, which has no consumption use at all-And by the way, this whole idea of the "basic human needs" and "practical purpose" sounds pretty communist to me. I'm sure you'd be the first to point out that value is subjective and that people can find value in whatever they want. No, it does not. There are two curves that determine price, supply is only one of them, and absent demand, the fact that something is more scarce doesn't give it any more value at all.

Of course. You keep missing the point entirely. Just because a statement is wrong doesn't mean the category ceases to exist. You might as well be saying that "2 + 2 = 5" is not a mathematical statement. But of course, in your original objection, you were saying that arguments from practicality and utilitarianism have been used to justify the worst aggressions in history, but clearly these arguments can't be correct. So which is it? You can't have it both ways.

I didn't say the argument was moral, I said it was a moral argument.

The US entered World War II because "The Axis Powers are evil, so the moral thing to do is to go and kill them." I didn't say the arguments were sound, but they were moral arguments nonetheless, and that was my point. You were saying that focusing on what's practical or utilitarian is a problem because some people use arguments of that nature to justify aggression. My counter-argument was that moral arguments are far more often used to justify large aggressions. Of course in both cases the arguments can be shown to be wrong, but that's besides the point.