Zachary Young

How do I prevent what - Established business interests from lobbying congress to pass laws in their favour? There wouldn't be a Congress or Parliament in my proposed system. Just market places;.

A gold standard would put an end to the business cycle. Instead of prices going up every year we would have a slow and healthy deflation. Lastly it would end inflation and restore the incentive to save. Saving is critical to a healthy economy, because without saving there is no investment, no capital accumulation, no long term healthy economic growth.

The real monopolist is the government. They monopolize education, health care, roads, justice, regulation, defence etc. What do you propose we do about THOSE monopolies? They are very harmful, both in terms of cost and in terms of service.

Don't need one. Market competition, or the threat of market competition developing, prevent a harmful monopoly from being established. Anti-trust is actually profoundly anti-competitive. The reason why anti-trust legislation was established in the states (if you read the congressional records of the time you see this) was because established business interests didn't want to compete with these upstart trusts. Prices were rapidly falling, and instead of competing on the free market established business interests decided it would be easier to lobby washington to shut down their competition. It is possible a firm could grow to establish dominant market share, by out competiting their competition on price & quality, but that's hardly a bad thing.

Gold is around $1800 an ounce. You don't have to make up the difference. Prices will just be WAYYYY cheaper in gold currency (to account for smaller money supply).

Great talking with you too, and thanks for listening

I suffer mental anguish reading a lot of the posts on this forum... better lock all you guys up just to be safe.

Corporations are no threat to anyone. They exist entirely in the spectrum of voluntarism. What exactly are you afraid a big bad scary boogieman corporation is going to do to you? Sell you a service or employ you gainfully? The real danger is government. Government that can take away from you everything you have. Government that can steal your income, appropriate your land, dictate to you how you should live. Anyone who doesn't like a corporation is free not to deal with it. Can't say the same about a government.

Government was created to exploit the poor. It was created through conquest, not out of benevolence. You must really be wearing some rose coloured glasses if you imagine government is about helping the poor. Oh, it is justified on 'helping the poor' but politicians and bureaucrats are just like anyone else - working for their own self interest. Of course there is nothing wrong with self interest, except when it's combined with the power of coercive taxation. The system I am describing would be far more just - for the poor and everyone else - than our current system. A market in food doesn't mean only the rich can eat. The poor eat very well in our current society. What it means is market competition will work for the benefit of all people.

Why isn't there enough Gold? Any amount of money supply is enough. We could have a money supply of one dollar, we would just have to issue .00000000000000000000000000000001 cent denomination coins. Perhaps you don't have the right background in economics to understand this point.

Again you are making the mistake of imaging that a libertarian society would exactly mimic a statist society. This is not true. Why would we have to keep as many police? Obviously we don't need nearly as many police as we have today. Or rather the supply of "police" (and I say "police" because they would only serve SOME funtions that modern police serve. Obviously they wouldn't be spying on us, confiscating our property, locking us in jail for non crimes like smoking pot etc.) would match the demand. Blackwater is a creature of the U.S. government. They are paid for by the U.S. government. They aren't 'private' in any real meaningful sense of the term. Yes, there would be private security firms, not like Blackwater (which is essentially mercenaries), but focused on protecting individuals and their property from harm. Now your supposed villian owns labour camps and goes about enslaving innocent people? This is farcical indeed. Obviously the families of some of the innocent people enslaved would raise hell and people would shut this evil person down and probably kill him. But this is just an absurd hypothetical... something out of a james bond movie, not out of realty. The real world doesn't function like your delusional night mares about freedom. Private security agencies are responsible to their clients. If they didn't do a good job of protecting their clients they would quickly go bankrupt as no one would pay their policies. This is a great market check on corruption or bad service. On the other hand, when the actual police do not protect you, what is your recourse? Stop paying your taxes and go to jail for your troubles?

You would still be covered, probably through voluntary charity, either on the part of a security firm or by someone buying you a policy. But a society without the monstrous wealth destroying activities of government would be so prosperous there's no reason to imagine you couldn't afford a little security insurance.

The Bank of Canada devalues your holdings by printing more money. A currency backed by a gold standard would actually grow in value each year, instead of steadily losing value.

I am anti-CBC, anti-conservative, anti-liberal and anti-ndp. Am pro liberty & freedom.

You are making the mistake of imaging that this proposed system would a carbon copy of our current system, just private. It would not. It would be radically different. The judge's verdict would be ignore by EVERYONE, most notably the private security firm the innocent person has retained to defend him. Now what do you do when there is a government judge that always finds people guilty? A hanging judge? WHat is your recourse in that situation? You wouldn't be in the slave labour camp. When they came for you, your security firm would step in with their guys with guns and say "give him a fair trial or we are going to have a fire fight". Then there would be a fair trial. If you were found guilty you would face your punishment - your own security agency would ensure it. If you were found not guilty you'd be free to go. And a judge in the current legal system was corrupt? I am shocked, absolutely shocked to find corruption in a legal sytem with no competition.

Exchange rates would fluctuate based on people's subjective value scales. Let's call my new currency, backed 100% by Gold, 'Rothbards'. So 1 Rothbard is equal to 1 gold gram. It can be freely exchanged for 1 gold gram at any time. So I guess the exchange value would also be the price of Gold in Canadian dollars. But the exchange rate would be determined by the market.

How do I answer your absurd hypothetical? I'm not even sure what you're asking. There's some evil rich lex luther style super villian that what, goes around kicking poor people just for the thrill of it? A rich man who hires a private 10,000 person army? Have you been reading too many comic books? Of course there are evil people with 10,000 (or more) armies in real life. Dictators, governments and the like. What should someone who lives in a society ruled by one of them do? They have no recourse. But let's consider your absurd hypothetical. We are living in an anarcho capitalist society. Super evil villian dude decides - for whatever reason, I guess he watched too many James Bond movoies? - to hire an army of 10,000 people and go around harassing others. I'm not sure where this guy got all his money from if he's such an obnoxious idiot... must have been inherited wealth?!?! Anyway, all the other private security firms would band together to defeat this evil super villian I suppose. I don't think it's terribly likely that anyone would set about to do this, or that people who join in his evil army of security agents. Personally I don't care much if the Harry Potter books were ever written or not. You seem to hold them as some sort of ideal. Personally I'm sure society would be just as well off without them. There is quite a difference between someone stealing a house that someone built - that is indeed evil - and someone taking a look at the house, and then copying it using their own materials and land. That is no at all evil.

The guards make a tidy profit every pay cheque.

I would set about the creation of a new currency. Once people see how prices keep going up in the current fiat system and prices stay level in the gold currency people would rapidly switch over.

Those aren't 'private prisons'. They are government prisons. When the government controls who goes to them, pays for them, etc. it is a government prison. So they out source it to a corporation... what is the difference? Government prisons are for profit too. The warden gets paid. The guards get paid. Lots of money to be made.

The point is there is no need for inflation or deflation. Any amount of money serves the economy just fine. Inflation is unnecessary, and harmful because the new money does not enter the money supply evenly. First it goes to the state, and people intimately connected with it, and they get to spend it at the old rate, and then it circulates out to the rest of us and we get to spend it at the new (lesser) rate. Inflation is a transfer of wealth from those most distant to the state and also a tax on people who save. Actually I do favour the establishment of private competing currencies, as opposed to a centralized government controlled money supply. This would naturally result in a gold standard as gold is uniquely suited to the task of being money. Our current fiat money supply, unbacked by any commodity, is unsustainable and will sooner or later collapse.

A judge who always found a defendant guilty would be ignored. He would be irrelevant. People could take their cases to them if they wanted, but everyone would realize that it was a show trial, and not accept the results of the trial. An individual convicted of a crime by that trial (probably by absentee) would still find people to defend him, his own private security agency would demand a fair trial. On the other hand someone who was actually guilty, and found so in a fair trial by a judge who had proved his judicial fairness over the years, would have no one to defend him.

As Mises pointed out 'any amount of money supply is enough'. We have enough gold already. There is justice on the market place. No one is forced to do anything, forced to buy anything. People can only make money by serving the needs of consumers, by creating something of value. Contrast this with government, which makes money by stealing it. There wouldn't be any lobbyists or regulations in a voluntary society. Powerful vested interests couldn't do anything but make me a sandwhich that I want to buy or give me a job I want to work. It is only when you introduce the idea of government, the ability to tax coercively that powerful people can exploit others. People wrote songs and books long before intellectual property was ever invented, so your argument isn't credible. You would think that any author worth reading would be glad to have their work distributed far and wide even if they didn't get paid a penny for it. I don't think someone should be able to own ideas or recipes. If someone else can reproduce your book or song cheaper than you can, sucks for you. That's the beauty of the market economy. Things always cost the least for the consumer. Prices push downwards. Society keeps getting wealthier.

A judge who was accountable to the market place would be much more careful about not punishing an innocent person. AFter all it could mean his career. If there was a judge or a justice company that routinely had 'show trials' they would quickly go bankrupt and no one would pay any attention to their cases / rulings. Of course it wouldn't be perfect, but at least there would be self correcting mechanisms in place. Much better than our current injustice system.

Argus : that sounds about par for the course. Powerful vested interests write the regulations. I think we should abolish intellectual property - it's nothing more than a government granted monopoly that keeps the price of drugs and other stuff artificially high. IF we get rid of IP drugs - especially say aids medication that the 3rd world desperately needs - would be a lot more available.