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Forum - James Jaegar, another Fed-hating crank.

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advancedatheistPosted: Dec 06, 2009 - 20:10
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Level: 3
CS Original

Jaeger even uses the libertarian/Zeitgeister duckspeak, calling Federal Reserve dollars "thin air." Again, I ask: Why do these guys complain so much about using this "thin air" to pay their taxes?

http://www.thedailybell.com/640/James-Jaeger-Original-Intent-Fiat-Empire.html

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Edward L WinstonPosted: Dec 09, 2009 - 04:34
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President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho: porn star and five-time ultimate smackdown wrestling champion!

Level: 150
CS Original

There are a lot of logical problems with the thin air argument, but I find myself often asking them that, if it's worthless, then why does the government let you use it to pay for things? Of course, the answer is always "they're trying to do X so therefore they must do this."

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scitopsPosted: Dec 09, 2009 - 08:30
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Level: 4
CS Original

What I've always wondered is what makes gold so great? It has little use other than jewlery. I could even understand their argument if they wanted to back their currency with oil, corn, or some other commodity that had real world use. Austrians can claim dollars are just paper, but I could counter gold is just a rock.

However according to these types "gold is money." Just the other day Peter Schiff said we would be paying for every day items with gold in the next few years.

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advancedatheistPosted: Dec 09, 2009 - 09:17
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Level: 3
CS Original

Economist Marshall Auerback at Counterpunch has addressed this "thin air" obfuscation several times lately. For example:

http://www.counterpunch.org/auerback12072009.html</p>

He compares the government's creation of money to the spooky creation of points in games. If you bowl a strike and earn five points, doesn't that leave five fewer points from a finite supply for the other bowlers? If not, where do those points "come from"?

And in yet another Austrianist cognitive dissonance, why do these guys apply Malthusian reasoning to the gold supply, while dismissing Malthusian warnings about other resource and environmental constraints on the human population like Peak Oil? I doubt they would receive well the claim that we've created a vast oversupply of "fiat people" whom the planet can't support over the long run.

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Edward L WinstonPosted: Dec 09, 2009 - 13:29
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President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho: porn star and five-time ultimate smackdown wrestling champion!

Level: 150
CS Original

@scitops,
In order for gold to have value, people have to be willing to exchange things for it. We know from the King of Spain (or was it Portugal?) that when you have a lot of gold, that doesn't mean you're richer, people have to be willing to believe it to be worth a certain amount anyway. The current value is estimated by "thin air" anyway.

@advancedatheist,
The answer is simple: buffet belief systems work really well. You can pick and choose what works and ignore anything that contradicts it.

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