Human Freedom Rests on Gold-Redeemable Money

In my daily reading, I was drawn to an article titled:
Ron Paul Has a Gold Ally in the Buffett Family (source below)

While this article is an interesting read, it was an essay that was addressed in the article that drives this thread. I had never heard of this before and to be honest, I do not have much history about the Buffett family next to what we all know about Warren. So let me share what I found interesting...

The late-Congressman Howard Buffett is a posthumous pillar of the Libertarian party, the anti-war movement and asset-backed currency -- the "Ron Paul of his day," according to Philip Klein. And on the subject of gold, Buffett Sr. may have penned the best-ever essay in support of a gold standard: "Human Freedom Rests on Gold-Redeemable Money."

Is there a connection between Human Freedom and A Gold Redeemable Money? At first glance it would seem that money belongs to the world of economics and human freedom to the political sphere.

But when you recall that one of the first moves by Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler was to outlaw individual ownership of gold, you begin to sense that there may be some connection between money, redeemable in gold, and the rare prize known as human liberty.

Also, when you find that Lenin declared and demonstrated that a sure way to overturn the existing social order and bring about communism was by printing press paper money, then again you are impressed with the possibility of a relationship between a gold-backed money and human freedom.

... The subject of a Hitler or a Stalin is a serf by the mere fact that his money can be called in and depreciated at the whim of his rulers. That actually happened in Russia a few months ago, when the Russian people, holding cash, had to turn it in -- 10 old rubles and receive back one new ruble.

... Under such conditions the individual citizen is deprived of freedom of movement. He is prevented from laying away purchasing power for the future. He becomes dependent upon the goodwill of the politicians for his daily bread. Unless he lives on land that will sustain him, freedom for him does not exist.

Full PDF Essay found here

I'll leave you all with a quote from the end of the original article:

Leila Buffett, Warren Buffett's mother, recounted that her husband said he considered only one issue when deciding whether to vote for a bill: "Will this add to, or subtract from, human liberty?" Now that's a concept that more policymakers, business leaders, their economists and advisers should ask of themselves.

^^^----- Now is that a sentiment we can all agree with?

Original Article Source

reply to post by freakjive


This post will only apply to the general term of "human liberty" and to political aspects of mediums of exchange.

To be sure, there is some proof in that premise of the headline, --if you want to only back partway down the road to the root cause. And BTW, the answer is not any amount of gold.

As long as a human has a need that someone else can fill, there will be a medium of exchange to enable that need to be filled. (This is basic economics 101.)

This transaction done willingly is the giving of something for something else, That something from either side may be a physical product or something intangible. Typically such would be physical effort (labor), time, mental effort (entertainment, tutoring, general thinking, etc.). Money(gold) was an extremely clever afterthough by those that alread had the gold.

This tells that unless an individual is self-sufficieint, that person will need others to supply what is missing from their own ability to survive. This knowledge is common to those that have decided, in effect, "to go back into the woods."

Yet the average person in civilization today, accutely aware that they are being hammered by all manner of "suppliers of their needs," find themselves caught in a web of their own doing. (Actually, caused by their forebearers.) There is no easy remedy that the "supplies" care to haggle over. You pay the price or not. Some folks have the almost religious view that they are "owed" such and such because they must survive at the level they deem sufficient. That is hogwash, a purely personal ethic demanding to be observed by another.