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Reblogged:India: First to Prove Binswanger's Point on Bitcoin

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Forbes warns, "This article is more than 7 years old."

Is this because they think principles have an expiration date -- or because this piece has crossed some kind of line after which conservative pundits start proclaiming something "prophetic?"

Either question would be understandable from anyone who runs into the piece, "Don't Be Silly, the Entitlement State Won't Allow Bitcoin," once news that India is banning bitcoin spreads enough.

Binswanger's column focuses on actions by government in the United States, but his analysis is spot-on and applies everywhere and anytime:
BitBlinders.jpg
Don't be blinded by the Bitcoin delusion... (Image by Thought Catalog, via Unsplash, license.)
Government suppression of private money is inevitable in the entitlement-state era. What is the alternative? Are governments going to stand idly by while more and more people avoid taxes and sidestep inflation? Government largess depends on taxation and monetary debasement. If there were private money, the welfare state could not exist. So, can there be any doubt that the government will throttle virtual currencies?
The ban goes well beyond China's ban on mining and trading cryptocurrencies:
The bill, one of the world’s strictest policies against cryptocurrencies, would criminalise possession, issuance, mining, trading and transferring crypto-assets...
Oddly enough, part of the expressed rationale for the plan is that India wishes to create its own virtual currency.

News Flash: India wants to join the ranks of kleptocracies with official cryptocurrencies for the same reasons those countries have them; which is why it has its own fiat money now; and which is why private investors won't really trust it.

And which is why, per Binswanger's prophecy/analysis, private virtual currencies won't be a substitute for the hard work of cultural and political change that we will need for free money and free banking to become a reality.

-- CAV

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4 hours ago, Gus Van Horn blog said:

And which is why, per Binswanger's prophecy/analysis, private virtual currencies won't be a substitute for the hard work of cultural and political change that we will need for free money and free banking to become a reality.

From free money and free banking:

The argument that gold is the intrinsically right standard, so people do not need any choice in the matter because the government would only be making them do what is best for them anyway, is a philosophical can of worms that ultimately undermines the moral case for free markets. This is probably why the Ayn Rand Institute, that flagship of right moral political philosophy, migrated its support from the gold standard to a system of free banking with private currencies.

Seems the Institute withdrew the Yaron Brooks article. Yaron Brook articles on New Ideal

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In the late 19th century, advocating the monetization of silver was quite popular. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold_speech

I'm not aware that anyone proposed the dollar be equivalent to some amount of gold plus (not or) some amount of silver. Adopting such proposal would have been the first step toward money being backed by a basket of commodities (as advocated by Benjamin Graham and Friedrich von Hayek). The basket could have been modified over time to also include such things as crude oil and copy paper.

Graham's article "The Critique of Commodity-Reserve Currency: A Point-by-Point Reply" can be read in full on JSTOR with a free account.

Edited by merjet
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