Hacker News Reader

Comment by _ouxp | Hacker News Reader

Are you referring to the Liberty Dollar? I remember being very interested in this (and in alternative currencies) a few years back but was put off by a video promoted on their official website which showed someone successfully passing a Liberty Dollar at a drive-through to an employee who asked, "what's this?", and was told that it was "a new dollar coin."

At that point, they had unclean hands in my mind. The basis for an alternative currency should be consent, not confusion.

View on HN

You're misremembering. The primary educational effort of the Liberty Dollar focused on, whenever someone asked what it was, or you offered it, making clear that it wasn't US currency. Nobody associated with the Liberty Dollar in any official capacity would call it "a new dollar coin" and as the word "coin" is one of the magic ones that denotes government money. They might say "its 20 dollars in silver" or "a silver piece". And if asked if it was "real" or "genuine" they were told to say "It is not government money, its better" or "its genuine silver, but it is not made by the US government".

They were very careful because passing it off as if it were government money would be a crime. Despite not doing this, they have been lied about to the point that even you are misremembering.

There are many reasons to decide to not be involved with the liberty dollar-- not the least of which is the indoctrination that "money" must come from the government, something I had to overcome myself. But the claim that they were pretending it was government money is not one of them.

The entire point of NORFED-- the National Organization for the Repeal of the FEDeral reserve-- was that government money was not as good as silver rounds.

Even "it's 20 dollars in silver" is iffy. To most, dollar means USD, and there's no constant dollars-silver ratio any more.

This is the video that I was misremembering (works in newest VLC): http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050206004912/http://www.l...

via: http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050206004912/http://www.l...

Alas, the wayback machine won't let me see the video, but even the name of it is bad since it contains the word "coin".

Most may assume that "dollar" means USD, but that is not the legal meaning. Dollar is a generic term, as Canadians use it, for instance. But further, if I were to say "20 USD in Silver" I'd be referring to the US dollar and I'd be naming a price for this amount of silver. This is no different than saying "$5 in coffee beans".

Edit to add: My real point is to disagree with the idea that the liberty dollar advocated (generally) passing it off as US government money, as they spent a great deal of effort trying to prevent that perception or anyone associated with the organization doing so.

I'll concede that you saw a video where someone didn't make it explicit enough that it wasn't government money and that put you off of the idea... and in fact your quote might even be exact. In which case you are not misremembering.

My point isn't really to debate the video, so much as the intent of the organization.

I also agree with your take on Asset Forfeiture. In any case, I wasn't being snarky when I said "misremembered". I had, in fact, misremembered parts of the video, though the sense of recipients not being fully in on it remains.

I always thought they should have used the phrase "Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price" (M.S.R.P). But I would actually favor striking the word "dollar" altogether. People can just use ordinary silver pieces bearing the mark "One Troy Ounce", which describes its physical mass only.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com