Get Government Out of Coin Manufacture | Hacker News Reader

Get Government Out of Coin Manufacture

mises.org

20 pointstc10 comments

I wonder to what extent governmental retention of minting coins is just PR to reinforce the archaic belief that money is still call by value, when it's actually call be reference.

Isn't it sort of like virtual memory? Each process (consumer) has the illusion that all of its memory pages (dollars) are in RAM (backed by specie), but since it isn't actually using all of those pages at once, the OS (Federal Reserve) can swap some of them out to disk (print more money).

Only, when all processes try to use their RAM all at once the system used to crash.

I doubt that most people know the difference between specie and fiat money in the first place.

And to inhibit the notion that all of those references just point to null.

Get mises.org out of news.YC.

just eliminate the penny and use up that capacity on something else. Don't they pay more to make a penny than what it is worth? Whats the point anyways...when was the last time anyone ever paid at a register with pennies?

Since the Fed is not property of the government, but rather an associtation of bankers

Doesn't that mean that government is already out of Coin Manufacture?

The U.S. Mint makes coins, not the Federal Reserve. They are two separate entities. To further complicate things, the Bureau of Engraving, still a different agency, is responsible for making bills. All these organizations are related to the U.S. Treasury, however.

Our system is much more complex than Ron Paul and fellow gold standard libertarians would have you believe. They exploit this complexity for their own purposes. Because the system is hard to understand, they try to convince people into thinking that a simpler one would be better. This probably isn't the case, however. Sure, some simplifications could take place, but they would potentially have large impacts on our economy and society. Our system has evolved to become what it is today and any changes should be made with much consideration and caution.

Macroeconomics is a very complicated field. There are many theories about macroeconomic behavior and none fully explain or predict all economic situations. In microeconomics, one can do experiments to test the various theories, but macroeconomics is another beast entirely.

I would be wary of anyone who tells you that they fully understand how the economy works and has solutions to solve the problems of our day. The economy of the world is a very complex system. I do not pretend to understand it, but know enough to see that changes can have vast and unforeseen consequences.

Of course any economic process, when you look at it closely, can appear complicated. To use an old example, think of all that is necessary to make an ordinary wood and graphite pencil. A depth-first investigation of the process shows that wood must be obtained, which requires access to forests, which requires permission to enter land, which implies that land boundaries exist and are recorded, which requires surveyors to determine boundaries, which require surveying schools, which require learning supplies, which among other things require ordinary pencils, so we're back at the start... My point is that it's not a requirement that one fully understands something before one can make suggestions. I don't have to be an expert in surveying school materials to be able to criticize the performance of a pencil. It's enough to have a general understanding.

Similarly, it's not necessary to understand exactly how government makes money or through which agency (be it the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the US Mint, Bureau of Engraving, etc.) to criticize that fact that the money is under exclusive government control.

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