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I mean there’s likely no convincing you - but there’s plenty of scholarship to disagree. The Constitution quite clearly gives Congress the power to “coin Money and regulate the value thereof.” It of course makes no additional statement as to how that should be done. It’s a pretty tortuous reading in my opinion and one that would basically be invalid going back to McCulloch v. Maryland to say that coin Money, must only mean metallic alloy coins.

Between Expressed Powers and Necessary and Proper there’s certainly enough justification - it relies even less on the Commerce clause.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter one little bit if you can convince me or not, as I am neither a federal circuit court judge, appellate judge, or supreme court justice.

I think it is less important that our money be a particular commodity than it is that the government lack the power to manipulate its value for its own convenience.

In my opinion, it is clear that the power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof" is to standardize the exchange rates between coins, probably by weight of the metal, but not necessarily. It is also clear that the coins need not be metal, but also that no one could be forced to accept coins other than gold or silver coins.

Thus, they could stamp out wooden nickels, but that wouldn't make them worth anything to anybody, except possibly for payment of federal taxes. As long as we have those, it is only a short hop to rectangular paper "coins". They can do it, but nobody has to accept them.

But since nobody is trying to pay taxes with Bitcoin yet, and the federal government isn't mining them, as far as we know, there is no justification for them to be standardized or otherwise regulated whatsoever. It might arguably be authorized under whatever clause, but it certainly isn't justified.

What would be done if massive deposits of precious metals were found, rendering those metals little more valuable than perhaps copper or aluminum? You could still make coins with the same value of course, but they would be a bit impractical to carry around.

A copper coin worth $20 in todays USD would weight nearly 3 kilograms!

Surely at least paper gold and silver certificates would be a reasonable concession.

Gold and silver certs are negotiable debt instruments, covered by the government's power to borrow. You lend them a gold or silver coin, and they write you a note promising to repay the bearer of the note one gold or silver coin of equal weight on demand.

It's sort of a bogus loan, with a variable term and zero interest rate, but it's still allowed, and certainly makes things more convenient for a lot of people. And the government can still profit from the seignorage from the mint.

> Thus, they could stamp out wooden nickels, but that wouldn't make them worth anything to anybody, except possibly for payment of federal taxes. As long as we have those, it is only a short hop to rectangular paper "coins". They can do it, but nobody has to accept them.

Nobody has to accept paper money, either. The only thing "legal tender" laws mean is that if you want to use the power of government to enforce debts, then the government gets to say that its job is done when government-declared legal tender has been presented, whether you accept it or not.

If you don't choose to involve the government in your affairs, then legal tender laws don't affect you.

This is not a "no way in hell" issue. The issue of whether Congress should have the power to issue paper money or make them legal tender was debated at the Constitutional convention and left unresolved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_Tender_Cases#Original_int.... An explicit part of the concern at the Constitutional convention was about not wanting to bind the hands of a future Congress with regards to paper money. Supreme Court cases in the 19th century determined that the power to make notes legal tender was incident to Congress's power to borrow money on the credit of the United States and to "coin Money" and to "regulate the Value thereof."

To be fair, this is actually one of the more plausible ones of the various "everything is unconstitutional" myths. At least some of the framers clearly did want to tie the hands of the federal government when it came to making paper money legal tender.

I find the arguments of Alexander Hamilton and his central bank supporters to be self-serving and destructive to the ends of the people. And in my biased and prejudiced opinion, central banking in the US has been an unmitigated disaster every time it has been tried. I don't believe JM Keynes can be used as a foundation for a sound economy, and I don't think monetary inflation is good for anybody except the person doing the inflating.

There is good reason for the Constitution to override the status quo of the Articles of Confederation on the subject of minting coinage, but I'm not certain a debate left unresolved regarding paper money is indicative of anything when they did actually agree that a person could be owned, and that was worth 3/5 of a vote. It was either less important than slavery, or more difficult to resolve. I'm inclined to believe the latter.

Before descending into full-on libertarded ranting, let's just say that leaving the matter as ambiguous effectively grants the government license to do whatever it pleases and interpret the ambiguity in favor of that.

Failing to bind the hands of a future Congress is what allowed them to pick up that grenade and pull the pin.

I'm not really interested in getting pulled into a 200 year old debate. For better or worse, most of the latent ambiguities in the Constitution were resolved in favor of the interpretation espoused by Hamilton and the Federalists. All I'm saying is that it's not the case that there was this clear Constitutional dictate in one direction that we callously ignored in modern times.

> I'm not really interested in getting pulled into a 200 year old debate.

Why not, if the debate is still valid? These issues weren't so much "resolved" as put aside in favor of more government power or postponed (in the case of slavery, equal protection). The mere fact that the debate is 200 years old is simply more credit to its importance.

The constitution is imperfect (like our government), as it itself acknowledges, and is "correct" only as Lincoln said that it serves a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all (men) are created equal".

As someone else once said, don't take refuge in the false security of consensus.

> The mere fact that the debate is 200 years old is simply more credit to its importance.

No, it usually means one side lost and can't get over it. Half the country still disagrees with Darwin, it doesn't make the debate important despite it being well over 100 years old. The same applies here.

> Half the country still disagrees with Darwin

If you don't think that debate is still important, you are essentially conceding it to the half the country you disagree with (because they sure as hell think its important). I'm sure you don't want your kids being taught creationism just because you consider yourself "above" the argument.

And regardless, the same does not apply here, because unlike the overwhelming evidence we have for evolution by natural selection, there simply is not enough data on the usefulness of central banking to the prosperity of the nation.

> If you don't think that debate is still important, you are essentially conceding it to the half the country you disagree with

No I'm not. The debate was over 100 years ago, the ignorant just haven't figured it out yet. They simply get laughed at now for trying to argue the case. Mockery is not concession.

> there simply is not enough data on the usefulness of central banking to the prosperity of the nation.

Not what I was referring to. I was referring to this, " For better or worse, most of the latent ambiguities in the Constitution were resolved in favor of the interpretation espoused by Hamilton and the Federalists."

You can't ignore 200 years of judicial interpretation and case law simply because you prefer to interpret the text differently, that was his point and he's correct. That debate is over.

"No I'm not. The debate was over 100 years ago, the ignorant just haven't figured it out yet. They simply get laughed at now for trying to argue the case. Mockery is not concession."

If it's actually half the country, and they actually think it's substantially more important than the other half the country, there's an argument that it's effective concession. But, at the risk of putting words in your mouth, I more understood you to be saying that having the argument wasn't important - conveying the understanding behind your "your side" of that argument you might consider quite a bit more important.

There never was a debate. Having a debate presumes that it is possible for one side to concede. The public discussion between Bill Nye and Religiousguy Whatsisface showed that one side is not debating; they're just baiting. Bill Nye said all it would take to change his mind is just one piece of real evidence. The other guy said that nothing anyone could ever say or do would change his mind.

On hearing that, it becomes obvious. There is no quest for truth or spirit of inquiry in the opposition. They are simply obstacles to progress that must be routed around. The debate is not over; it never took place, and it never will.

If you can't get someone to support rational argumentation by means of rational arguments, you're better off talking to someone--anyone--else.

There are some people who claim to be beyond convincing. There are probably some people who are beyond convincing - and there's probably some overlap between those two groups. It's just not the case that either of these sets includes everyone who doesn't "believe in" evolution.

You can't have a reasoned debate about evolution; reasonable people already know it's a fact and don't dispute it. Only unreasonable people are still disputing a basic fact of the world discovered well over 100 years ago.

You're presuming a lot about people's exposure to various ideas. A reasonable person surrounded by unreasonable people, who has - of course - encountered talk of evolution but almost exclusively absurd caricatures isn't going to "already know it's a fact".

If they graduated high school, they were exposed to the facts regardless of who they're around. Anyone who doesn't know evolution is reality is not a person of reason.

"If they graduated high school, they were exposed to the facts regardless of who they're around."

Unfortunately that's basically false.

> Mockery is not concession.

If half the population becomes slightly over than half the population out of random chance (or say, the "ignorant" having a few more babies as they are wont to do), mockery would be political concession.

It's far better to convince who you deem ignorant of your own views. This means treating their arguments seriously in the fashion of http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html .

Mockery is unlikely to succeed (as are downvotes), and pretty much fails pg's 1st test.

Your next claim, that "200 years of judicial interpretation and case law" ends the debate fails pg's second test. It's an ad hominem attack, that any disagreement with legal precedent (admittedly strong in this case) should be ignored.

By the same token, legal precedent prior to the civil war dictated that human beings could be property. I presume you are glad that some individuals within that society begged to differ.

Debates should be conducted on first principles and supported by objective evidence. I myself agree with Rayiner in that there is no constitutional dictate either way, only saying that the debate is valid on the grounds of 1st principle regardless of how old the arguments are.

Keep your idol worship to yourself; pg is not the authority on how disagreement should work, he's a VC for tech companies, not the authoritative source on how things should be. I happen to agree with the Hitchens approach of mocking religious ignorance and don't give a crap about being reasonable about it. I don't care about pg's tests. Debate is not relevant and only lends status to non-sense. Mockery is the appropriate response to evolution deniers, not reasoned debate. You cannot reason someone out a position they were not reasoned into.

I don't think you have a clue about Christopher Hitchens (who I actually quoted in this thread: "don't take refuge in the false security of consensus").

Perhaps you should read more of what he wrote, and watch the dozens of debates he conducted with priests, rabbis etc. Of course, you can use ridicule in an argument, but you cannot put yourself above the debate (or you will lose).

Perhaps it's you who don't have a clue. Perhaps you should read more of what he wrote, and watch the dozens of debates he conducted with priests, rabbis etc, because I already have. Listen to the man himself[1] on the importance of mocking religion.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3sFg8-1qTw

I'm saying that even if it was clear, it probably would have been ignored (maybe even amended) anyway. Control over the nation's currency is so powerful that it is inevitable that someone will try to usurp it.

If you're trying to create a limited government, there are ample reasons to dig a deep moat around money, fill it with poisonous snakes and spiders, and line the walls with Dementors.

"I don't think monetary inflation is good for anybody except the person doing the inflating."

Isn't it good for persons with dollar-denominated debt exceeding their dollar-denominated assets?

Only if their dollar-denominated debt wasn't adjusted to account for inflation, which assuming stable rates of inflation, isn't likely.

Agreed, though I have a hard time seeing it as particularly bad for anyone in that case either.

It complicates all economic calculations by unnecessarily introducing time and rate variables into the equation, and puts the entire economy on a treadmill, so people have to work just to stay in one place. Since those variables are often only rough guesses, they can be wrong, and cause misallocation of funds.

When you print an additional 2% of the money supply, you are essentially taking about 2% of the entire economy and assigning it to yourself.

Back when money was gold, and gold was money, in order to increase the money supply by 2%, you had to mine 2% of all gold already in the marketplace, which required a lot of labor and capital. If the price of gold was high, you worked more expensive mines. If it was low, you idled them as temporarily unprofitable. The effect of the increase on the money supply was diffused throughout the economy by virtue of the sheer amount of work required to accomplish it.

With paper money, all that is required is a press and anti-counterfeiting measures. The transfer of value into the new money is far more concentrated, both in terms of actors and time. The buying power of the new money is higher, because people don't necessarily know how much you printed until you start spending it.

It is a great virtue for Bitcoin to make public the exact amount of new money added to the economy. Monetary inflation can therefore be predicted exactly. It's still inflationary, and does not account for changes in demand to achieve a stable money price. What it needs is a feedback loop that connects mining rewards with demand for the currency. I imagine that could key from the hash rate of the whole network, but I'm not certain how.

> When you print an additional 2% of the money supply, you are essentially taking about 2% of the entire economy and assigning it to yourself.

There is no basis for the assumptions about demand for money vs. other goods that are necessary for this to be a justifiable claim.

Assumption: The value of money is the aggregate value of market transactions divided by the product of the available quantity of money and its velocity.

Assumption: The money itself has zero intrinsic value. It is only worth what you can trade for it. Thanks to the previous assumption, that is a fraction of all goods and services on the market.

When you change the size of the money supply from 100 to 102, the 2 new notes increase in value from 0 to 1/102 of everything on the market, and all of the 100 old notes decrease from 1/100 to 1/102 of everything. The guy that prints the new notes gets 2/102 of everything for free. That value is not created; it is taken. Everyone who held any old note has their buying power reduced by 1.96%.

Is it justifiable? Yes. Is it a gross simplification because economics is a dismal, dismal science? Also yes.

Section 8 says very explicitly: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof

People are totally allowed to make their own money and you can use it as you like.

EDIT: About the commerce clause.

Forgot to mention, if you want to bag on the federal government, don't bag on the commerce clause, bag on stipulating federal funding is only available if you do this completely unrelated thing.

"If you handle more medicaid people we will cover part of the cost", that makes sense. "If you raise your minimum drinking age to 21 we will help pay for your roads". WTF?

I'll bag on the commerce clause from here to next week and back, thank you very much. The original meaning of regulate was "standardize", so most of what They claim to be doing with it is overreach. As far as intent goes, it was supposed to eliminate border friction on interstate trade, so Delaware couldn't charge a $1 tariff on a widget imported from New Jersey and two bits on the same thing from Pennsylvania, or other assorted trade-barrier nonsense.

I think it would be completely warranted to have a constitutional amendment that controls how the federal government manages the treasury. It should not be giving money to the states except by apportioning the funds by census populations. If the Wisconsin drinking age is 18, too bad. As long as you are paying for highways at all, you have to pay them 1.817% of that money, because they have 1.817% of the US population.

That would prevent an awful lot of political lever-pulling in the form that you mentioned. You couldn't tie federal highway funding to anything other than the actual upkeep of the highways. And you couldn't make school lunch subsidies contingent on serving corn at least 3 times per week, or declare ketchup a vegetable.

> I'll bag on the commerce clause from here to next week and back, thank you very much. The original meaning of regulate was "standardize"

Revisionism. The word "regulate" was interpreted in more or less its modern sense in Gibbons v Ogden, in 1824, merely 35 years after ratification.

"[T]he power to regulate; that is, to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations, other than are prescribed in the Constitution."

This is not a case where the meaning of the word has drifted from what it meant at the time of the founding. I'm quite conservative in my Constitutional interpretation, but I think conservatives get the Commerce Clause wrong. Its broad and was intended to be. The anti-federalist framers thought the "interstate" part would be a limit, but didn't concieve of a world where every transaction would cross state borders. Indeed, they lived in a world where market transactions were the exception. But saying that we should interpret the plain text more narrowly because the world has changed since then is a very "living Constitution" thing to do.

> The original meaning of regulate was "standardize"

I would certainly include defining a singular version to be under the power granted by standardize. Heck most standards are singular in nature. That isn't a stretch at all.

> so Delaware couldn't charge a $1 tariff on a widget imported from New Jersey and two bits on the same thing from Pennsylvania

We are talking about minting coins, not interstate taxes.

> It should not be giving money to the states except by apportioning the funds by census populations.

That only works for some very basic things. Maybe roads (I doubt it) and certainly not a lot of things such as National Forests.

> declare ketchup a vegetable.

Vegetables in school lunches are measured exclusively by volume, not by nutritional content. Most of the tomato jokes are related to concentrated versions that get a pass because serving a kid a cup of ketchup or tomato sauce is silly.

The statement does not refer to how states may pay their debts - it refers to their power to issue currencies.

"...make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts... " means states cannot issue their own currencies as legal tender. They can only make gold or silver legal tenders for debts. The federal government can make paper dollars a legal tender, and the states can pay their debts in that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_Clause#Legal_Tender

Denying a power to the states is not the same as granting it to the federation. The federal government was never authorized to declare anything a legal tender. It was authorized to manufacture coins and say what they are worth.

It would be nice to think that the supremes would strike down legal tender laws for that reason, but as they are paid in paper, I don't think it likely in this millennium.

> Legal tender, and paper money are not delegated to the federation, but prohibited to the states, therefore they remain the province of the people.

The power to emit debt instruments, including in the form of paper money, is, to the extent it is not included in the power to coin money and regulate its value (Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 5) a necessary part of the power to borrow (Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 3). See, inter alia, Juilliard v. Greenman, 110 U.S. 421.

That's rather disingenuous. When you borrow, the counterparty must have something to lend to you. The creation of new fiat paper money has no counterparty.

The power to borrow is to write a promissory note in exchange for a real something, that is later redeemable by giving real somethings to the holder of the note. I can write a note promising to pay a hamburger and a half on Tuesday for a hamburger today. In order for that note to have any sort of economic effect, someone has to give me a hamburger for it.

Once it's out there, that's worth 1.5 burgers, and can be traded around at will, but come Tuesday, I need to have 1.5 hamburgers on hand to redeem the note.

The paper money notes now circulating in the economy have nothing to do with borrowing. Where is the promise to pay? What is the term of the loan? Why is the US paying the Fed interest to take and use their note?

If it were borrowing, the Treasury would print the notes and give them to the Fed in exchange for something. Those are T-bills. The something they get in return is Fed scrip. That is what circulates. That is what they made into legal tender. Do you buy groceries with T-bills? US notes? Gold or silver certificates? No? The federal power to borrow does not apply here. You are not exchanging federal instruments, but notes issued by a private (but legislatively controlled) banking system.

If you contract to be paid only in federal coins or instruments, and someone pays you in private bank notes created from thin air instead, the courts will not decide in your favor.