I am not comfortable giving government more power to control the economy. The government was never meant to have the power over the economy they currently do. We are over 100 years in to the reign of the Fed and I see very little good that has come from it.
Can you expand on that for a bit? I look at the history of governments and I see less direct control of the economy throughout history.
For large chunks of history governments owned most of the economic output of their constituents in the form of slavery.
Even in the supposed free market heyday of the late 1800s USA the government controlled most of the productive land either outright or via land grants & treaties, they controlled right of ways for the major tech innovations like the telegram & railroads and they enforced labor rights at the end of a bayonet.
Monetary policy seems like a softer power than the previous regime to me. What am I missing?
Whether what you are saying is true or not - on face value it appears that when the founding fathers in the US were laying the groundwork for the new government, it was envisaged that the role the federal government had would be smaller than it is now. Whether that is good or bad is a different argument, but it seems on face value to be a given it wasn't intended by those folks.
The example given re the Fed - I don't believe there was any suggestion by the founding fathers of a central bank. Banks used to issue their own money.
Alexander Hamilton, famously wanted and got a central bank exactly for the purpose of issuing money. There’s a musical about it.
George Washington suppressed a rebellion that started at least in part because the federal government was interfering with the use of whiskey as a medium of exchange.
I’m fairly receptive to the Jeffersonian view that these were not good ideas for the federal government but claiming the founding fathers didn’t view them as federal powers just isn’t true.
That wasn't a central bank anything like a central bank acts today. It was more a "national bank". It wasn't lender of last resort. It didn't regulate other banks. Banks didn't have an account there. It didn't play a part in settling payments like the fed does now.
By comparison, modern central banks like the Fed are very interwoven into the banking system and financial system and have a lot of power. They settle interbank payments. They set interest rates for short term lending between them. They regulate banks. They supervise banks. They do all kinds of buying and selling of securities. There isn't anything to my knowledge to suggest Hamilton was imagining something like the Fed.
What Hamilton got was of course a watered down version of what he wanted precisely because of the Jeffersonian objections.
He had argued even during the revolutionary war that there was a need for a Bank Of England equivalent in the States. The Bank of England also didn’t look exactly like a central bank does today but was an explicit instrument of governmental monetary policy.
Hamilton and his supporters believed the federal government would fail without a similar institution so it’s just not correct to say that the founders didn’t envision a central bank. It was a contentious issue then like slavery was.
If the central bank uses different technologies and processes now that’s to be expected. But even the original bank had as part of its central mission the management of federal monetary policy. Dealing with revolutionary war scrip and resolving a fiat currency were stated aims. The founders didn’t envision that the Department of State would send an ambassador to the UN either but it’s a natural extension of the duties of that department they did establish.
Any appeal to the founders implies allowing for reasonable differences between the world of then and now or it’s a pointless appeal. And the founders certainly did envision a governmental central bank that enacted monetary policy. It was a central argument of the day.
It's seems you know a lot more history than I do :)
In all seriousness though - is there somewhere you can point to which shows the debate around a central bank that suggests they wanted the central bank to: clear interbank payments, set short term rates between banks (and themselves), act as a lender of last resort, regulate and supervise other banks? I've never seen anything that suggested anyone wanted to do any of those five things. I've only seen the arguments for functions which one would consider a national bank.
There are two parts there - which one? Banks certainly did issue their own money. And there wasn't a central bank - at least not as a central bank is defined today.
I clipped the quote incorrectly, but the part about the founders. Considering they established a national bank in the first two years, it seems like they did want a central bank.
Gotcha - please see the discussion above. At least to my knowledge, there was never a discussion of a central bank like the Fed. The national bank proposal (and function) was just that - a national bank. It was the bank the government used, and they also acted as a commercial bank in some manner and did a few other things. They didn't do many/any of the things the Fed does.
I'm not sure what the fed does that a giant national bank doesn't, at least if you're looking at an old school bank like the Bank of teh US. They lend to other banks! They print money! They buy assets!
The big obvious ones: regulate and supervise other banks, settle interbank payments, explicitly act as a lender of last resort to stabilize the financial system as required.
There are also other practical differences - for example, having a set, specific target for short term rates (the first bank of US didn't have a target rate, even if they did loosely have some ability to sort of influence rates).
The power given to the US government is extremely limited. As far as the economy is concerned the US government is given the power to coin money(gold and silver), regulate interstate commerce and trade with foreign nations. That is it. Regulate in this context means to keep regular as in keep interstate trade moving.
There is no power to set prices of labor, give subsidies, dictate safety regulations, print money, maximize employment or maintain stable prices that is given to federal government.
Through monetary policy the federal government has breached the limits of its granted power. Physical force can be resisted. How do we resist the economic yardstick of the dollar being changed to benefit those in power?
This became more ranty than I had hoped. The bottom line is monetary policy of adjusting monetary supply to maintain prices and employment is just the other side of the price fixing coin. It's the same logic behind the reasoning and similar detrimental outcomes for the majority.
The only explicit thing about gold and silver is that states can't make anything but them tender, but the feds can through coinage powers (not metal specific): "coin money and regulate the value."
Also, the UN Charter is supreme law of the land according to article VI of the US Constitution, so check some of those other claims through there too.
> This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The UN Charter is law only insofar as it does not run contrary to the US Constitution.
State laws do not supersede federal treaties, but the federal government does not have the authority to enter into a treaty which would violate the Constitution.
Insofar as the UN Charter does not violate the constitution, you are correct that it is supreme to state laws and state constitutions, but it cannot by definition run contrary to the Constitution as the federal government would not have been able to enter into it.
> Thus, a properly/legally concluded U.S. treaty overrules any STATE law and any STATE Constitution, but a properly/legally framed U.S. treaty does not, may not, can not, and is forbidden to overrule the U.S. Constitution or abrogate the Sovereignty of the United States. If it does, it is not bona fide. It is a usurpation. It is not "under the Authority of the United States" to make such a treaty.
Plain reading, if that statement means it overrides state laws, then it also means it overrides the constitution. It was treated like that in the first few years and then courts came up with a bunch of creative interpretations not to.
I've decided you're right. I typically advocate for the plain reading, and the plain does state that.
Unfortunately this means I now must advocate for the overthrow of the US government, or at least the exitship of the UN Charter and all other treaties which expand power beyond those enumerated in Artice 1 Section 8.
Edit: Actually I'm still not sure. Article 6 says, "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in the pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme law of the land;..."
Congress is not authorized to enter into a treaty which would violate the constitution, so how could they enter into a treaty with the "authority of the United States" if they are not authorized to do that?
Why do you have to work for money while they can create it? That seems to be a fundamental thing nobody can adequately answer - let alone control issues.
The short answer is that is the way they made it. They being people in power corrupted by greed and megalomania.
Originally only gold and silver were money. You could trade for money or dig it out of the ground. If you brought your gold to a government mint it would be made into coins of known purity and weight. Government coins were a trusted unit for trade. However, gold money limits what a government can spend due to a natural physical limit on supply. The primary benefit of gold money is nobody can conjure 100,000 tonnes ($6.43T) out of thin air for their own benefit. That puts the government on more equal footing with the people.
It's much more likely that money started out from debt/obligation systems. Coins for immediate payment stayed pretty uncommon except between parties that didn't trust each other for a pretty long time. With fiat money the government acts as a trusted third party.
Early taxes like the tithe were also not money-based.
Because money for a person is different from money for a government. "Creating money" generally means increasing the ability for banks to give out loans, which spurs economic activity like starting a new business etc
The purpose of money is to trick farmers into producing food for everyone else so nobody starves. Any system where that happens is working acceptably. The inflationary fiat system is better at it than the gold standard - you'll recall there was a great depression and people were unhappy about it.
The luxury space communism idea where everyone just gets infinite money unfortunately has no evidence it'd work, because the farmers wouldn't believe you. The earlier systems, historical communism and feudalism, worked without money because you'd just have the farmers killed if they complained, but obviously that was problematic.
"The luxury space communism idea" usually has an expressed or implied removal of scarcity as an issue. If there's unlimited supply of goods and services, then there is no need for money.
On the other hand, most sci-fi of this nature also has semi-military structures and the military is the ultimate form of communism.
1. your idea probably isn't post-scarcity, you've just forgotten that the goods/services you want to automate have inputs themselves that still cost something.
2. if robots are smart enough to produce everything for us, they're probably human-level intelligent, could be customers instead of producers themselves, and so you've actually rediscovered slavery.
Government is what creates the economy. You earn money so you can spend it again, but you could achieve this also without money. What you cannot do without money is paying your taxes, which you are forced to with ultimately the threat of violence of throwing you into jail or worse.
People create the economy. The government is supposed enforce the agreed upon property rights that the economy is built on. The government was once funded by tariffs on import and export essentially a tax on the success of the nation. Since the income tax was imposed the government has taken a shortcut to the wealth of the people. This saps wealth from the populous that slows and diminishes the wealth and growth of the nation as a whole. It also changes the incentives of the government.
You are correct that with an income tax the government is incentivized to have as many people working as it can so it can squeeze some blood from us. It is an abusive and destructive incentive and the only way to require it is by force. The original way had much better incentives for government behaviours that are beneficial to the people and ultimately the nation.
Government being about enforcement of property rights is a libertarian property-extremist pipe-dream. Governments used to be the only way for large groups of people to work toward a common goal, before private companies were allowed to form.
I fully agree that income tax is a drag on actual performers, and would much prefer property taxes.
The US government exists solely to deal with international matters and to protect state and individual rights. The powers given to the government by the states are pursuant to those needs.
That is not libertarian extremism. That is historical fact.
If the states thought their way of life was secure from violence perpetrated by other states or nations none of them would have ratified the Constitution. A central government was seen as a necessary evil to prevent foreign invasion. Even then it took considerable effort to convince states a central government was necessary.
Government, as in social regulation, like manners, rules both implicit and explicit emerge in any count of humans greater than one. Thus it can be conferred that government is an endemic quality of humans. This can be, and has granted the conception of property and property rights in various forms. It needs no funding, nor formal institution, only public assent. Markets form naturally without the state: barter, debt, and spontaneous exchange (think of ideas, techniques) occur independently and ultimately have very little to do with property rights.
Then there's the "state" (frankly a disingenuous term) which holds a monopoly on violence. With that monopoly they can enforce property concepts of a wide variety. The state maintains power with assent from a power plurality. Of course with that very same power the state government can control a much wider gamut of human interaction. For example they can mandate education at the threat of either jailing a parent for charges of neglect, or assuming the child as the liability of the state government. They can also fund and direct the curriculum taught in schools.
Graeber, in his book Debt speaks on the emergence of money (which itself can emerge independently) this is typified by accepting only one medium to reconcile taxes, specie, which itself is state government issued. The logical consequence of this is that the specie would be necessary to everyone within the authority of the state, and so it assumes the nature of universality. Of course with the position of authority the state government assumes they can mint and debase currency. He also argues that this system was put into action to simplify military campaigns. The predominating mode of exchange previously being debt between trusted parties, otherwise neighbors. Remuneration from a strange soldier who could abscond or die is a risky proposition.
But we can have one without the other. The state itself is predicated on a virulent, and thus, circular fiction, and we've actually got very little in the way of a true impression of precisely how it emerged. One common interpretation is mutual defense. In the fashion of a circular argument it self-amplifies. A neighbor becomes a state, upregulates a military, and so the reasonable course of action is to tit-for-tat and form a state government, upregulating a military. And so forth. Likewise the same can be said of capitalism and acquisitive behavior in general, which are favored by the state and business which also form another amplifying system.
>Governments used to be the only way for large groups of people to work toward a common goal, before private companies were allowed to form.
All the above considered, yes, but only the loosest sense of government, which can be dictated by family, culture, religion, or even business, which itself can operate without a formalized state government.
Most people here have a good software engineering job that pays a good $$ amount that they can use to buy regular crap. Most people here do not care about the economy or the effects the government has on economy. Most people here also "oppose" tyranny but would rather have convenience with authoritarianism than freedom with costs.
> The government was never meant to have the power over the economy they currently do.
Indeed. The government should never give tax breaks to specific industries. Most people here will think it's a good idea to promote green energy through tax breaks or government investments. But that's the literal definition of a controlled economy (aka communism) except it's done with some extra steps.
In a free economy, the government should be funded solely to serve the necessities that can't be served by private companies. The tax rate should be the same for all industries. Industries should pay for their "externalities" (ie: pollution), however.
It's helpless but it took me a decade to figure out that there are no dictatorships/authoritarianism: There are only people who submit.
