Control over money will end in total slavery

Free exchange of goods and services is bedrock of freedom

- JB SHURK

BY slowly replacing the use of gold coins with mandated paper currencies, nation states have engaged in a bit of hocus-pocus to conjure funny money out of thin air.

Although the particular order of events has been different for different nations over the last few hundred years, the important steps have all been the same.

First, some form of paper money is introduced and backed by the government's promise to pay the holder of each note a fixed sum in gold or silver.

Next, the introduction of a private central bank comes into existence, holding a de facto monopoly power to print paper money according to its best judgment for maintaining a healthy national economy.

Finally, the gold or silver backing of those paper money currencies is removed.

Throughout the West, that slow but steady transition from money with innate value to currencies with no innate value has operated like a long con against the public. People have been conditioned to use paper money over the course of decades.

The supply of, and demand for, paper money was decoupled from Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', and government mandates precluded citizens from returning to the universally stable mediums of exchange that gold and silver had long provided.

Abracadabra! Western treasuries and central banks replaced free markets, securely denominated in fixed quantities of gold, with centrally-controlled paper currency markets that distort the value of everything privately owned.

This Machiavellian switcheroo has enabled governments to spend money like drunken sailors precisely because central banks right across the street will buy up their debt and facilitate the printing of more money. How could politicians object to an arrangement that allows them to spend recklessly without any normal free-market consequences?