If It's Ilegal To Deface Coins, How Come People

Many Socialist countries also make it illegal to take their coins out of the country. For example Cuba, makes it illegal to take either their regular coins, or the special Inturist coins that visitors have to exchange their money for, out of the country. (On the other hand they don't mind exporting the commemorative coins that the sell for a high premium.) Makes it difficult to collect recent cuban minors.

*coughs*

Conder, what you and jbuck are both describing are communist countries. I know that Joseph McCarthy liked to use these two terms to mean the same thing, but none of us are Joseph McCarthy. Most things that are "socialist" are actually societal improvements--for example, our roads are created via public funds, and therefore everyone may use them; nobody has the right to gate them up and say "you can't go there" or to tear them down and go "nope, nope, I wanted to plant something there." That is a socialist setup.

The difference in theory has to do with how much is owned by whom (e.g. in socialism the government owns part of production and private enterprise owns part of production; in communism the Motherland owns it all and you don't have to worry about the paperwork, just doing your job), and in practice tends to come down more to levels of censorship. Most modern-day actually socialist countries (Sweden and Finland are the first two that come to my mind) don't have any problem with the free exchange of information. Please compare to the Iron Curtain and the Great Firewall.


Sorry, that swapping is a big pet peeve of mine.

I have no idea how allot of the stupid laws ever got "important" enough that they thought they had to have something in writing to avoid it from happening, all I know is they are there

I guess I thought this was common knowledge that this was what was supposed to happen at first and that is why I made the comment. If something like this would happen again they could carry it through as there may not be anyone there with enough influence to try or even want to get them to change it. So if they asked for them all to be returned and you didn't do so, they "could" make it a crime because they can recall them if they wish. I am not saying they ever will because when they did it with Gold the country was in bad shape, I am just saying I believe they can if they wanted to

I'd like to know about the "neither may continue til the other has passed" law--did anyone ever stop to think about this before putting it on paper?


And jbuck--it's all good, just a peeve of mine because people freak out if you even mention the words "social safety net" without realising that a social safety net is not a fast track to being the next China/USSR (Cuba is actually relatively functional regardless of whether I agree with their policies, so I'm leaving them out of this). I still maintain that the one politician who did the most harm to this country was McCarthy, and his damage is still being felt.

Big Circus at it again

Actually, not to be the killjoy in this thread, but I might have a theory about the elephants!

Back in the 1860s, the King of Siam enjoyed a friendly correspondence with our then-President, and offered a royal gift to the United States. Among other properties . . . . well, I'll just let you read an excerpt from Lincoln's gracious declining of the gift:

I appreciate most highly Your Majesty's tender of good offices in forwarding to this Government a stock from which a supply of elephants might be raised on our own soil. This Government would not hesitate to avail itself of so generous an offer if the object were one which could be made practically useful in the present condition of the United States.

Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam on land, as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation in internal commerce.

Lincoln allowed this correspondence to be published publicly for people to read (sidenote: this probably came from a political motive; part of this correspondence includes the King of Siam's assertion that "the system of American Slavery" was known to be "repugnant to everyone" from around the world. Given that the King had slaves of his own, this was a powerful contrast between types of slavery* and also showed that other powerful world leaders were on Lincoln's side), so it's entirely possible that some group of politicos went " . . . . but what if the King says that there are elephants that do well in cold, or in--oh crap--the South? OUR FIELDS!! WHERE'S THE PANIC BUTTON?"




*Just in case anybody's going "what the--TYPES of slavery?", I studied this king in college (he's the same king portrayed in The King and I). His slaves were fed, housed, and provided with clothes. American slaves were not given clothes, had to grow their own food, and lived pretty much in conditions we would consider prisonlike.

Going back to the Cuban coin thing: I knew someone who imported small Cuban coins because they were the same size and weight as subway tokens and they worked in the turnstiles. They`ve since changed the tokens so they no longer work, but things like this happen.