If equities lose due to a black swan, and the dollar goes full Venezuela, commodities could reach a point or valuation which makes confiscation desirable.
Governments have no trouble raising money by increasing the money supply. Silver and gold no longer play a direct role in the monetary system. This is way simpler than confiscation, unless a particular commodity was needed. In times of trouble, rationing of newly produced commodities could take place. If the government wants silver, it would be easier to get it from the mines.
Quote: Silver and gold as money are specifically mentioned in the constitution.
States could put out there own silver and gold currency.
Actually, the Constitution expressly forbids the States from doing precisely that. It says, in Article 1 Section 10:
Quote: No State shall... coin Money;
It's quite black and white; States are not allowed to strike or produce (this is the definition of "coin" as a verb) their own money. Trust me, they'd have done it long ago if the Constitution didn't forbid it, because striking coins is quite lucrative. This is, incidentally, why Sales Tax Tokens were eventually shot down and never revived, as Sales Tax Tokens were de-facto state-issued coins.
Article 1 Section 10 of the Constitution goes on to say that...
Quote: No State shall... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;
"Make" here means "declare", not "produce". So this doesn't contradict the earlier statement about forbidding the making of coins, and doesn't give States permission to strike coins so long as those coins are gold or silver. It gives States the right to declare already-existing foreign or obsolete coins to be legal tender within that state, so long as those foreign or obsolete coins are made of gold or silver. It also means states can't issue their own banknotes and declare them to be legal tender within the state, or unilaterally declare any other non-coin object (like precious metal ingots, gemstones, coffee beans, etc) to be legal tender.
States could (and did) issue their own banknotes; so long as those states didn't then attempt to declare those banknotes to be legal tender, they were allowable under the Constitution.
So far as I am aware, no State has ever exercised their constitutional right to declare foreign coins to be legal tender. But these sections of the Constitution pose some interesting hypotheticals. Suppose, for example, that the Confederacy had actually issued usefully large quantities of gold and silver coins during the Civil War. And suppose that a cash-strapped post-War State, finding itself with stockpiles of Confederate coins and no ready means of melting and reissuing the metal as Federally-sanctioned coins, then declared those Confederate coins to be legal tender. It seems constitutionally allowable (Confederate gold and silver coins would seem to be logically included in the definition of "gold and silver Coin"), though there may then have been legal challenges from the Federal government, on the basis that the Confederacy was not a recognized government and therefore not a coin-issuing authority and that Confederate "coins" were actually issued by rogue States in defiance of the Constitution, and therefore not legally "coins".
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Quote: I wonder if certain alcoholic beverages would be more valuable in a post-apocalyptic world than silver, or gold...?
They tried making rum legal tender in early colonial Australia. Didn't work out too well; people kept drinking their profits, and those at the top were the ones most likely to be drunken fools. When Captain Bligh (of "Mutiny on the Bounty" fame) was appointed colonial governor and attempted to forbid the use of rum as currency, Australia's first and so far only military coup, the Rum Rebellion, was the result.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
After the Norfed debacle, no one will try to make anything resembling a currency, one would think.
I had read that constitutional article differently. I am not a lawyer though, but after purchasing gold backs, I thought it was pretty " black and white."
The tyranny of the federal government seems to hold no bounds. The constitution is basically toilet paper these days, anyway.
All the more reason to think instability could lead to currency collapse and a hunt for safe assets.
The government being reactionary, may chase the wealth as it shifts from equities to commodities.
Confiscation is a time-tested method of theft. One some even see as legitimate and a "patriotic " duty, as demonstrated under FDR.
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Posted 02/11/2022 7:29 pm
