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A bill recently introduced in Texas seeks to obliterate the Federal Reserve's much-maligned monopoly on currency by establishing gold and silver as legal tender — but the groundbreaking legislation, if passed, would also prohibit those precious metals from being seized by State authorities.
[...] Senator Bob Hall introduced the bill last month, which, the Tenth Amendment Center explains, "declares specifically that certain gold and silver coins are legal tender, and prohibits any tax, charge, assessment, fee, or penalty on any exchange of Federal Reserve notes (dollars) for gold or silver. The bill authorizes the payment of taxes and fees in gold & silver in certain circumstances. It would also prohibit the seizure of gold or silver by state authorities."
Would this matter in a nation where money is mostly plastic nowadays anyway?
Source: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/texas-bill-gold-silver-money-federal-reserve/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 16 2017, @02:53PM (4 children)
You almost make a point. Currency of any kind is basically valueless. Or, nearly so. However, there is a distinction between fiat money - which we operate on today - and money which is backed by some kind of a standard. Gold has always had some imagined value to people, despite the fact that you can't eat it, it won't keep you warm, it won't keep the rain off your head while you sleep. Gold has no intrinsic value, yet people value it highly. You can take it anywhere, and trade it for almost anything.
Not so much a roll of toilet paper with dollar denominations printed on it. Paper has no value beyond your faith in the institution printing the paper.
And - your faith is seriously misplaced.
NOTE: The US government doesn't print that paper. A private corporation prints that paper. The paper doesn't benefit either the people, or the government of this country. Once upon a time, when government printed "greenbacks", the currency profited the government, and indirectly, the people. Today, the paper only benefits some shareholders of a corporation.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday April 16 2017, @04:37PM (3 children)
Gold does have intrinsic value. Not enough to account for it's perceived value, but it's not insignificant.
"How much gold is in a smartphone?
Magann: In very rough numbers, there are 10 troy ounces of gold (or about three-fifths of a pound) per ton of smartphones. Ten thousand phones weigh one ton. [With gold selling for about $1,580 per ounce, that would yield $15,800.]
How about a laptop?
Magann: Two hundred laptops would yield five troy ounces of gold.
How much is in an average desktop?
Magann: A PC circuit board, where the gold is, weighs about a pound. If you had a ton of those boards, you should have 5 troy ounces of gold."
- http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2013/03/20/how-much-gold-is-in-smartphones-and-computers [dell.com]
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @05:18PM (1 child)
Gold does have intrinsic value.
There is no such thing as intrinsic value. It has value to us humans, but that does not make its value intrinsic.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday April 16 2017, @06:33PM
Most things we discuss are human concepts that don't exist in the physical world.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 16 2017, @10:49PM
Given: 1 troy = 31.1034768e-3 kg ; Gold price = 1580 US$ / troy
Smartphone: 1e-6 kg/unit = 1.6 US$ / unit
Laptop: 777e-6 kg/unit = 40 US$ / unit
Motherboard: 71e-6 kg/board = 3.6 US$ / unit
Laptops really stand out.
Now where is that acid...... ;)