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Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

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Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#71

Post by fredoralive »

yardie wrote: post #67
fredoralive wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were to happen "legally", instead of "civil war II: the farce", I suppose the obvious bit would be to pass a constitutional amendment[1] to allow Texas to secede, probably after a Texit referendum. Presumably similarly to Brexit all the nitty gritty minor details like "not destroying the economy" can be worked out in negotiation between Texas and the USA, which will no doubt leave the newly independent Texas in…

The article that allowed the UK to leave the EU was specifically crafted for the UK at the time they joined. The EU realized that mistake right away and removed it for future members. No such agreement exists in the Constitution because having states come and go as they please would be incredibly dumb.

Huh? Article 50 is still there, and isn't a UK specific thing:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

"Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements."

Wikipedia (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_the_European_U...) notes that a formal method of leaving became a thing in the early 2000s when various Eastern European states were joining, not when the UK joined in the 1970s.

(As for the US, I did say actually passing a constitutional amendment to allow succession would be unlikely, but I don't think it's legally impossible?)

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#72

Post by silverpepsi »

zpeti wrote: post #66
silverpepsi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is fraction reserves, as soon as that fraud is legalized, the entire marketplace is by definition fraudulent. If they did have reserves and fraction reserve was suddenly legalized, you get retroactively robbed in a sense. Holding gold would appeal to me but is impossible. I won't dedicate my life, hell or high water, to one country. You can't just up and carry stuff across nation borders. It is a total ni…

> One of the worst inventions in history imo. As opposed to what? Roaming tribes of mongols, and castles where you couldnt leave if the king didn’t let you? What did you think happened if you left your tribe in hunter gatherer tribes? You got eaten by a jaguar on the next tree, or you starved. What romantic notion do you hold of the world before visas and passports?

Fair enough. To be specific, as opposed to immediately before passports were invented

I imagine it was similar to what it was like: 1. Before police patrolled in America 2. Before driver's licenses (you can still experience this in Cambodia, low CC scooters don't require a license) 3. Before tattoo artists needed a medical license in Japan and Korea

Ya know, liberty and basic rights that have now been abrogated to such a degree that the herd not only doesn't remember what they were like, but actually questions the validity of even being that "free". (Populations like China tend to think a central authority not controlling speech is absurd too.)

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#74

Post by Finnucane »

lamp987 wrote: post #43
hakfoo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect there are three flavours of gold bugs: 1) Wealthy + Paranoid + Stupid. They'd rather keep their money in sovereigns under their mattress, than put it into any sort of productive economic activity. On a long term, especially in the US, you could pretty much throw darts and build a portfolio that competes with, or beats, inflation. 2) Conspirational: "fiat currency is a grand scheme to undermine our savings f…

"fiat currency is a grand scheme to undermine our savings" imagine writing this as ironic mockery during an ongoing inflation crisis.

Note also that historically, the gold standard didn't actually prevent inflation.

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#76

Post by HillRat »

nobody9999 wrote: post #10

IANAL, but doesn't Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution[0] bar Texas from creating such a currency? [0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C1-2...

The use of the term "currency" in the bills is probably ill-advised for just that reason, but states can, under certain circumstances, issue bank notes that act essentially as currency or bills of credit; Briscoe v. Bank of Commonwealth of Kentucky, 36 U.S. 257 (1837) found such bank notes constitutional so long as they aren't issued under color state sovereignty -- that is, they must trade on "no pledge of the faith of the state, in any form." (The federal government eventually killed off state bank notes, not by attempting to outlaw them directly -- AFAIK! -- but by taxing them aggressively, though I don't believe those laws are on the books any more.)

Having said that, the fact that these bills direct the state to establish the program, fixes in law the redemption of the "currency," and directs the state to hold gold reserves for the currency all suggest that this is Constitutionally questionable, because the bill is trading on "the faith of the state." Consider that, if Texas establishes a gold-backed stablecoin then executes a rug-pull, your legal options as an aggrieved party are limited due to state sovereignty, which is precisely the issue that the Constitution seeks to prevent (though at the time the question of sovereign immunity was somewhat less settled in the absence of the Eleventh Amendment).

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#78

Post by api »

qwytw wrote: post #30
api wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the crazier political rabbit holes to go down. There are reasonable and/or reasonable-sounding arguments for pretty much every position and those arguments have been rehashed in every imaginable way for decades and decades. Online there's probably tens of gigabytes of debate between "hard money" advocates and "fiat" or inflationary currency advocates. After seeing endless debates between various schools…

> We don't know and we'll never know. All you can do is tell just-so stories You can compare the permanent boom and bust cycle the global economy was in prior to the Great Depression to the relatively stable inflationary environment of the last several decades. Just look at: https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1800?amount=1#:~:t... . Specie based money (with not meaningful monetary policy) is not stable, in fac…

Here's the problem:

https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

We can't run an experiment to determine causation.

A lot of things happened since WWII. The whole way our government works shifted more toward centralization as a result of the war. Better information and communication technology could have allowed markets to operate more efficiently. Loads of European and Asian productivity was smashed in the war, distorting global trade toward America. A generation received a collective military experience. Women entered the workforce in large numbers. On and on and on...

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#79

Post by s1artibartfast »

harywilke wrote: post #62
dotcoma wrote: post #29

Is Texas getting ready to secede from the union, or what ?

Yes. It is the stated position of the Texas GOP that they should secede. "33. State Sovereignty: Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government199 has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes200 upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified. Texas201 retains the right to seced…

There's a difference between maintaining the right to do something and wanting to do something or preparing to do something.

I maintain that I have the right to leave my employer and wife. I don't have plans or want to do either at the current moment

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#80

Post by [deleted] »

bheadmaster wrote: post #70
throw0101b wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so that there's no way to actually save money in the long-term. Besides equities? Besides TIPS? * https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tips.asp Do you literally keep bills under your mattress or buried in your backyard? There's your problem.

> Do you literally keep bills under your mattress or buried in your backyard? There's your problem. No, there's not my problem. The problem is that the government keeps printing money, so my bills under my mattress or buried in my backyard keep dropping in value. The fact that there are securities that are literally called "Inflation-Protected" as an antidote to that only serves as a proof of the original problem. >…

[deleted]
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