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Rhinoqulous wrote
I find these interesting. Wasn't it illegal to own gold while we were under the gold standard? I seem to recall that you could own small amounts (for jewelry), but other than that gold was the property of the state. Also, I think there is more money in circulation than gold could cover, which would either make the price of gold skyrocket or do really wacky things with the dollar.
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Yes. Executive Order 6102. Money in the bank - the so called M1 - lives a double life. It is your savings and someone else's loan. Encouraging (or enforcing) bank deposits helps to pump up the economy by increasing the money supply. During the depression of the 1930's our currency was gold based and so the hording of gold had the effect of reducing the money supply. Roosevelt was trying to do a quantitative easing by outlawing the holding of gold.
This year our government has been doing some odd things with regard to gold. Effective July 1st we can no longer trade gold on the forex. Also effective this year, you are to report any gold that you aren't holding at the bank in your tax returns. Some speculate that our government has sold gold that it doesn't have and now that other countries are demanding physical delivery (for instance Chavez required a huge delivery from the US earlier this year) they plan on forcing citizens to trade their gold for paper in order to make good on those sales.
I don't know if that's the case or if they just want to discourage the use of alternative currencies. If we all stop using dollars, then they lose the capacity for uninhibited spending on the backs of the citizens....a much more lucrative means of income than mere taxation.
Which is why I would like to return to an asset based, non-fiat currency. It doesn't have to be gold. Gold just happens to hit a certain sweet spot. It's useless to manufacturing and doesn't rust. It doesn't matter how much there is (currently a one centimeter cube per human). What matters is that if you take the right amount of paper to the bank, they must produce the metal. It helps keep them from going nuts with the press, and more importantly for the 99% in the US, gets us out from under the burden of being the world's reserve currency.
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Rhinoqulous wrote
Intellectual property right laws in this country are fucked right now. They pretty much change at the whim of the Disney corporation (every time one of their properties is to go into public domain, the laws change. Coincidence?). How would this work with things like beer recipes (or even the branding of names)? While I think the current law is complete bullshit, limiting all intellectual property might not work either.
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The whole point of the copyright law is to encourage creativity
which it is no longer doing. Instead it has become this fuel for predatory groups of attorneys to roam the land harassing the young. This group has gotten so nasty that they have
are actually praising the virtues of child pornography There is a nice article about the
need for change in copyright law by Lessig in the WSJ. Unlikely to happen as the MPAA and BMI are big poltical lobbyists.
Regarding beer, you cannot copyright recipes, but
now that you can patent broccoli, probably the work-around is to patent yeast.
So Rhinoq! Where are your five policies!