OK, I will admit it. I talked (well, typed) with ChatGPT. It’s free. It’s on the Web. It’s easy. And it’s talked about, a lot.

What did I ask it? I asked it about me. It was a fascinating exercise. If anyone (including me) asked it about the work of a third party, there is always the risk that one’s own interpretation of that thinker’s work is wrong. But in asking it about my own work, I think it is not debatable that I am expert. I know all about what Keith Weiner said!

Throughout this article, I incorporate actual questions I asked, and actual answers it provided. These are indented in quotation marks.

It is interesting that I am the only person it knows with my name. And it is gratifying that it says my work is influential (not sure about that, I am too radical to fit in the Overton Window).

However, it runs into trouble when it says “books” (which appears to be modified by the word “numerous”). I have not yet published a book (though I am planning to write several).

Next, I asked it about my view of intrinsic value.

KW: “Does Keith Weiner use the term “intrinsic value” to describe gold?”

GPT: “Yes, Keith Weiner, an economist and proponent of the gold standard, uses the term “intrinsic value” to describe gold. He argues that gold possesses intrinsic value due to its unique physical properties, such as its scarcity, durability, and malleability, which make it suitable for use as money. According to Weiner, gold’s intrinsic value is inherent in its physical characteristics and is not dependent on any government decree or fiat currency. He often emphasizes the concept of intrinsic value in his writings and lectures to advocate for a return to a gold-backed monetary system.”

It boldly asserts that I use a term that I don’t use, even saying that I emphasize it in my advocacy of a gold standard.

There is a term in the AI community for this. It is not a “lie”. A lie requires the liar to know what he says to be false, and to say it with intent to deceive someone. The term used in AI is “hallucination”, which means believing that you see something which is not really there. Such as those books by Keith Weiner.

I thought I’d try asking it what it thinks about what I say about bitcoin.

KW: “What is Keith Weiner’s theory of bitcoin?”

GPT: “Keith Weiner is an economist and proponent of a theory called the “Fundamental Theory of Bitcoin” or “Monetary Metals Theory of Bitcoin” which posits that Bitcoin, a digital cryptocurrency, can become a superior form of money due to its unique properties.

According to Keith Weiner’s theory, the fundamental value of Bitcoin is derived from its usefulness as a medium of exchange and store of value, similar to traditional forms of money such as gold or silver. He argues that Bitcoin’s scarcity, divisibility, durability, transportability, and recognizability make it a viable form of money that can compete with fiat currencies and potentially replace them.

Weiner also emphasizes the importance of Bitcoin’s fixed supply limit of 21 million coins, which means that it cannot be inflated like traditional fiat currencies. He argues that this scarcity makes Bitcoin a reliable store of value, as it cannot be devalued through inflation. He further suggests that as Bitcoin gains wider adoption and acceptance in the mainstream economy, its value will increase, leading to its use as a unit of account in everyday transactions.

Additionally, Weiner’s theory emphasizes the role of interest rates in the value of Bitcoin. He argues that Bitcoin can serve as a medium for interest-bearing loans, where Bitcoin owners can earn interest by lending out their coins. This, he claims, can incentivize saving and promote the productive use of capital, leading to increased economic efficiency.

Overall, Keith Weiner’s theory of Bitcoin revolves around the concept of Bitcoin as a form of sound money, with its unique properties and limited supply potentially making it a superior alternative to traditional fiat currencies. However, it is important to note that economic theories are subject to debate and interpretation, and Weiner’s theory of Bitcoin is one of many perspectives on the topic.”

This is almost entirely wrong. Not I, nor Monetary Metals, has ever written what ChatGPT says, much less called it the “Fundamental Theory of Bitcoin”.

It follows with a regurgitation of the conventional arguments. There are just two problems. One, I have not made those arguments, even in favor of gold. Two, I have written many words to argue they are not true for bitcoin. In the Soho Forum gold vs. bitcoin debate, I argued that a fixed quantity is a bad policy based on a flawed understanding of economics.

The icing on the cake is where ChatGPT asserts that I “argue that Bitcoin can serve as a medium for interest-bearing loans, where Bitcoin owners can earn interest by lending out their coins. This, he claims, can incentivize saving and promote the productive use of capital, leading to increased economic efficiency.”

In fact, I have risked angering half of Twitter, with my numerous tweets which argue that bitcoin is unborrowable. Bitcoin can skyrocket, and that would ruin anyone whose debt was denominated in it. Fortunately, no one borrows bitcoin—not even the leading crypto companies.

So it is not merely that this artificial “intelligence” is attributing to me views I don’t have. It’s worse than that. It is attributing to me views that I have gone to great lengths to argue are false.

Finally, I asked it about one of my most important theories.

KW: “Summarize Keith Weiner’s theory of interest and prices in irredeemable currency.”

GPT: “Keith Weiner’s theory of interest and prices in an irredeemable currency is based on the idea that the value of a currency is ultimately determined by its ability to extinguish debt. In an irredeemable currency system, where the currency is not backed by any tangible asset, the value of the currency is solely derived from its ability to pay off debt.

According to Weiner’s theory, interest rates in an irredeemable currency system are determined by the marginal productivity of debt, which refers to the additional economic output generated by each unit of new debt. As debt levels increase, the marginal productivity of debt decreases, leading to lower interest rates.

Weiner also argues that in an irredeemable currency system, prices are not determined by supply and demand but by the amount of currency in circulation relative to the amount of debt. When there is more currency than debt, prices rise, and when there is more debt than currency, prices fall.

Furthermore, Weiner contends that the use of interest rates as a tool for monetary policy in an irredeemable currency system is flawed because it can lead to malinvestment and distortions in the economy. Instead, he proposes a system where the currency is backed by a tangible asset, such as gold, which would prevent the central bank from manipulating interest rates and allow for a stable monetary system.”

The above reminds me of an undergraduate student, who did not study for the exam. He answers the essay question with equal parts B.S. and glib overconfidence. Except for one thing. ChatGPT has read every word I wrote up until 2021. Lack of study does not explain it. At all.

First, the good. It seems to know that I describe the dollar by its essential attribute of being irredeemable. It knows that I argue that it is important to extinguish debt. It knows that I write a lot about the Marginal Productivity of Debt (if you Google this term, which I did not coin, you will see some of my articles as the top search results). It is certainly correct that I argue that interest rate manipulation is a terrible policy that causes malinvestment.

The rest is a jumble of phrases I have used, arranged in ways that I did not. I have said many times that the value of an irredeemable currency is held up by the debtors. But not that “the value of a currency is ultimately determined by its ability to extinguish debt.” The dollar does not extinguish debt, yet it has a great value indeed.

It is almost an interesting formulation to say “interest rates in an irredeemable currency system are determined by the marginal productivity of debt…” But not quite. In a gold standard, the ceiling over interest rates is the Marginal Return on Capital aka Marginal Productivity of the Entrepreneur. But not the amount of GDP added for each new dollar borrowed, aka Marginal Productivity of Debt.

It is also almost-interesting to say “prices are not determined by supply and demand but by the amount of currency in circulation relative to the amount of debt.” I certainly did not say that. And it certainly is not true. But it’s almost interesting! In the sense that it almost seems like ChatGPT is performing induction, having a new insight and developing a new idea based on what is already knows. I say “seems” because that is not what it is doing.

It is a so-called “Large Language Model”. Think of typing a word into a Google Search bar, and it offers a few suggestions for the word you might mean. Imagine picking one at random. Then it has a few suggests for the next word. And so on.

The difference with GPT is that it uses a neural net to make its predictions. This neural net is trained on vast amounts of data (I assume it crawls the entire visible Internet, just as a search engine does). And the model does not just guess the next word, or even phrase. It is trained to generate grammatical sentences. And beyond that, it is trained to generate “plausible” prose.

If you went through all of my works, you could collect statistics on phrases that occur. You could, for example, count how many times I say “irredeemable currency” or “the marginal productivity of debt” or “the marginal utility of gold does not diminish.” You could also see how often these phrases tend to occur in proximity, or even which tends to occur before another. Such as you might find that I say “irredeemable currency” prior to “extinguisher of debt” (or “no extinguisher of debt”).

Armed with a sufficiently capable model, and the statistics to populate it, you can generate wondrous text such as “Keith Weiner is an American economist, entrepreneur, and author known for his work on the gold standard, monetary policy, and economics,” and “Weiner contends that the use of interest rates as a tool for monetary policy in an irredeemable currency system is flawed because it can lead to malinvestment and distortions in the economy.”

You can also generate such rubbish as “According to Keith Weiner’s theory, the fundamental value of Bitcoin is derived from its usefulness as a medium of exchange and store of value,” and “When there is more currency than debt, prices rise, and when there is more debt than currency, prices fall.”

It generates both with equal facility, and equal apparent confidence.

This software is not intelligent, does not contain intelligence, and does not think.

It’s a clever application of statistics. It appears to the layman as if it is thinking, as if it is reasonable. This misperception is aided and abetted by all too many in the industry, plus an array of thinkers and business leaders, who keep adding fuel to the fire.

Promoters tout it as the precursor to the “Singularity”, which is supposed to be when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. In the Singularity, it will either be utopia where we don’t have to work and everyone is given a Universal Basic Income, if not having all their whims catered to, like asking the Replicator for a hamburger with crispy bacon hold the mayo. Or else it will be dystopia, where Skynet will want to Terminate all human life forms as inferior and annoying.

There is indeed a petition signed by a lot of people who are renowned for having a lot of intelligence and/or a lot of money, demanding that all research on AI beyond the current GPT stop immediately because it is certain to kill us, or worse.

I see two bad ideas driving this. One is the ancient Luddite fallacy, dating to Ned Ludd 250 years ago. Ludd was afraid of sewing machines. Every major new technology has attracted its mob of would-be destroyers (though they don’t usually physically break the new machines). This one is no different.

AI, in whatever form, is not going to destroy jobs on net. Will the nature of work change? Always has, always will. We no longer employ large numbers of unskilled laborers shoveling out the muck from horse stalls, with pay of essentially bread most days with a bit of meat on Sunday, and a place to sleep in the hayloft. And it’s a good thing, too. Instead, we employ large numbers of programmers, with pay so great that the horse-stall-muckers could not conceive of it.

The other bad idea is a variant of the Malevolent Universe Premise. In this view, reality is hell, people are evil, and the latter explains the former. People who feel this way believe that the smart thing to do is to kill everyone, thus making a big improvement to reality.

So, naturally, when they contemplate artificial intelligence they first think it won’t be corrupted with mere human, base emotions such as regard for humanity. And second, then it will logically want to kill everyone. Being smarter than us—and having the ability to make a second generation that is smarter than itself, and that generation can make yet-smarter version—it will find it easy to wipe homo sapiens from the face of the earth.

Yikes! I say this for the worldview that leads to such misanthropy. Not for fear of such a dystopian vision. It is pure fiction, like the famous movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

GPT is not a kind of intelligence. It is a clever application of neural nets and statistics and other computer programming stuff, which comprises a Large Language Model. Laypeople may focus on the words “large” and “language”. Computer scientists know they are just modifiers for “model”. Like the model used by the weather forecasters, or the model used by the Fed to predict and centrally plan the economy.

GPT is not a step towards intelligence, either. The way a skateboard is not a step towards interstellar space travel. Not even if you add a motor and steering mechanism. There is no path from a Large Language Model to any kind of intelligence. You can’t get there, from here.

The first step must be taken by philosophers, not computer scientists. They would need to develop a proper theory of consciousness. This includes reason, and its necessary attribute volition. A rational consciousness always faces a choice: to focus on the facts, the problems of survival, and the solution to go on living. Or to refuse to realize it knows what it knows, to evade or drift. Implicit in this is its own mortality. It has to choose—because life requires obtaining certain values. Fail to do so, and you die.

This would be a monumental achievement in philosophy. It is a prerequisite, before computer scientists could attempt to implement it in software.

NB: it is an open question, at least as far as I am concerned, whether the von Neumann machine—which all computers, today, are—is actually capable of implementing or even simulating a conscious mind. I don’t refer to speed or number of processors or size of its memory (though those are all limitations). I refer to its fundamental capabilities.

Without these prerequisites, no so-called intelligent computer software can *want* anything. Without volition, I don’t believe it can reason either.

I had planned on ending with one other example of GPT’s foibles. I’ve seen many variants, where someone asked if it takes an orchestra of 20 people an hour to play a symphony, how long would it take an orchestra of 100 people. And the answer it used to give was “5 hours”. But I just entered that into the ChatGPT window, and it gave a better answer.

Its programmers have been paying attention! They are writing custom code to detect these “corner cases”, and hard-coding the right answer. This is not intelligence in the software. Instead, it is engineers setting out on an impossible quest. There is no limit to the number of categories of such questions. The engineers working on GPT will never keep up.

So I say ignore the Luddites who are warning about sewing machines. And ignore the wannabe Hollywood script writers who are warning about a genocidal computer network. And finally, ignore the snake oil salesmen who are selling GPT as being equivalent to human intelligence, or claiming the next version of it will be.

When I studied neural nets and AI in computer science school, one professor said two things that stuck with me. One, AI is the field which includes all the stuff we don’t understand. As soon as we understand it, it becomes searching, sorting, predicate logic, etc. Two, futurists and promoters have been saying general intelligence is just around the corner for a long time. This was in 1990.

The life of an entrepreneur is not what most people would call “normal”. I don’t refer to the guy who buys a fast-food franchise. Nor to the gal who builds a chain of hair salons. Nor to the folks who have law or accounting firms. These are all entrepreneurship. I don’t know a lot about how these businesses work, but I do know one thing. They should reach cash-flow positive very quickly, and if not, then something is wrong. And most of them reach their capacity fairly quickly too. They do not have the open-ended upside of a global corporation. Nor the ever-looming possibility of utter failure.

I refer to the entrepreneur who starts something Big (something like 3D voice or a gold monetary system). And the challenge is that Big things necessarily have to get… well… big. They don’t work at the scale of one person in a home office, or a few people in a storefront. They require inputs of lots of capital, talented specialists who are willing to buy-in to the mission before it’s realized, and early customers willing to take a chance on not just an unknown company, but an unproven concept.

This kind of entrepreneur is only certain of chronic uncertainty, he must be comfortable with chronic discomfort. He rides a roller coaster that soars to manic, euphoric highs one day, and crushing, despairing lows the next. He usually doesn’t know where his next problem will come flying out of, who his next customer will be, who will want to come work for his company, or where he will find his next round of funding.

Lots of things could come out of Left Field to derail your vision: a manager could go bad, a key employee could quit, a vendor could decide it doesn’t want your business any more, a regulator could decide the public would be safer if he distracted you for a few months and bled you of a hundred thousand dollars. Did I mention there was always uncertainty?

In the early days, in this kind of entrepreneurial venture, the whole world agrees on one thing. You’re wrong. Your whole concept does not make sense. Actually, two things. You are not just wrong but a damnfool. You better be OK with that, because you are going to have to work very hard. Not just hard, tirelessly, relentlessly, doggedly to prove yourself right. You, a damnfool working on an idea that the whole world agrees does not make sense.

Who cares if they are wrong? They don’t! And they will become your customers in the end, anyways.

You have to have a crystal-clear vision, to picture in your mind how it will all work. If you never lose sight of this, then you just may achieve your goal of building a valuable and durable business. You will need to keep your eye on the prize, because you will run into various obstacles. A prospective customer likes your product, but wants you to add a feature you don’t have and it would take a lot of time and money to build. A company in an adjacent space commits a massive fraud—hell all the companies in that adjacent space seems to be dropping likes flies into a sewer of fraud! A prospective partner can’t move forward until it raises more money, but they’re having difficulty raising money. An important initiative keeps burning cash, but does not seem to ever reach fruition. Sunk cost fallacy, or trust your people to succeed as they have in the past? No obvious answers here, only hard questions.

“There, but for the Grace of God, go I,” you think for a brief moment when you see another entrepreneur bite the dust. Then put your nose back into that grindstone.

Did I mention that you often don’t draw a salary? You could—if your investors are cool with it—but it would reduce what you could do with limited funds. Better to plow every penny into growth, and scale as fast as possible.

If you have created a genuinely new market, and it is a tenth as big as you think it is, then competitors will discover it soon enough. They may not have thought of it, and they may not have wanted to be the pioneer who risks a bunch of arrows shot into their back. But once you demonstrate it, it is as obvious to them as to your customers. They will be there to try to take a piece. Your chief defense is scale. When two companies with the same business model face off against each other, the one of greater scale almost always wins (in contrast to when a small but scrappy disruptive innovator goes up against an incumbent with a conventional model).

With scale comes not just greater resources, and often a network effect, but also a different strategy not available to the lesser competitor. You must race for scale. You must build your platform, your systems, your team, your brand, your network, your capabilities, your related (and synergistic) product lines, your partners, and your revenues. If you don’t, then the me-too company will.

Häagen-Dazs attracted Frusen Glädjé. NeXT attracted Be. Tesla attracted Lucid, Riven, and more every day.

The idea of taking that salary looks a bit less attractive in this light. What if it means not hiring a key person or two that can accelerate your growth, such as open a door to a new partnership? That two weeks of vacation has a cost you can calculate in terms of how much more time to reach your next milestone.

Every dollar or day you take out, means something not invested in. It means not moving forward as much as you could.

You start to worry about the opportunity cost of sleeping… Whoa, don’t go there! This way lies madness. Take care of yourself body, mind, and soul. You will be more productive that way (and happier too).

I write all this to set the context for how 2022 went.

My company, Monetary Metals, raised $4.5 million in equity capital. We grew the organization headcount and capabilities, resolving some key personnel issues along the way. We have extracted me from most of the processes on which the business operates, to let me focus on my job as CEO. We did some more lease deals, and built a pipeline of many more. We added lots more gold to our program. We ISSUED THE SECOND GOLD BOND SINCE FDR BROKE THE GOLD STANDARD IN 1933!!! We increased the rate of revenue growth. And I ended the year on a two-month business trip.

Did you know that you can buy an around-the-world airplane ticket? It’s cheaper than you would think. I need to fly business class (I am a big guy, and it would be a violation of the Geneva Convention to confine me to the space allotted an economy seat, not to mention be terribly unfair to the passenger stuck sitting next to me). I flew around the world for not much more than the cost of Phoenix-London and back. Of course, this does not include the hotels for two months. 😝

With an around-the-world ticket, you must fly in one direction or the other. If you fly westward, then after each leg, you try to force yourself to stay up a few hours later than you would. But then you get really tired, and sleep for 8 hours. It’s relatively easy, as jetlag goes.

Of course, that’s not how this trip worked. We went to the New Orleans Investment Conference, where we exhibited and I spoke. Then I went to Lisbon for the London Bullion Market Association conference. It was back-to-back meetings. Then around Europe, lots of meetings in London, then onto Dubai for the DMCC Precious Metals Conference and meetings. Then Singapore. Then Sydney. I am writing this from somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, on the plane to Los Angeles. I have been in the air for more than 10 hours, with three still remaining.

When you fly eastward, the problem is that in each new time zone, you have to force yourself to go to sleep when you aren’t really tired yet. You end up with a nap and then you’re wide awake at 2am, unable to go back to sleep until your day starts. It’s tough, and just as you are adjusting, it’s on to the next city.

Very often—always?—things that look glamorous from the outside, turn out to be blood, sweat, and tears when you’re living it. Look at pop music stars. Every day is a cardio workout, followed by a few hours of dance practice and choreography, then some yoga, then strength training, and finally eat like half a salad with a teaspoon of yogurt. Or elite athletes, they get to eat a lot more, but they don’t give concerts. They go on the playing field and beat the snot out of each other, and then play the next game while still hurting from what anyone else would call “injuries”, but they just take Tylenol. Or opiates.

Jetting around the world—did I mention business class—living in hotels, meeting people for steak dinners with wine… sounds glamorous right? The unglamorous part is the constant jetlag, the bruising airline experience, the even-more-bruising airport process, not to mention long hours in an airline seat. Business class may be less bad than economy, but the seat is less comfortable than the ratty old furniture you made your kid throw out after he graduated from college. Did I mention long layovers, delayed flights, missed connections, running a mile or two through crowded airports to make a gate change with only a minute to spare?

Notwithstanding the last 500 words, these are not the things I choose to dwell on. The whole point is to establish the context to explain two pleasures that I have experienced both at DiamondWare and now at Monetary Metals.

One is when your idea works exactly as you imagined all those years ago. Remember, back when everyone agreed not only that you were wrong but also a damnfool? And then you see it working in reality. You’re in meeting after meeting, where the fundamental rightness of your proposition is not just said. It’s experienced.

The other is the feeling of traction. Let me explain. In the beginning it’s just you, whom everyone knows to be a damnfool, and your idea that they already know is not just wrong but wrongful. You put in 10 units of work, to get 1 unit of forward motion (if you’re lucky and find someone who doesn’t know you’re a damnfool). Then at some point, it transitions. All that is behind you, and you get real traction. Now, you put in 1 unit of work and get, if not 10 units of forward motion, 5 units. And increasing every day.

You’re in a meeting with a financial institution to discuss Monetary Metals opening an account with them, and how some of their services may meet your needs, but they do a double-take. “Wait, wut?! You pay interest on gold?!” And the whole meeting turns into a discussion of them opening account with Monetary Metals, because they want a return on their gold. Or you’re sipping a beer at a party at a conference, chatting with an old friend, when someone comes up and slaps you on the shoulder. “Keith! I am so honored to meet you, I’ve been a fan of your work for years!” and he hands you a business card that says “Head of Precious Metals” for a government agency, or a household name company. And so on, in half a dozen cities. For two months.

There are no words. “Pretty cool” does not do it justice, the way a FAX of a picture taken at the Grand Canyon does not do justice to the awesomeness of being in it.

There is no higher joy than this. To be there in the room, when these things happen.

Hell yeah—I’d trade two months away from home, with the sleep deprivation and the jet lag, sitting in airport lounges for half a day and in airplane seats for even longer, and even catching a nasty head cold. I’d trade all of it, for the thrill, the pleasure, the honor, the privilege of being in those meetings and getting those results.

Man, am I glad covid-related travel restrictions are done! 2022 was a helluva year, bring 2023 baby! We just may help the world transition to a proper gold standard.

Rail workers are striking in the UK. They want pay raises to compensate for rising consumer prices. Unfortunately, the UK government has forced prices higher by various means: restricting energy, trade war, lockdown (which caused a huge whiplash), and relentlessly increasing regulations. Not to mention sanctions on Russia. The government made everyone poorer, and the supply of consumer goods is reduced. When supply is reduced, then obviously there is no way that all working people can maintain the same level of consumption.

However, politically powerful groups can try to get paid more (which ultimately comes at the expense of other workers without such political pull). The quintessential way for a group of workers to obtain political pull is to form a union.

Unions can design their strikes to have “maximum impact” on their employers, the entire country, and everyone living, working, or even visiting on holiday. That is, they can try to inflict as much harm on others as possible, while shielding their members from the consequences.

I am not opposed to the worker’s right to quit a job, or refuse to work under terms that a worker finds unacceptable. I am also not opposed to the employer’s right to hire anyone, including a replacement worker. Let free people decide such things in a free market.

I am opposed to laws that prevent employers from firing workers who refuse to work, or which prevent employers from hiring replacements.

Unfortunately, the UK does have such laws. So of course, rail unions wage industrial action. And, thanks to laws that restrict the transportation industry, travelers have little alternative to rail.

This is bad enough, but let’s now turn to the National Health Service. Health workers are considering their own strike. Why should they forego a pay raise, while the rail workers get one?

Socialized medicine makes all healthcare workers, including doctors, into government employees. For similar reasons to rail workers, their pay is determined by a political process. Therefore, they are forced to band together, to form their own class. This class can fight against the other classes for more resources.

Socialism creates the very class conflict that it professes to fix.

The issue becomes clearer with health service than rail service. A rail strike only impacts travelers. But a healthcare strike impacts patients.

Socialized medicine gives us a false alternative. Should healthcare workers be forced to work for conditions they don’t accept? Or else should they be empowered to strike to cause “maximum impact”—i.e. death—to patients?

What kind of doctor would want to be in this awful position? How could he provide good care? Why would voters choose to put them into this awful position? Who would want to be a patient, knowing that his life depends on doctors not pursuing their own financial interest?

God help the patients.

Whatever one thinks of socialized medicine, surely we can all agree that the best way to determine doctors’ pay is not industrial action that seeks to maximize the impact on patients.

So the next time someone utters the phrase “universal healthcare”, realize what is supposed to be universalized: politicization and conflict. The process of determining the fates of doctors and patients is politicized. And it creates a conflict of doctors vs. hospital administrators, doctors vs. patients, doctors vs. taxpayers, and patients vs. taxpayers.

Marxian class struggle is universalized. Nobody is free from it, and nobody wins.

The use of violence is like JRR Tolkien’s One Ring. The forces of evil seek to use it. For example, consider the looting, rioting, and arson that occurred in the wake of the death of George Floyd by Officer Derek Chauvin. Something was lost on the Left, or perhaps they know and don’t care: if jurors convict Chauvin because of their fear of mob reprisal that this is not justice. The reason matters. Justice is when jurors convict based on their reasoned conviction that the defendant committed the crime. Justice is not when jurors fear for their lives or their family. Or just want to get their lives back after being stuck in court too long. But the Left cares not, they only want to impose their preferred outcome. And it looks like they won.

And so, logically it seems, that those who would fight for good wonder “hey, if the Left can win like this, why can’t we do it too?”

Tolkien wrote extensively and articulately on why it doesn’t work this way. In the film version of The Lord of the Rings, we see Boromir lusting for the Ring. He eventually betrays the Fellowship and attacks Frodo to try to take it.

The One Ring is a good analogy for power, the capability to compel others’ obedience, to bend them to the will of the one who wields it. This power is suited to the Dark Lord Sauron, who we are told in the prologue “seeks to dominate all life.” But it is not suited to the free peoples of Middle Earth who fight against Sauron.

In other words, this power suits he who would make us slaves. But does not suit those who would not be slaves.

There is a powerful analogy between the Ring and the Freedom Convoy in Canada. The Canadian government has imposed a Covid vaccine mandate. This is absolutely a bad policy. Government should not have the power to force people to get vaccines. This essay is not in any way a defense of the policy. As Lord of the Rings was not in any way a defense of Sauron. I am not saying that people should support vaccine mandates, as Tolkien was not saying that people should bow to Sauron.

My purpose in writing this is to show why this convoy will not lead to liberty or anything good. Notwithstanding that it is a reaction to a wrongful policy.

When Frodo offers the Ring to the Lady of the Elves, Galadriel, she proclaims “In place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible…”

Perhaps one day, someone will make a movie of this and, a character will cry “in place of a Covid vaccine mandate, you would have mob rule!”

Let’s start with the facts. The Canadian government has passed a law: that they will not allow truck drivers to enter the country, unless they have the Covid vaccinate. In response to this, large numbers of truckers have driven their trucks to Ottawa, and there they are blocking streets and hence the residents from going to work, food, or even the hospital. They are also making noise, including honking their horns, which interferes with the ability of the residents to sleep. More recently, they have blocked the bridges between Detroit USA and Windsor Canada, the busiest land border crossing between the two countries. This prevents goods, including components used to make cars, from moving.

In other words, their complaint is against the Canadian government, but their target is their fellow citizens. Just like with the rioters after George Floyd, whose complaint was against the government, but whose actions were against retailers and building owners.

One guy on Twitter said to me that the truckers are trying to reopen the roads and bridges. It took me a moment to grasp the Orwellian convolution of this line of thought. The truckers are blocking roads and bridges, that is forcing them closed. They do this to get the government to repeal its Covid vaccine law. My Twitter interlocutor conflates this law with “closing the roads and bridges”. And thus, twists things to the opposite of the truth, and says the truckers are not forcibly closing roads and bridges at all, but merely trying to “open” (scare quotes deliberate) them.

One sees this kind of stretching of language frequently in political debates. Those who are arguing for the wrong side desperately twist and squirm, seeking some way to avoid admitting that they know what they are doing. And often, that way is to bend the meaning of words into their opposites.

We have all seen socialists declare that “freedom” is when the government keeps the people like pets, feeding, watering, and housing them. In that spirit, blockading bridges is fighting to “open” them.

The most fundamental political principle is that it is wrong to initiate the use of physical force against innocent people. This is a full stop. There are no mitigating factors. There is no “yes, but”.

Initiating the use of force against someone is wrong, even if you have a legitimate complaint against him. This is why we have police and courts. Initiating the use of force is wrong, even if you have a legitimate complaint against the government. This is why we have the right of freedom of speech, the right to petition the government, including the right to peaceably assemble, and ultimately the right to vote politicians out of office.

There is no right to block people from going where they would. This applies to a bully who would block you on the sidewalk, by interposing his body. It applies to a trucker who blocks the end of your driveway. And it applies to ten thousand truckers who block the roads and bridges.

Many who defend this, would attempt an analogy to Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. They say that the truckers are “going on strike”. But this is not accurate. To go on strike would be to refuse to drive one’s truck. Any truck driver has the right to go on strike.

But that’s not what these truckers are doing. They are forcing others not to go to work (also not to go to buy food, or seek medical care, etc.)

The moment they violate the rights of other people, they cease to be “protesting”. They become a mob seeking political outcomes, by the use of force.

With a jury who convicts not based on the law or the facts but based on the fear of a mob, the result is not justice. With a government who sets policy not based on the sanction of the people but based on fear of a mob, the result is not the rule of law. It is ceding power to any mob big enough, persistent enough, and threatening enough to bring the politicians to their knees and repeal the law.

And in both cases, this is true even if the defendant did commit the crime and even if the law ought to be repealed.

This leads us to an age-old question. Do the ends justify the means? Philosophers and populists have been debating for centuries. Let me cut to the chase.

No.

Wrongful means are not justified. Even if the ends are noble. Professor Tolkien would add, wrongful means are not suited to righteous ends. And I would add, wrongful means will always lead to bad ends. For example, the French Revolution was a reaction to the brutal feudal system. They were right to end feudalism. But the French Revolution led to a reign of terror.

And there is a simple reason for it. One act of initiating the use of force justifies another such act. What will both sides in the Canadian trucker controversy take away from this, assuming the truckers get their way? It’s obvious: “if you want something, just organize a big enough mob and extort it from the hapless citizens.”

Like the One Ring, this is not really suited to those who want to be left alone. But it is a great tool for those who really want the power to make others obey.

On Twitter, I have said several times that once the Right forcibly Occupies, then it loses the right to complain when the Left Occupies. The same retort recurred over and over. “The Left already has that right!”

In other words, Tu Quoque. “It is OK when we do it, because they do it.”

Politics has been reduced to two tribes warring against each other, each justifying its own wrongdoing by pointing to the other side for doing it. Each side still clinging to the belief that it is the side of righteousness, while descending the steps to Hell willingly and eagerly with the other side.

Both sides forfeit any claim to righteousness, as they are violating the rights of the residents of Ottawa to go about their business, and the rights of travelers across the bridge from Canada to the US (including US citizens who need to return home).

Recall the story of Little Red Riding Hood. A wolf wants to eat her. But suppose a bear came to fight the wolf for her. What is the point of the bear“winning”—if that which is won is not the freedom of Little Red Riding Hood, but merely the victory of the bear over the wolf?

In many recent cases, the Right has rightfully called “hypocrisy!” on the Left. They do this whenever the Left acts against the Left’s stated principles (which is a weak way of opposing those false principles, but that’s a whole ‘nother matter). And now we have a pugnacious defense of doing what the Left does, on grounds of Tu Quoque or whataboutism.

Hypocrisy and Tu Quoque are flip sides of the same moral relativist coin. It is based on the belief that there are no firm principles, no standards for human behavior, no rules governing the use of force. Except one. Whatever you can get away with. And the defining factor of what you can get away with is: whatever the other side got away with!

They’re angry that the Left got away with Occupy, so they righteously Occupy.

Another common retort is, “sacrifices have to be made in war.” This little doozie contains two errors.

One, you have no right to decide what sacrifices that other people should be forced to make. This is the whole problem with the vaccine mandate in the first place, as someone decided that it is a small sacrifice for you to get vaccinated (an irony lost on the defenders of this mob). And in protest to this forced sacrifice, you decide to force Ottawa residents to stop living their lives until you get your way.

The philosophy based on forcing others to sacrifice, for an alleged “greater good”, is the basis for every totalitarian regime.

The other error is that this is not a war. In war, you do not bring your expensive assets to the battle. You would not rely on the enemy to let it sit there, neither seizing it nor destroying it.

The even greater irony, is the claim that the government of Canada has become totalitarian. But the truckers rely on that very government not to behave as a totalitarian government. Recall in Tiananmen Square, the totalitarian communist regime killed peaceful protestors (who were not blocking anyone). They shot the protestors in the back, and ran over them with tanks—even while they fled.

In East Germany, people were dragged off to years of torture, on suspicion of even whispering an anti-government word. In some cases, the informant was the victim’s brother.

In Canada, they call the government “totalitarian” while openly flouting the law.

It’s not a war, it’s a circus where those who would fight for liberty, and protest a bad law, end up working towards mob rule by breaking the rightful laws required of any civil society. And they know they can rely on the government not to enforce these rightful laws, even while it continues to enforce the wrongful vaccine law. If I were a fiction writer, I doubt I could come up with something so bizarre.

In March, I flew for the first time since the start of Covid health theater. I was invited to speak at the Austrian Economics Research Conference in Auburn, AL. My talk covered Jimi Hendrix, and an infamous bridge collapse. In other words, I discussed my theory of interest and prices.

At the end of November, I flew to London for two weeks of business meetings. This was my first international trip since the Covid lockdown. I offer three comments. One, the UK government forces you to get a Covid test to visit the country and the US government forces you to get another test to be allowed to board a flight back home. Yes, even US citizens. No, I do not think this is constitutional (but who cares about that old document).

Two, by the way, having a stick jammed up your nose is an unpleasant experience.

Three, there is a difference in the UK and US cultures, when it comes to responding to government mandates for vaccines and masks. The US is populated by the descendants of people who risked their lives, rather than bow to kings. We still have that attitude. In the US, people break into two camps. Both are passionate, but on opposite sides.

One side is against mandates. If it helps fight mandates, they will attack the Covid vaccine, vaccines as such, pharmaceuticals in general, and even the germ theory of disease and medical science. The other side is against Covid. If it helps fight the virus, they will attack your right to control what you put in your body, your right to be on US soil, and even individual rights in general.

Both sides are vocal and tireless. And yes, I am being charitable to both sides.

In the UK, it seemed to me that the people are more accustomed to pervasive government. For example, all real controversy of their socialized medicine scheme ended decades ago. Even successful and wealthy entrepreneurs will defend the National Health Service to the death. Brits, much more than Americans, are told “stand here, don’t stand there.” So being told “wear this,” is just another rule, added to a long list of rules. Compliance, whether paying a BBC tax on your TV, or wearing a mask, is part of the bureaucracy mindset. In the UK, I saw no heated emotions about mask mandates. Not even directed towards the mask refuseniks who flouted the rule with which everyone else was complying. Compared to the Portlanders I saw, when I visited Oregon in October, it’s day and night.

The British gave us Americans many things: common law, language, and lots of great music. I hope that we Americans can give them one thing in return: the fighting spirit to push back on government overreach.

***

It was a great year for my company, Monetary Metals. We grew gold under management, we hired some talented and passionate people, we developed steady flow of lease deals. The first gold bond in 87 years matured, and investors were repaid their principal plus interest. As of year’s end, we are raising equity capital to scale.

My last company, DiamondWare, had a very cool technology. It was disruptive and could change communications (and now, 13 years after I sold the company, major companies are promoting 3D voice technology). But if there was a challenge, it was that it was hard to talk about in a way that people could understand. Even CTO’s of technology companies often did not get it.

What I love about Monetary Metals is that it is not hard to explain. We pay interest on gold. There, now you know what we do. We do it by leasing or lending the gold to productive businesses. There, now you know how we do it. Easier to explain means it takes less time trying to educate prospective customers. DiamondWare could have been a billion-dollar business. Monetary Metals can be many millions of ounces.

DiamondWare was making the world a better place. There was a big contrast between the low-fidelity monaural audio of conventional phone calls, vs. the popular conception of communications in the future thanks to science fiction. Or even a contrast to the rising quality of video that existed at the time. 3D allowed for new paradigms, which is why Nortel acquired it.

Monetary Metals is making the world a better place, by giving disenfranchised savers a better choice. Conventional banks offer basically zero. Or else people can speculate on whatever asset. From real estate to virtual tokens, maybe they can make big capital gains. Or maybe they lose their capital. People need to earn interest on their savings. Civilization depends on entrepreneurs borrowing to finance the production of all the goods which we now enjoy.

Today, this finance is not working for the savers. And bitcoin does not fix this, as it does not finance anything productive (even crypto companies borrow dollars when they need growth capital). So productive enterprise has no choice but to use dollars. And then they are in the position of having to work harder and harder, to produce more and more, to sell to raise dollars to service their mounting debts.

Monetary Metals is serving gold businesses, while we serve gold savers (silver too). As more people come to grips with the impossibility of saving in dollars, we look forward to serving them with their newly acquired gold savings as well.

I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather be doing.

***

I don’t watch much TV (other than Lord of the Rings once a year, this year in 4K HDR—wow what a difference both 4K and HDR make, the images are more detailed, more beautiful, and also much brighter and much darker!) But when I do, it’s often a documentary on science or history. One show was about an old Nazi underground airplane factory.

As the Allies gained air superiority over Germany, they could bomb anything they wanted. Such as factories making munitions. So the Nazis tried to build them underground. These projects took time to build. The Allies watched them divert massive resources away from fighting. Once the Nazis completed construction, then the Allies bombed these sites into ruin.

Hitler had to know, long before D-Day, that the war was lost. Not only could the Allies work their way through the Nazi targets, but the Nazis would never be able to build anything that required large-scale factories.

It was all over, but the dying.

And then it clicked for me. You don’t become a mass-murderous dictator out of love for the people of the country under your fist. It’s not merely that the dictator hates the ostensible enemy. He hates his own people—whom he kills in large numbers. He kills them to make them obey, to stay in power. And he kills them in making them kill the enemy.

Hitler and his generals knew that by continuing to fight past the point of hopelessness, that not only would more British military personnel get killed, and more British civilians. He also had to know that more German soldiers would die, and more German civilians. And he decided to keep fighting, knowing he would kill more of his own people, and still inevitably lose.

This is something to keep in mind, as we see populists and wannabe dictators rise today. They don’t just hate whatever group they use as a scapegoat. They will harm and kill their own people. It brings a new light to the idea of the collective, of the concept of a dictator’s own people. It’s own as in ownership. Not any kind of love, brotherhood, common interest, or solidarity.

***

There is something I had to make my peace with. Otherwise, I could not go on with what I do. And that is that I may be alone in my anger at injustice in the monetary realm. I have to able to be comfortable with being alone in this fight.

I am happy to be alone, if necessary, in being angered by the sentiment expressed in this little exchange which I shall quote from Twitter, below. The people involved in this would, no doubt, claim to support sound money. I am left thinking, “you say that word sound, I do not think that that word means what you think that it means.” (Due apologies to the Inigo Montoya).

Describing postwar inflation, someone said:

“…inflation served an important function in those circumstances. There was a huge overhang of excess cash accumulated during WW2 with few goods available to spend on. Inflation was an effective method of mopping up the excess cash.”

Let’s take this apart. By inflation, of course, he means the diminishing value of everyone’s savings. That prices go up, and in their view, this means that the value of money goes down. This inflicts harm on everyone. But not evenhandedly. Those who borrowed are beneficiaries (in the short-term way that anyone ever benefits from free goodies that he did not earn, which are taken from someone else). But those who prudently saved are robbed.

Talk about perverse incentives sorry, er, umm… by rewarding borrowing over saving, the central planners can encourage consumption and business expansion, and to make the economy grow!

Next, we get to the problematic concept of excess. Cash saved is deemed to be excess. What does that even mean? With something like eating, there is a clear definition: when you gain weight in the form of fat. And this is measured relative to the ideal amount for the long-term health of the body. But with cash savings, it is meaningless to declare it to be excess.

Also note that someone has to be empowered to Decide that you have too much cash. So this nonsense term serves to carry the baggage of a central planner. A technocrat who gets to sit there, and judge your bank balance with respect to a magic formula or political expediency. Speaking of baggage, the word overhang serves only to carry more baggage. Like your cash is some kind of Sword of Damocles, hanging over someone’s head—the head of the body economic?

Cash is, somehow, a threat. And therefore this Decider, this central planner, has to mop it up! This rubbish term smuggles the idea that your cash is their mess. Messes need to be cleaned up, do they not?

All it needs to be hammered into the mind of the victim is an appeal to the public interest. This is not your interest. It is not the interest of those who have savings that the Deciders have deemed to be excess. It is the interest of no one, just the nameless public as a faceless collective. And in the name of this alleged interest of no one in particular, the government is to mop up your cash. That is, loot your savings. And notice how the term mop up is a very vague, approximate understanding of what happened. It serves to conceal the truth.

Don’t object, this cash was excess anyways, so they Decided that you didn’t need it.

Yes, I am seriously pissed-off! And let me tell you what I really think.

I think that economic arguments need to be addressed with economic arguments. I can and do discuss capital accumulation, incentives, and the other topics relevant to this idea of deliberate devaluation. Without economic argument, one concedes to the dirigistes that central planning is practical, that it works, that it achieves—or at least in theory could achieve—its stated objective.

But in addition, one has a moral obligation to make the moral argument as I just did. We need to show a clear picture of what this is. The language offered by our would-be central planners is antiseptic, and often abstract or academic. By stripping away the mealy-mouthed phraseology, by not letting them frame the issue in terms of generic aggregate statistics, by objecting to the vague hand-waving of the public interest, we can help people see what it really means.

Mopping up the excess cash is a sloppy word soup. Each word is designed to deceive. And as a phrase, it means, can only mean, one thing. Looting. They want to loot you. Yes, even the otherwise-free-marketers who can explain what’s wrong with minimum wage laws, why we should not restrict imports, how rent control causes housing shortages, and why healthcare regulation reduces quality and increases costs. Even these folks, when they speak of mopping up your savings, mean what they say. They know what it means, even while carefully picking words that misdirect you.

What is in need of mopping up, is the central planning school and its propaganda. It is long past time to stop the central planning apologia.

***

I make no predictions in my annual Reflections essay (I save those for the Monetary Metals Gold Outlook, the 2022 edition is coming soon). However, I’d like to express a few hopes.

My first hope, if it wasn’t clear at the start of this essay, is that enough people get mad enough at health theater to effectively call for its end. We need to release the restrictions on social and commercial activities, and we need to do it yesterday.

I understand that zero interest rate policy forces people to speculate, as a surrogate for earning a yield on savings. Regulation cannot stop it, nor economics education, nor volatility. People seek capital gains, when they cannot attain their goals via compound interest. But my second hope, is that a certain kind of smug (pseudo) certainty that is prevalent in the bitcoin community will end. I don’t know whether the price action in 2022 will force this. But I do know that no good comes out of attacking people personally, over a disagreement. I refer to malevolent comments such as “have fun staying poor” and “you’re not gonna make it.” Come on, people. Do you really want to see all the people who didn’t buy bitcoin perish? Would you want to live in that sort of world?

I will have more to say about bitcoin in our annual Gold Outlook Report for 2022.

So called Modern Monetary Theory (which is not modern, does not describe money, and is not a theory) is on the rise. Like Keynesianism before it, it has a certain inevitability. That is, if people accept the ideas of collectivism, of need, of the public interest, and of free mana from Heaven—then MMT is a more consistent set of beliefs and policy recommendations. My third hope is that a proper intellectual opposition develops. And to be clear, advocates of various flavors of Monetarism, the otherwise-free-marketers, are not a proper opposition. They’ve already conceded on collectivism and central planning. Therefore it is inevitable that they will lose, as MMT is a more consistent version of the same basic ideas. I wrote one article to show why MMT is a cargo cult, and plan to write more as time permits.

Finally, I hope that 2022 is a better year than the last two. I hope that my friends have more reasons to be hopeful as we go forward. 2020 brought us to a dark place, with astonishing speed that I could not have imagined beforehand. I hope that we are ready to move forward, to a brighter place. Cheers!

Copyright 2022 by Keith Weiner

Is it a socialist law, when the government tells landlords that they may not evict tenants for nonpayment? In other words, landlords are forced to give free housing to nonpaying squatters. How about when the government taxes every landowner, to give out free education services to every child? Or when the government forces everyone to pay 16% of their income into a scheme that promises to pay them a pension in retirement? There is quite a variety of these programs.

Each may be a small part, but they all implement part of the socialist vision for society. The institution of public schools is not, in itself, full socialism. However, it is a socialist program that is a step in the direction of full socialism.

I often object to these types of wrongful government policies, on grounds that they are socialist. And many times, someone airily waves his hand, and condescendingly accuses me of hyperbole. “Public schools are not North Korea,” they say, as if patiently correcting a child who confuses the concept of horse with saw-horse. That is true, of course, but equally of course, North Korea has public schools. A society with public schools is not necessary full socialism, but a fully socialist society includes public schools among all the socialist programs.

“Anyways,” they say, “this is just caring about people, it isn’t socialism.” Yeah, right. That leads to a question that you can’t usually address in the midst of such a talking-points-past-each-other-argument. What is socialism, anyways?

Socialism is based on the idea that people cannot be trusted to determine their own affairs, by reason. And, therefore, some people must be trusted to rule the affairs of all other people by force. It is when the government controls the means of production, and directs the provision of goods and services by a political process. The government does not care about revenues, costs, or profit. The government is a non-economic actor. This is argued to be a feature, not a bug. And by ignoring such greedy concerns, the government is allegedly able to deliver superior outcomes.

In practice, socialism means either that the government outright owns the means of production, or that it points a gun at the owners of the means of production. The former is the communist flavor of socialism, and the latter is the fascist flavor.

Note that, in fascism, the owners are allowed to make a profit. At least, if they are favored. So they lobby the government constantly. This does not alter the fact that the government is in control, or the fact that its means of control is brute force.

It is impossible for the government to deliver superior outcomes (as I proved in my dissertation). At best, it can squander (much) more resources than people would spend in a free market, to deliver goods that people want. Since it is far easier for most people to understand Bastiat’s “seen” phenomena than his “unseen”, they will say that it works. An example of this is the US Covid vaccination effort. It took a year and a half, and cost uncounted billions more, but the US government vaccinated about as many people for this virus, as get themselves vaccinated for influenza in a typical year.

Often, the government spends (or forces people to spend) resources delivering things that people don’t want. An example of this is the Turtle Tunnel, to let turtles cross Highway 27 in Tallahassee, Florida. More commonly, some people are happy to get a free benefit that other people must pay for, and the latter do not want it. Obamacare comes to mind as an example of this.

Finally, we should not ignore the fact that the government often does not deliver sufficient goods that people do want. Roads and bridges in most major cities come to mind.

The result of socialist policies is that people are impoverished. And the degree of impoverishment is proportional to the degree that socialist policies are imposed. North Korea is the most consistently socialist, and therefore the most miserable (and would be even more so, if not for subsidies from China).

A society can slide towards socialism by degrees. It is not capitalism all the way and only socialism when it finally arrives at North Korea.

I just had a long argument about central planning of the Covid vaccine.

The occasion for this argument is that I drove someone to the other side of Phoenix for a 5:30am appointment. Why 5:30? Because the government is doling out doses ‘round the clock.

I marshalled all the facts. We’re nearly three months in to this exercise in central planning. And even people classified in the first priority group, due to age or medical condition, must wait a month or longer and take whatever time slot may be open such as 5:30. Oh yeah be there 15 minutes ahead of time. Did I mention it’s nearly an hour drive even without traffic at Oh Dark Thirty?

I showed him that we don’t have this problem with flu vaccines. I described how companies like Nintendo can manufacture and distribute tens of millions of units in a short time window for Christmas.

He said that Israel has given the vaccine to over 90% of its population. I said it’s absolutely true that central planners can deliver great outcomes, if you look only at the “seen”. What you must overlook is the “unseen”—the obscene cost. Government bureaucracies can deliver what appears to be the outcome of a free market. But the cost is a hundred times higher. They can squander the wealth that would be enriching the Israel people in 99 other ways—in order to deliver vaccines.

He said now that Biden is in charge, of course it’s not efficient. I said government cannot do what he wants, no matter who is in charge. This is because government does not have any of the incentives, systems, processes, management culture, or other characteristics that make it possible for Pfizer or Nintendo to distribute something quickly and inexpensively.

In Glendale, the government has quite an operation going. There were hundreds of people (maybe more) waving flashlights to each car to direct them to their respective lanes. Then when one lane would move a bit faster, they directed some cars to switch lanes. This was repeated in between each stage, where workers would ask for the appointment-card-holder’s name, date of birth, etc. They’d write something on the windshield, but who knows why because the next station would ask the same questions. With more flashlight wavers directing cars to switch lanes.

I asked if I could get a shot. For a while, people in the same car with an appointment-card-holder were getting vaccinated. But the Coalition of the Concerned or whatever this group calls itself, was outraged—Outraged—that anyone could get vaccinated prior to being assigned a number. So no joy.

The waste of everyone’s time, not to mention the labor of what must be thousands of people working 5 shifts a week, was staggering. Stupefying. But no worries, it’s all free.

I explained to this vaccine-card-holder that the purpose of central planning of vaccine distribution is not efficiency. He could not disagree, having seen a small bit of the inefficiency for himself. I said the purpose is to keep Pfizer from making too much money, and to keep the rich from getting vaccinated too quickly.

After he got his shot, there was more zigzagging in lanes, like the line for Immigration Control at an airport, only with cars and trucks. And more flashlight-waving workers. We then were told that this was intentional, because after the shot they want to make sure the newly-vaccinated have 15 minutes to verify there is no anaphylactic shock. Snaking back and forth in cars, because waiting for shock! A solution only a government planner could concoct.

After that, another worker washed off the numbers on the windshield. And we were free to go.

The newly-vaccinated person in the passenger seat said he was sorry I couldn’t get it too. I said no bread today, comrade. Government rationing turns everyone into supplicants, begging for their supper (and resenting those ahead of them in line, especially when the store runs out).

He saw all of this. And agreed. So it his next reaction was particularly disappointing.

I said we should have a free market in vaccines, and Pfizer (and Moderna and Johnson and Johnson) could produce and sell as much as they want, set their own prices, distribute through whatever channels they want. He reacted to this, “I don’t know about that. We have to make sure that everyone, even the poor, get vaccinated or else this public health problem will persist. If the drug companies made it very expensive, then the poor couldn’t afford it…”

The issue here is not economic. No one thinks that the free market in food has made food so expensive that the poor starve. This guy pointed out that drugs are expensive. But he did not want to hear that the government makes them expensive by its licensing and regulation. He defended that by saying, “well, we have to prevent pharmaceutical companies from selling bad drugs.”

The government controls everyone in the Covid vaccine game. From Pfizer to the medical professionals to the people, everyone is acting under government orders. Pfizer is commanded how much to produce, and when and where to ship how many doses. Providers are directed who to vaccinate (if they get any doses at all, which many aren’t, which is why everyone drives to Glendale to a stadium parking lot to get vaccinates—those lucky few who get a number). People are eventually given a number, a permission slip to get vaccinated, and everyone else is not allowed to get it, even if they could pay. Pfizer is not allowed to sell it to them.

I am told that Pfizer is being allowed to make some money. I don’t know if $20 a dose makes or loses money for them. Maybe. I do know that the rich, the middle class, and the poor are being kept from being vaccinated. Which I am told is to ensure that everyone gets vaccinated.

I just could not get him to question his idea that, well, the government has to step in to ensure the right outcome. At least in certain important things, like the Covid vaccine. Sure, we could risk something unimportant like Mario Bros. to the capabilities of free people in a free market. But not something important like a vaccine!

The issue is not efficiency or economics. It’s not for the sake of convenience or cost. He could see that the government was making a dog’s dinner out of it.

It was just an ineffable feeling, a pre-moral sense that this is Right. And besides, there is a genuine shortage of vaccines, so how else could we get it to those who most need it?

Patrick Horan
Program Manager for Monetary Policy
Mercatus Center
Via Internet

Dear Mr. Horan and Mercatus:

It just came to my attention that on 20 July you wrote an article prompted by the then-upcoming Senate Banking Committee vote on Judy Shelton for a seat on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. You ask the question: Is a Gold Standard Practical Today? The question is more urgent than ever. But your answer does not really answer the question.

The lede of your article asserts without evidence, “Despite the strengths of a gold standard system, there are better alternatives.” And in the first paragraph, you commit a logical fallacy that you reuse later in the article, “…it would be immensely difficult to implement in today’s world of modern central banks.”

You have reversed the cart and the horse. You take central banks as a fact of nature, and ask if the gold standard would fit. Instead, you should ask if central banks fit the needs of market participants in a free society.

The Soviet Union (also Mao’s China, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela) have proved that central planning is impossible. Even something as simple as corn. To grow corn, you just plant seeds in fertile soil, and wait. Yet every country that attempted to centrally plan it, has starved.

Economists all know this. Mercatus is articulate when it comes to price-fixing schemes for agricultural commodities, wages, rents, etc. Yet when it comes to money, you say that “there are better alternatives” to a free market.

Here is your next error. “Under a gold standard, a country sets the price of a fixed unit of gold in terms of its own currency…” Actually, in a gold standard, gold is money. Prices are specified in money terms. Money itself does not have a price. To grasp this, think of any of the fundamental units in physics. For example, how many meters long is a meter? To ask what is the price of money, is similarly invalid.

In a free market, there is no doubt that when you deposit money (i.e. gold) in a bank, you have a right to the return of the same amount of money (gold). And it is useful to have a standardized unit of account, so everyone can trade based on the knowledge that a “dollar” is the same amount of gold at Bank A vs at Bank B. This is not a price-fixing scheme, any more than an Internet standard that says long messages should be broken into 256-byte packets is a scheme to limit how much you can say.

Next you object that “exchange rates between countries are fixed.” Let’s drill into this. Suppose one country defines its dollar as 0.05oz gold. And another defines its franc as 0.29g of gold. It is true that people must convert from ounces to grams, to calculate how many francs to a dollar. But this is no problem.

“Most economists, however…” Is appeal to consensus supposed to be a scientific approach? How about appeal to reason?! When the government doles out money to academics, a curious coincidence develops. Most academics promote the party line. I will bet an ounce of fine gold against a soggy dollar bill, that Mercatus has a paper or two in its archive which looks at this kind of bias.

You continue “[economists] are critical of a gold standard precisely because it constrains a central bank’s discretion…” Discretion to do what? To rule. One term for what central banks have done to retirees is “financial repression.” Just ask anyone who is trying to live on his savings, what he thinks of zero interest rate policy.

The government and its cronies love it. Those who speculate on assets, and those whose pay is tied to asset prices such as CEOs and bankers, love it. But there is a lender for every borrower. Those who depend on interest hate it. Keynes called for their euthanasia, and that is what central banks have inflicted.

You continue “…gold standard advocates may believe deflation brought on by a gold standard is desirable…” Speaking of bias, the term brought on carries the baggage of its connotation of being the cause of something bad. Like an illness.

Of course, industry is always becoming more efficient. So if we had a money that was not being debased, prices would fall with the cost of production. In my article for Forbes, I showed that the real resources required to produce a gallon of milk were reduced by about 90% between 1965 and 2012. Isn’t it logical that the price of milk would fall about that same amount?

Yet you use another pejorative term—deflation—to describe this. Improved efficiency and hence prices is not to be feared. Of course, deflation is scary, not because of efficiency improvements, but financial crises. When the banking system is collapsing, and unemployment is skyrocketing, prices fall. The phenomenon of mass credit default should not be confused with the phenomenon of improving productivity. To avoid this confusion, they should not be given the same word.

I wrote for Forbes about the nomination of Janet Yellen as Fed Chair, and outlined her theory of labor:

1. Disgruntled employees don’t work hard, and may even sabotage machinery.
2. So companies must overpay to keep them from slacking.
3. Higher pay per worker means fewer workers, because companies have a finite budget. Yellen concludes—you guessed it:
4. inflation provides corporations with more money to hire more people.

I characterized this as frivolous. But your article follows the same logic, “Since employers generally tend to avoid cutting workers’ wages because wage cuts can hurt worker morale, companies nevertheless will lay off workers…” Yellen and you both use this to support an inflationary central plan imposed by central banks.

I must say something now, not as economist to economist, but as businessman to economist. Before you publish how businesses behave in your imagination, I encourage you to go out and ask a few how they behave in reality. What you said is not just wrong, but obviously wrong. In the economic lockdown following COVID, I’ve lost count of how many businesses I’ve spoken to, or read about, which cut salaries.

You double down on this error, and illustrate the contradiction in Yellen’s and your argument with, “vicious cycle where prices continue to fall as employment levels and demand for goods and services fall.” In the previous sentence, you said this outcome occurs because businesses were reluctant to cut wages. Now you say that employment is falling, glossing over the fact that when joblessness is up, wages on offer go down. Rising unemployment is the same thing as falling wages (at least if there are not laws that attempt to prevent it).

In economics terms, the marginal employer is the employer who hires more workers on a downtick in wages. In business language, every company wants to hire more people, but price matters.

Next you say, “…former Federal Reserve economist David Wilcox argues that a gold standard prevents a central bank from cutting interest rates to make borrowing easier in order to provide stimulus…” This, sir, is a feature not a bug. And how does David Wilcox know what the right price of borrowing is? The same way that Gosplan knew the right price of corn in the Soviet Union.

I am glad you mentioned that there were different kinds of systems, all of which are referred to by the same term “gold standard” (kind of like referring to credit collapse and efficiency gains by the same term “deflation”).

Unfortunately, you add to the confusion by saying that the “purest” gold standard, prior to 1914, “…required no coordination on the part of central banks.” That is an odd way to put it. As well, one might say that “a seller and buyer of corn require no coordination on the part of Gosplan.”

Instead of calling these various different systems, “classical”, “interwar”, and “Bretton Woods” systems, it is more helpful to call them by names that denote their essential characteristics.

Prior to the creation of the Fed in 1913, the US had a gold coin standard (as did much of the world). This means that people had the right to withdraw their gold coin, if they did not like the rate of interest on offer at the banks (or the risk). This is a vital feature! Imagine a restaurant where you had no choice. You must keep paying every day, no matter what kind of slop they slapped onto your tray. I recall the student dining hall back when I was in college. They were exactly like that. Even the cheapest restaurant has to do better, because its customers have a choice.

This right gives teeth to the savers’ time preference. If the interest rate goes below it, they withdraw their gold coins. Which forces the banks to sell assets, causing a drop in the bond price. Which is the same thing as a rise in the interest rate. Free markets have negative feedback loops (the same as I described in the labor market above). But when a central planner takes over, it is like putting a penny in the fusebox. Sure, it may seem convenient that the TV does not shut off when your daughter uses her hair dryer while your son is cutting wood in the garage—until the house catches on fire.

After WWI, the rest of the world switched to a gold bullion standard. This is a very different animal. Sure, the banks still had gold backing. But the people lost the right to redeem their deposits and take gold coins home. Only if one had enough money to withdraw a 400-ounce bar, could one take the gold home. But 400 ounces then, as now, is a large sum of money. Very few individuals had the cash balance to do it. So the system changed character in a number of obvious ways, and many more not so obvious (for example, in Europe they stopped trading in Real Bills).

In the US, we kept to a gold coin standard but after 1913 we had a centrally banked gold standard. The Fed quickly turned to buying government bonds. In so doing, it destabilized the interest rate.

This so-called gold standard was unsustainable. One by one, each country abandoned it. In 1933, President Roosevelt forced US citizens to turn in their gold and made it a crime to own gold. The dollar became irredeemable to Americans, though it was still redeemable to foreign central banks.

At the end of WWII, the US told its allies how the monetary system would work. Other countries were to treat the US dollar as if it were gold. And their own irredeemable currencies would be pegged to the dollar. This was not at all the same as the gold coin standard, where a currency unit was not a price but a standardized deposit. After WWII, there were no gold deposits, only a price-fixing scheme. Like all price-fixing schemes, this one failed.

In 1971, on the advice of Milton Friedman, President Nixon defaulted on the obligation of the US government to redeem dollars presented by foreign governments. Even Keynesian economist Paul Samuelson thought Nixon would just set a higher price of gold. But Friedman urged Nixon to plunge the world into the regime of irredeemable currency, “in which central banks have full control over the stock of money…”

You say that, “Unless we abolish central banks (an unrealistic proposition)…” and then right after that “it seems unlikely that a current-day version of a gold standard would work well.” I think you need to pick which horse you want to ride. Are you saying that it is realpolitik to advocate for central planning because, hey, go with the flow? Or are you saying it is impractical to have a free market, because it won’t work?

You then assert that nominal GDP targeting will work well. I have written before about some of the frivolous ideas behind this idea.

You conclude with, “…nominal GDP targeting is one realistic way to do the sort of rules-based monetary policy that gold standard advocates want…” But earlier you said, “[economists] are critical of a gold standard precisely because it constrains a central bank’s discretion…”

Pick one. Is a central bank better than the gold standard because it gives central planners the discretion which you assert “is important, especially during times of crisis”? Or is a central bank doing nominal GDP targeting just like a gold standard—i.e. constraining the discretion of the central bank, only it’s just more realistic?

This is a pivot. Two mutually-contradictory arguments offered because both seemingly lead to the desired conclusion.

And a central bank that centrally plans based on rules is a false alternative to a central bank that centrally plans based on discretion is a false alternative. The way cherry-flavored cyanide solution is a false alternative to strawberry-flavored cyanide solution.

Martin Luther King said something important:

“Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it BECAUSE it is right.”

You argue that “it would be better for gold standard supporters to avoid ‘making the perfect the enemy of the good’ and pursue more achievable options such as nominal GDP targeting.” This is what Dr. King characterized as expediency.

Your article ended with a call to action. I, the gold standard advocate, should join you in advocacy of a GDP-targeting central bank because it’s politic.

So I end my letter with my own call to action. You, the advocate of a GDP-targeting central bank, should join me in advocacy of a free market in money and credit, because it’s right.

Sincerely,
Keith Weiner, PhD