Re: LP Press Release: Jerry Springer (fwd)
Kevin Dempsey Peterson (peterson@ocf.Berkeley.EDU)
Mon, 23 Mar 1998 17:29:09 -0800
On 19 Mar 1998, Daniel C. Burton wrote:
>Kevin Dempsey Peterson <peterson@autobahn.org> wrote in article
>> (which still leaves those who oppose abortion free to not have one), and
>> drop the "stable currency" thing -- if people want to trade with rubber
>> dollars, that's their business (though I support the "no government
>> monopoly on money" idea).
>
>There is no "stable currency" thing. That's just Harry Browne and Milton
>Friedman. The Libertarian Party Platform is to end government control of
>currency, abolish the Federal Reserve Board, and move to a free market for
>private bank notes.
I remember reading from David (is it David?) Nolan about "fiat" this,
"fiat" that, and how it was going to cause the end of the world. Harry
Browne, Milton Friedman and David Nolan are pretty representative as to
the Libertarian Party. Section II, subsection on Inflation and
Depression in the current Platform shows the LP's preoccupation with
gold over "fiat" money.
http://www.lp.org/platform/iad.html
It's just like the Springer thing -- the LP doesn't officially condemn
fiat money as such, since people are free to use anything they want as
currency, elm leaves, gold coins, or even worthless scraps of money,
though it's pretty clear that any rational person wouldn't accept
anything but specie; just like the LP doesn't officially condemn the
"perversity" protrayed on the Jerry SPringer show, just fed. funds being
used to subtitle it.
It's like, there is the official platform, which I tend to agree with,
and then there is what you can see the people who wrote the platform
were thinking, which I tend to find incomprehensible. Of course, I'll
be voting libertarian, because tehy are orders of magnitude closer to
what I would like than any other party, but I still don't think they are
100% right.