Peter Stone wrote:
>
> I really hate wading into these libertarian (in the perjorative sense)
> debates, but here goes.
>
> I skip the question of this history of how paper currency emerged, and of
> why the gold standard was left by the major industrial countries. I really
> don't have time to spend investigating them, but from what little I know,
> they are about as realisitic as the "social contract" accounts of how
> government emerges.
> >
> > If you truly want to facilitate a democratic banking system,  first,
> > eliminate all banking regulations.  Not an absurd notion if you have
> > confidence in the civil courts (to arbitrate disputes over money and
> > agreements) and in the criminal justice system (to define criminal acts
> > and then to detect, investigate, adjudicate and incarcerate criminals).
> > Second, promote (do not force) gold as the best choice for a global
> > standard.
>
> In practice, of course, even banks do not want this. They realize that it is
> was a pretty nutty world out there when banks were unregulated. There were
> enough bank panics in the wild and unregulated years of the 19th century to
> convince banks, consumers, and the business community that regulation of
> some sort was a necessity if bank difficulties were not to reverberate and
> collapse the economy. The only question is what sort of regulation will it
> be--would it benefit everyone, or just rich people.
>
> The people in power who advocate deregulation actually want to eliminate the
> controls on what banks can do without endangering the money of wealthy
> investors. In other words, they want to be ableto do anything they want
> without taking any risks. It's a great deal, if you can get the government
> to cover your butt when you screw up.
>
> If your response is that you would like to see "real" deregulation and a
> "real" free market in banking--you might note "real" free markets almost
> never exist, and that businesses, when they are strong enough, are the
> first to try to get rid of them. In what strange fantasy world would this
> not take place? Anarchists
> and communists are constantly being berated for not being "realistic" but
> libertarians yearn for a market that behaves like no other that has ever
> existed anywhere--and there have been a hell of a lot of markets! Talk
> about utopian!
>
> This is a point Chomsky has made more times than I care to count.
>
> Peter Stone
> [log in to unmask]

        I do not think there is any such thing as "the right kind" of
regulation. The real problem is the wage system. 19th century anarchists
experimented with a wide variety of alternatives to currency such as
(Greene's ?) Time store and other models  have prematurely been relegated
to failure even by libertarian theorists (in either sense of the term).

        I realize that libertarian socialists want to avoid utopian
thinking that leads to all kinds of craziness. But government regulation
of any kind is no solution. Statists are far too tricky to be trusted ,
no matter what their proclaimed motives.

        My point is that for anyone (even Chomsky) to argue that the
Banking System can be reformed using the State is wrong at best. The
whole foundation of Capitalism is intrinsically statist and cannot be
reformed. As a biologist, I believe we need to look at society from an
ecological ,not merely an economic, point of view to prevent anyone from
getting the upper hand including "regulators".

                                Howard