You are ignoring the legal tender laws. Your creation of “mike’s notes” can be discounted (or the reverse) depending on the market value of the notes. That’s not legal tender money. You cannot force me to accept them at any particular value you choose to give them.

In addition, suppose I hold on to your note for say, 10 years and then trade it. I will have to compute the value in dollars of the note ten years ago and the present nominal dollar value of that note. Then I must pay a capital gains tax on the increase in the nominal number of dollars that this note is now worth. This is true even if I merely trade it for the said rent since that rent will be appraised by the IRS and I will be given a bill for capital gains taxes.

And if you think you can just willy-nilly create money without any consequences, go talk to the people who were creating the Ron Paul Dollar.

You and I can legally create money. Say I own land that yields me rent of 50 oz of silver per year. At a market rate of 5%, this land will be worth 1000 oz. If I’m known in town, I can buy groceries by handing the grocer a piece of paper saying “Good for 1 oz. rent on Mike’s land”. People will accept it as money because I accept it for rent. Note that I don’t ever have to pay out an actual ounce of silver for my rent certificate.

I could probably issue something like 600 of these certificates before people started to worry about my solvency, and they would stay worth 1 oz even as I increased their quantity. I could even issue another 100 certificates, use them to buy a government bond worth 100 oz, and still not cause inflation, since the extra 100 certificates are adequately backed by the 100 oz. bond.

I will comment on two point:

1) As to the events, bailouts both fiscal and monetary combined with false bookkeeping – allows bondholders and employees to continue on the good times at the expense of 98% of us.

2) The scam – and both purists and moneterists forgive me, it is a simple example for illustration only.

Say the money supply is $100, and it (obviously) suffices as claim on all goods. Some guy at the top creates an extra $2 for himself. The real stuff available to consume hasn’t changed, but he has extra claim on the same stuff. You, on the other hand, can buy 2% less stuff.

It is a nice scam. The guy who creates an extra 2 bucks for himself essentially is taking 2% off the top of every transaction, every dollar saved, etc.

We aren’t in this together. We aren’t in the same boat. There are many who benefit from the system, both monetarily and with power. Most of us just pay.

And their children inherit millions, while yours get….

Er, okay, how do we value the “plant, machinery, patents” then if not on what they can earn us in the future?

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt is also a great intro. If you want something by a non-Austrian economist, Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell is great. But I stress that a thorough understanding of money, as well as free markets, is also essential. If you want to read about money and the federal reserve alongside some 20th history, try The Creature from Jekyll Island by G Edward Griffin.

You don’t have to accept US money.

Well, since I don’t live in the US, I indeed don’t. But I suspect that is not what you meant. I recommend you make yourself familiar with legal tender and Gresham’s law.

And you don’t think this has something to do with the ability to keep creating new money that we are forced to use?

If there is nothing wrong with this then how come you and I can’t (legally) do the same thing? Let’s start creating currency with pictures of you and me on them – and then let’s use them to buy things. And oh yeah, anyone that refuses to accept them, we point our guns at them until they comply. And finally, we have to point our guns at all the other posters here that try to do the same thing – unless they start their own country with their own central bank. Then we’ll just threaten wars if things get out of hand.

Read more: Trade Deficits and Fiat Currencies — Mises Economics Blog http://blog.mises.org/12103/trade-deficits-and-fiat-currencies-2/#comments#ixzz0hhvpG6rU”

I thought this was now being cracked down upon?

The capital value of a company is the plant, machinery, patents they own. Future earnings is speculative. In the case of a company which has no track record of turning a profit, a crap shoot.

You’re making a fundamental mistake here. The capital value of the firm is not just some value you can assert, it is based on the projected future earnings of the firm. This in turn is based on expectations of certain activity from consumers and investors from a certain structure of productions, consumption patterns etc.

Suddenly selling 1 million shares and thereby depriving the rest of the economy of 60 million of investment it was expecting changes those very patterns and the structure of the economy, so the capital value of the firm is not constant like you assume.

If you want to store your money in gold no one is stopping you.

And if you want a more liquid currency, noone is stopping you from obtaining it from a private issuer either. Why should legal tender laws and central bank force everyone to participate in their ideas of what currency should be?

I understand where you are. But the people in charge are not trying to do what’s best for you or me, they’re trying to rise up their own management ladder and pay their mortgages and have a nicer car than next door and all the other things everyday people do. And they are part of a system that rewards them personally for actions that harm the nation/economy as a whole, so some of them simply don’t know. Some of them of course are liars and crooks but not all.

Fractional reserve banking and central banks are a designed to steal money from the public. The first thing you need to get straight if you want to understand this is what money is. Here

http://mises.org/daily/3480

is a good start, and this is longer and more complete when you know more.

http://mises.org/books/moneyproduction.pdf

Good luck

If you want to store your money in gold no one is stopping you. Why must it be in the form of government issued coins? You like disks better than bars? But unless there is inflation your gold is not an investment and will lose you any interest you could have gained by not simply storing it.

If you have so much “money” that you you don’t need it, then put your billions in a NUMBERED Swiss account. They will charge a nominal fee to hide it from the Feds.

There is no requirement for using US money for anything but paying taxes and government fees. If you want to use gold or bottle caps for money all you gots to do is find a store keep who will accept gold or bottle caps. As long as the gold or caps are not in a form that looks like government issued money the Feds will not care. Municipalities issue wooden nickels for local promotional reasons.