There is good reason for the Constitution to override the status quo of the Articles of Confederation on the subject of minting coinage, but I'm not certain a debate left unresolved regarding paper money is indicative of anything when they did actually agree that a person could be owned, and that was worth 3/5 of a vote. It was either less important than slavery, or more difficult to resolve. I'm inclined to believe the latter.
Before descending into full-on libertarded ranting, let's just say that leaving the matter as ambiguous effectively grants the government license to do whatever it pleases and interpret the ambiguity in favor of that.
Failing to bind the hands of a future Congress is what allowed them to pick up that grenade and pull the pin.
If you're trying to create a limited government, there are ample reasons to dig a deep moat around money, fill it with poisonous snakes and spiders, and line the walls with Dementors.
Why not, if the debate is still valid? These issues weren't so much "resolved" as put aside in favor of more government power or postponed (in the case of slavery, equal protection). The mere fact that the debate is 200 years old is simply more credit to its importance.
The constitution is imperfect (like our government), as it itself acknowledges, and is "correct" only as Lincoln said that it serves a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all (men) are created equal".
As someone else once said, don't take refuge in the false security of consensus.
No, it usually means one side lost and can't get over it. Half the country still disagrees with Darwin, it doesn't make the debate important despite it being well over 100 years old. The same applies here.
If you don't think that debate is still important, you are essentially conceding it to the half the country you disagree with (because they sure as hell think its important). I'm sure you don't want your kids being taught creationism just because you consider yourself "above" the argument.
And regardless, the same does not apply here, because unlike the overwhelming evidence we have for evolution by natural selection, there simply is not enough data on the usefulness of central banking to the prosperity of the nation.
No I'm not. The debate was over 100 years ago, the ignorant just haven't figured it out yet. They simply get laughed at now for trying to argue the case. Mockery is not concession.
> there simply is not enough data on the usefulness of central banking to the prosperity of the nation.
Not what I was referring to. I was referring to this, " For better or worse, most of the latent ambiguities in the Constitution were resolved in favor of the interpretation espoused by Hamilton and the Federalists."
You can't ignore 200 years of judicial interpretation and case law simply because you prefer to interpret the text differently, that was his point and he's correct. That debate is over.
If half the population becomes slightly over than half the population out of random chance (or say, the "ignorant" having a few more babies as they are wont to do), mockery would be political concession.
It's far better to convince who you deem ignorant of your own views. This means treating their arguments seriously in the fashion of http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html .
Mockery is unlikely to succeed (as are downvotes), and pretty much fails pg's 1st test.
Your next claim, that "200 years of judicial interpretation and case law" ends the debate fails pg's second test. It's an ad hominem attack, that any disagreement with legal precedent (admittedly strong in this case) should be ignored.
By the same token, legal precedent prior to the civil war dictated that human beings could be property. I presume you are glad that some individuals within that society begged to differ.
Debates should be conducted on first principles and supported by objective evidence. I myself agree with Rayiner in that there is no constitutional dictate either way, only saying that the debate is valid on the grounds of 1st principle regardless of how old the arguments are.
Perhaps you should read more of what he wrote, and watch the dozens of debates he conducted with priests, rabbis etc. Of course, you can use ridicule in an argument, but you cannot put yourself above the debate (or you will lose).
If it's actually half the country, and they actually think it's substantially more important than the other half the country, there's an argument that it's effective concession. But, at the risk of putting words in your mouth, I more understood you to be saying that having the argument wasn't important - conveying the understanding behind your "your side" of that argument you might consider quite a bit more important.
On hearing that, it becomes obvious. There is no quest for truth or spirit of inquiry in the opposition. They are simply obstacles to progress that must be routed around. The debate is not over; it never took place, and it never will.
If you can't get someone to support rational argumentation by means of rational arguments, you're better off talking to someone--anyone--else.
Unfortunately that's basically false.
Isn't it good for persons with dollar-denominated debt exceeding their dollar-denominated assets?
When you print an additional 2% of the money supply, you are essentially taking about 2% of the entire economy and assigning it to yourself.
Back when money was gold, and gold was money, in order to increase the money supply by 2%, you had to mine 2% of all gold already in the marketplace, which required a lot of labor and capital. If the price of gold was high, you worked more expensive mines. If it was low, you idled them as temporarily unprofitable. The effect of the increase on the money supply was diffused throughout the economy by virtue of the sheer amount of work required to accomplish it.
With paper money, all that is required is a press and anti-counterfeiting measures. The transfer of value into the new money is far more concentrated, both in terms of actors and time. The buying power of the new money is higher, because people don't necessarily know how much you printed until you start spending it.
It is a great virtue for Bitcoin to make public the exact amount of new money added to the economy. Monetary inflation can therefore be predicted exactly. It's still inflationary, and does not account for changes in demand to achieve a stable money price. What it needs is a feedback loop that connects mining rewards with demand for the currency. I imagine that could key from the hash rate of the whole network, but I'm not certain how.
There is no basis for the assumptions about demand for money vs. other goods that are necessary for this to be a justifiable claim.
Assumption: The money itself has zero intrinsic value. It is only worth what you can trade for it. Thanks to the previous assumption, that is a fraction of all goods and services on the market.
When you change the size of the money supply from 100 to 102, the 2 new notes increase in value from 0 to 1/102 of everything on the market, and all of the 100 old notes decrease from 1/100 to 1/102 of everything. The guy that prints the new notes gets 2/102 of everything for free. That value is not created; it is taken. Everyone who held any old note has their buying power reduced by 1.96%.
Is it justifiable? Yes. Is it a gross simplification because economics is a dismal, dismal science? Also yes.
To be fair, this is actually one of the more plausible ones of the various "everything is unconstitutional" myths. At least some of the framers clearly did want to tie the hands of the federal government when it came to making paper money legal tender.