OP, I've been meaning to make a website dedicated to 'unbanking,' both as a concept to fight fractional reserve banking, for privacy reasons, and for personal reasons for a lot of the reasons you're talking about. If I could pay my rent or utilities with blockchain, then yes, you're right OP. That's about the only thing I need a bank for. Also, what are your thoughts on things like the Texas gold depository.

>>3832 >what are your thoughts on things like the Texas gold depository Sounds like a good idea to reintroduce people to sound money on a local level. The criticism that fiat advocates lob at metallism is that there isn't enough bullion to back a national economy. Sure go ahead and use fiat all you want for your international trade, currency manipulation, and bankers' wars but that helps no one when what people need is simply a stable store of value and medium of exchange. And then when they have issued too much fiat they have to justify its value by racking up the interest rates. A stable money supply, a stable growth rate, a stable value, and the low/interest-free lending allowed by these guarantees is in the interests of everyone except the usurious.

>>3833 >The criticism that fiat advocates lob at metallism is that there isn't enough bullion to back a national economy. I always thought that rebuke was a joke. Is there not enough Bitcoin because there can only be 21 million? It reminds me when I thought back on The Lorax when I was older, "Wait...did The Lorax have no access to a futures market? Did he really have no accountant telling him about his land's current valuations?" The fact that that argument is taken seriously and that that argument still exists just makes me think that people hate capitalism on an irrational and biological level.

>>3838 It's a problem of the relationship with fiat, finances, and authority. The US government borrowed more than it generated in the 1960s and the USD started trading at a lower value for gold in international markets than the official peg, thus traders began arbitraging the difference for a profit and draining the United States of gold. The economies of Europe that were rebuilding following World War 2 had been lent larger and larger amounts of USD as reserve currency to fund their investment needs, but when the USD started inflating they too began making claims on US gold deposits. The fixed price of gold to USD under the Bretton Woods exchange rate agreement meant it wasn't competitive for US producers to mine to increase the national gold stock when the cost of extraction had steadily increased. The situation was unsustainable and faced with the possibility of a global run on Fort Knox, Nixon broke off the peg in 1971. It could have lasted longer had the US government been more fiscally responsible and not drawn the credibility of the system into question. Vietnam and Johnson's Great Society programs were the biggest culprits. Another solution was to let the USD depreciate against gold, but that would have severely impacted the United States' international influence as well as the bankers that held USD debts. When the peg was broken though, those bankers established a new fiat order that would artificially keep the dollar at the "top" by destroying its circulation through high interest rates, so that those who lent and shackled the world with onerous debts would be kingmakers at the feet of which all would grovel for scraps. Even though the numbers were no longer backed by anything but the vacuous promise of future returns (as well as energy prices at times), and the result has been the destruction of American jobs for the gain of other nations and exorbitant rises in fixed costs because fiat lies are just a disguise for the mass transfer of wealth to the elite, it has enabled """"""growth"""""". The lesson of all this is that ideal money should not be partial to any nation, any authority nor class, because even with the best of intentions a centralized entity is apt to drive the creation of a system of indenture by the power of monetary issuance. If we do not learn from the mistakes of the past we are condemned to repeat them, like the Fed trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes here.

>>3833 Please stop posting this fake quote.

>>3840 It describes what happened perfectly well. They've pumped up prices to get everyone invested before bursting the bubble each time to perform highway robbery.

>>3839 Was this meant to contradict anything I said?

>>3842 No, just an elaboration of why they do what they do. It isn't about economics or capitalism but control.

Americans insist that they live in a free country and just shrug when they are given overwhelming proof that the US is a police state.