The dollar would still be there but devalued. On that common basis of understanding degrees of worth would be set. When bread costs $1000 a measure of gold can be determined to satisfy even the most inflated cost. Gold would be sure whereas paper worth would be in constant flux, society would covet the gold.

A Gulch IMO would use practical value as currency - services, food, malleable metals, etc. It would stand to reason that gold, out side of technological use, would be more for external trade.

It is time to unlearn what you have learned.

In my world of nanochemistry, Au has much intrinsic value, but remarkably for the very opposite of the reason that it maintains value in the non-nano realm. Nanogold has some reactivity, is not conductive (because of its ligands, although I am working to change that), and fluoresces like crazy. Non-nano gold's value is because of its superior conductivity and its resistance to corrosion.

" dollars would have become nearly worthless or, totally worthless at approximately the end of AS."

I don't recall their use of the dollar, but here's my guess. I recall it saying people there didn't use USD. Maybe they had their own currency, linked to gold, not related to the USD. Many countries call their currency dollars or pesos without being related to the USD or Mexican Peso.

This makes me think of how it said you couldn't use USDs. I bet someone there, not mentioned in the story, would have exchanged mainstream currencies for gold / Gulch currency. They could take the USDs and buy materials for the Gulch.

I cannot argue that the state is absorbing far more resources than is required to support it's valid functions. I am not saying that the current situation is ideal.

What I am saying is that some mutually accepted organization is necessary to protect property and allow investment. We can all be stateless if we are hunter-gatherers but once we start building things we have to protect our right to enjoy our investment.

There are organizations that are built around the ideal of a stateless capitalist society where people defend their own property without resorting to the state -- they are called drug gangs. They are highly capitalist and do not rely on the state to protect their property. I doubt we want to emulate their operation for society in general.

True, at that time we were still on the gold standard but, only for countries, not citizens. US citizens were still forbidden from owning gold.

My objection is, by the time she got to the Gulch, the dollar would have been nearly worthless so, why denominate physical gold payments between each other in dollars rather than ounces or grams?

Even now, in a world still bent on using paper money, gold transactions are done in weights, not currency values. You buy an once of gold, not a $1345 worth of gold and, when you sell, you sell an ounce for whatever amount of whatever currency you desire or, whatever amount of whatever commodity you desire.

Gold weight is the fundamental measure, not currency.

I used to try to explain international currency exchange to my American friends, with little luck because, they were used to having the world's reserve currency. They couldn't fathom someone not wanting their money.

But, it would no longer be denominated in dollars, for the most part because residents of the Gulch wouldn't accept dollars.

She does make a point about how it is the gold backing the dollar that makes it worth in the speech by Francisco at the wedding party. I don't find this too much of an issue in that her real point is that money represents the value our labor brings to others. It's not important whether this is gold, tobacco, butter or paper notes backed by something

Whether they saw it or not would be irrelevant. Society outside the gulch would value the gold and their desire to obtain something of substance (value) because of the worthless dollar would give it supreme worth. That supreme worth would set the value for those within the Gulch who still had dealings with the outside world.A penny size piece of gold would be worth a lot of seeds, medicine, etc...

Will,
You make the same logical fallacy that is always repeated in this debate, you argue with the assumption the state is there, right now, protecting your property, while assume I am speaking from a purely theoretical position of what we would be faced with if this altruistic protector were removed from the picture.
The exact opposite is true. The state steals over half of everything you produce. Your corn is being taken right now. Your railroad ties disappear every week right from your paycheck into the hands of the very thieves your talking about.

But you argue that we must have this, because if we don't, someone will take your corn and your railroad ties will disappear right from your paycheck every week Into the hands of theives.
Because of the brainwashing we all receive from birth on, it is extremely difficult for people to see that what you fear absent a state is exactly what you have right this second. You have a glaring contradiction and are failing to see it.

We can't get rid of the theives from owning us becaus if we do, theives will own us

I understand why, throughout history, gold ends up being a sought after unit of exchange: it's rare enough to maintain value, even if it has little intrinsic value of its own. Carrying lots of steel or copper around could be inconvenient.

In our electronic world, digital credits might take the place of gold. If the electronic world remains reliable, a digital clearing mechanism independent of precious metals may be our next resort. It will still need some kind of unit.

This is where Rand's use of the dollar made no sense; dollars would have become nearly worthless or, totally worthless at approximately the end of AS. Would a bunch of people as smart as the occupants of the Gulch not have foreseen that?

While I did note it, I didn't view the exchange of gold and its being valued in terms of dollars to be a major issue when I read AS. What I found to be a nagging matter was using gold as an exchange medium at all.

I'm developing a multi-player on-line open world game where survival is literally in the hands of each player. While is remnants of society, each person must scavenge and create items of need for themselves. My medium of exchange? Metals. Why? Because metals can be crafted into any number of things. Another means of exchange is barter Item(s) for item(s).

These types of economics work with the philosophy because there is actual value unique to each individuals need. I considered Rand using gold as a medium, particularly valued in dollar terms, as a statement that she had no intention of her society having a complete and total divorce form the outside world - goods would be needed and, with paper money being worthless, bits of gold would still be of value.

I could totally be wrong...but thats how I viewed the gold issue (the only way I could reconcile her gold valuation as relevant to her plot). Personally I would have went a different direction, but its the authors choice and I enjoyed the book.

PS I gave you back your point..

Want the real contradiction in Atlas Shrugged? All the transactions in The Gulch are carried out with gold but, Rand doesn't quote the amounts by weight, she quotes them by dollar value.

A glaring logical oversight which, since her editor recommended very few changes to the manuscript, must be a sign of how difficult it was, even for Rand and her cohorts to step outside of the world they inhabited and into the one she was trying to invent.

The world, at the time Rand was writing AS, was so dollar-centric, even she couldn't escape it.

I understand. I was being fecetious. It is only not free in the sense that one must pay a ransom first.

Wrong.

One is still free to leave, even if leaving is no longer free. We are not serfs or slaves. Those who stay have made a choice - to stay.

Hello Wanderer,
You are correct. History has shown us that those left to their own devices are ruled by the local tyrant. Eventually all governments seem to devolve to the same state... it is no longer even free to leave. You must pay a fee to become an expat. http://thesovereigninvestor.com/asset...
Otherwise, wherever you go, you are still required to pay taxes to this government...
Respectfully,
O.A.

The problem with enforcing your own property rights is that someone with a bigger stick can take them away from you. Yes, you can hire a firm, and I can hire a bigger one. They call that a war and in the end, one side controls the property. It's how nations got built in the first place.

How does one build a railroad if I can collect those nice steel rails you have stretched across the land and use them for my own purpose -- or, on the other hand I have planted that field of corn and you start laying railroad lines through it, trampling it down.

I can say "that's mine, you have to stop doing that" and you can say "nya nya make me." And we can devolve into a grade school battle -- without a teacher to break it up.

I have not dictated how the state gets paid for. If we have a state that a whole bunch of us pay into and you don't does that make you the equivalent of a Germanic Outlaw -- outside the law? Can anyone do anything to you they want and the rest of us say, "well, he should probably have paid for the police?".

Yes, it's immoral for them to do this. So what. Your system must not depend on everyone ascribing to your vision of morality or it falls victim to the first one who doesn't.

If you institute a court system and pay them on a pay per service basis is there much difference? If they are local and would go broke if people did not voluntarily use them for resolution, would they not be the same in reality as a private firm? I am good with that. One need not grant them any other power. let them be at the mercy of the market.

This thread is the kind of ridiculous pseudo intellectual flailing about that dissuaded me from wasting time on this site 3 years ago.

I'd signed up after AS2, which was so bad, I thought surely there'd be a rewrite and reshoot but, after a few weeks of these kind of debates, I realized these weren't, for the most part, people whom I could engage in any beneficial way.

Perhaps, outside of her fiction, Rand's mind dwelt in the unreal, ideal world these ideas pose, a world where humans are honest and just and theft and murder are unknown. Great place but, can anyone tell me where it is? Can I buy a condo there?

In the real world, we do just as you suggest, form voluntary alliances, nations, societies and, impose rules on the members. Most of the rules are mandatory to maintain morally equitable treatment of all. However, membership isn't mandatory. If one finds the rules too objectionable, one is free to leave, to find another voluntary alliance to join.

I have no time for people who deny these realities. They are like the Pope denying the heliocentric model - intellectually immature or, emotionally flawed and, in either case - boring.

Does no one learn world history anymore? Does no one learn many past societies and some present ones were built on the idea of looting and pillaging others? Or, is it just simpler to philosophize if one denies reality?

There is a little bit a of leap between A is A and the fact that men need dispute resolution services justifying a state. there are plenty of free market dispute resolution services and the market actually favors private firms over state firms, many fall under the illusion this service of dispute resolution must be a monopoly. that is saying A must be B

Will,
Many things are essential to develop resources, property rights are not one of them. Resources can be developed by slavery as well as by free men.
The idea of property rights is an apriori one. It doesn't need to be enacted to exist.
You haven't really presented an argument for the need of the contradiction of the state. You started out by saying - Either everyone who owns property must enforce them or there must be an independant party (lets call it a state), and then you just assumed there must be the latter.
I don't assume there must be the latter? I see no reason everyone cant enforce their own property rights? If you know free market capitalism, then you understand that where there is a want and need, there will always arise a firm happy to make money fulfilling that need. The main difference between this and the state is that it is voluntary. No theft needed. No forced monopoly. No one pointing a gun at you and saying "Im gonna protect you and your gonna pay me!)
You can hire and fire as you please.
The problem with the contradiction is, once you accept the idea that others have the right to force you to pay for protection, how does that differ from what your trying to be protected from?
The state is exactly what your worried about. those are the thieves your talking about. pretending you need them from some other imaginary criminal doesn't justify it. they are the exact criminal your talking about that we need protection from. the second you accept the contradiction, you may have a separation in your mind between criminals and the state, but objectively, they are identicle

Yes. I have seen this argument before. Question: Is it not objective to see A is A and in this context to see and admit that men are fallible and need an independent arbiter when disputes among men occur? After all, most are not objectivists or even have any reasonable philosophic foundation based on reason. Emotion rules among many and their passions will turn many into brutes that wish to dominate by force. Thus the limited purpose for which we need a government... just some courts for adjudication and a minimal enforcement capacity of contracts and disputes without leaving justice in the hands of the Atillas. As for taxation/payment for these functions I am for loser pay. I suspect Rand had just enough pragmatism to see that it is true what James Madison said: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."
I wonder though if Rand, who thought our founding the best yet instituted, would admit to what I have proffered. She might even vehemently disagree with the assertion that she observed pragmatism even in such a minimal way. My two cents...

The point is that property rights are essential to develop resources. Property rights only exist if they can be enforced. Either everyone who owns property must enforce them, by violence if necessary, themselves or there must be an independent party, let's call it the state, that enforces everyone's property rights.

Now, how the state is paid for is a different matter, so I'm not pointing a gun at you to force you to pay for the protection of my corn. How to pay for the state is an interesting problem.

You could argue that there should be no mandatory payment to the state to enforce your rights, but then is the only thing protecting what you own your own force?

Because in the end, force must be met with force to be defeated. Philosophy alone will not defend you against someone who doesn't mind that you consider them immoral.

It does work for me OA, and you and I may be in agreement, but Rand was a supporter of limited government with a monopoly on the ability to retaliate force but not initiate force, this left a bundle of contradictions in itself. The free market anarchist and objectivist debate on the subject is an old one that Rand never fully answered to many's satisfaction.
An old open letter to Rand here
http://www.libertarianism.org/publica...

Hello james5820,
I am for voluntary taxes, lotteries, etc. and a pay as you go for services system. I think that would satisfy Rand and if my recollection is correct, in one of her books she suggested something of that nature..
Does that work for you?
Respectfully,
O.A.

Thanks OA,
Im aware she believed in a very limited government. I merely point out the fact this is still a glaring contradiction in her philosophy. She also believes there are NO contradictions (as do I), but to have any state, even the most limited one, one still must accept theft. Unless you can tell me there is a society where all members want to pay taxes, then it is still theft to have limited government. We either base our ideas on principles or we don't. I base my personal philosophy on the absolute that theft is immoral. Saying - it just very very very little theft, does not make it something other than theft.