The Aporetic

After the last post on Bitcoin, I’ve been having some interesting discussion with a reader, Jonathon Duerig, about Bitcoin and money. This is the first of a two parter on money and digital technology Bitcoin resembles the traditional gold standard, in that it’s a form of money imagined as outside government interference that can’t be […]

President Obama is considering appointing, among others, Janet Yellen as chairman of the Federal reserve. Predictably, opponents and proponents both take her gender into consideration: she’d be the first female head of the central bank. Yellen’s supporters think having a woman as chair would amount to a breakthrough for gender equality, but opponents have worried […]

Historians can’t quite make up their mind about abolition. Nobody wants slavery to return, and historians initially tended to praise abolitionists as moral visionaries. In England William Wilberforce is a hero for helping convince England to end slavery in 1833. In the US, Wilberforce was more recently  the inspiration for political-thug-turned-moral-crusader Chuck Colson’s crusade agains […]

VA delegate Robert “Bob” Marshall, representing the crazy parts of Loudon and Prince William Counties, is trying to compel taxpayers to spend up to $22,560 dollars to study an alternative currency for Virginia. Marshall believes the dollar is on the verge of collapse, and that Virginia must stand ready to issue its own gold coins. […]

You’ve probably read about the platinum coin idea. I posted about it before, but it’s probably worth revisiting. If it seems like it doesn’t make sense that’s because it kind of doesn’t make sense. Here’s the problem. Congress makes the budget. The budget mandates a certain amount of spending. The spending congress mandates is in […]

So recently the GAO addressed the question of replacing the dollar bill with a dollar coin to save money. The idea is that a bill wears out in, say, ten months while a coin lasts ten years. The government would save the cost of printing dollar bills. Also recently some economists have proposed that the […]