Ron Paul’s Gold Standard
“While I may not agree with the current rules and mission statement that the federal reserve is trying to accomplish, Ron Paul’s adherence to the gold standard is an outdated antiquity. The value of gold is not a fixed value any more than the value of the dollar, and pegging a dollar amount to a quantity of gold can do a lot to hurt it’s value in international markets.
For example, the exchange rate has a huge effect on the net imports and exports of the United States. If we had been pegged to gold over the past few decades the amount of exports the US would have sent out would have collapsed far more than it otherwise would have as buying stuff in dollar’d terms would exponentially increase. Likewise, there is a constant fear of inflation from an influx in the quantity of gold, or a deflation if the growth of gold doesn’t keep up with demand for money.
If people wished to preserve the value of the dollar the best thing one could do is have fiat currency and either fix the money supply, or to peg it fixed to a basket of international currencies (probably the euro, the brazilian currency, and the russian currency). These would have gained similar benefits that those who wish we were pegged to gold elude to, but at a far stabler rate. Actually, it should be pegged to a commodity market like the price of wood, or wheat, as those goods are relatively elastic with low price volatility.
Using fiat currency for the most part has been a huge net benefit, austrian business cycles included.”
-Kevin (www.gaiaonline.com/profiles/26996761/) [B.A. in Political Science and B.Sc. in Economics.
Yes.
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(Source: pusheen)
I do not think we can ever truly know if a god, or if any gods, truly exist or not. While it’s true that religion is a human invention, as no other animals worship any deity, it’s still plausible. I am not, however, saying i think any of the religions are true, or that any of the religions are plausible. If there is a god, our ideas about it are most likely wrong.
The greatest last-ditch effort a theist has brought to me is that God is outside space and time. What they’re suggesting, of course, is that God is outside the space-time continuum. We cannot examine outside the space-time continuum, which makes it impossible to verify or falsify. This is all, of course, assuming there is such a thing as “outside space-time.” But since the existence of a god is being suggested by those who believe in him/her/it, they carry the burden of proof. Those of us who dismiss the existence of based on lack of evidence don’t carry the burden to disprove God. Besides, you can’t prove a negative, that’s basic logic. For instance, you can’t prove that I don’t have an invisible dragon in my garage.
Those of us who take atheism seriously and know what we’re talking about know that we are not claiming that no god or gods exist; we are merely saying that based on the lack of evidence provided by those suggesting the existence of God, we have no reason to believe.
There will always be religion. There will always be apologetics for those religions. Just like there will always be people who see faith insulting to intelligence, and like there will always be people who don’t believe.
These types of truths are also quasi-subjective.
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“Interviewer: “Didn’t [Carl Sagan] want to believe?”
Druyan: “He didn’t want to believe. He wanted to know.
“A world at peace. There had to be sacrifice.”