Because there’s no advantage in doing so if you still have to make most transactions in dollars. There are people who trade outside of the dollar, but there’s little use if most people still only accept dollars.
USA monetary tokens include pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, John Fitzgerald Kennedy 50 cent pieces, and green pieces of paper with various numbers printed on them; however, these tokens are not actually, as far as I can ascertain, the substance which is theoretically exchanged in modern commercial transactions. A “dollar” is not a piece of paper or a substance or medium of itself per se; it is a measurement of mass or weight similar to a “gram” or “ounce.”
if you limit yourself to the definiotion of a dollar as a specific weight of silver..ok. but the green piece of paper i have says dollar on it, among other things.
do you consider the green piece of paper that says dollar on to be a us monetary token?
i have seen definitions put forth other than the silver wieght you mention for dollar.
can dollar mean both a silver weight and a green piece of paper with some type of congressional edict and govt force goving it exchange value???
You can exchange labor for gold and silver, but there are several factors which make it difficult, such as legal tender laws and tax laws. Ron Paul sums it up here:
Mark
Not to mention if you try to compete with US money directly the government QUITE LITERALLY will send men with guns to confiscate all your reserves while you stew in the legal process for years:
Because the Dollar has value, it is what they accept for payment of tax. So your answer is violence is the reason why.
“Mises Pieces is mistaken, as far as I can tell. Otherwise, the commodities exchange and futures markets and gold ETFs simply could not exist.”
Keep in mind that Mises died in 1973 so when he wrote his pieces he was correct, but the laws changed since then. Now trading with gold is allowed of course, but this has been the case only since as you already said gold prohibition ended in 1976.
-
Yes, I consider the green George Washington portrait to be USA monetary token.
-
The word dollar does not and never has signified a green piece of paper. I have two reasons for saying this: the “semantic” reason and the “physical” reason. Since I’ve already tried the semantic reason, I’ll go with the physical reason first. If a dollar is a Washington portrait by definition, then you must have ten physical Washington portraits to have ten “dollars.” But this is not the case in reality. In reality, there are two, five, ten, fifty, and 100 dollar bills. An Alexander Hamilton portrait (10 dollars) is not ten George Washington portraits. It is a single piece of paper. If a George Washington portrait is your definition of the dollar, then how can a single piece of paper with another design be called “ten dollars”? Does this make sense? Now here is the semantic reason, which actually follows from the physical explanation. If vendors are forced to accept various portraits as representing various “dollar” amounts, then the green paper isn’t actually what is traded. What is traded is what is represented by the green paper. It is an invisible, imaginary commodity or substance which has no name (and I have suggested a name for this substance in a prior post). A dollar is actually a measurement, like a kilogram, of an imaginary substance, so you have five dollars of the substance, not just five dollars. Imagine if I went down to an open air market and announced that I had three kilograms for sale. That wouldn’t make any sense to anyone. Three kilograms of what? I haven’t stated what the actual substance is that I’m offering, only the measurement. Let’s say I have three kilograms of beef. Okay, now that makes sense. Similarly, it makes no sense to say “five dollars.” Five dollars of what? Five dollars of this imaginary substance (which I have named Usonian Farcia). So the official currency of the USA is not the “dollar.” It is Usonian Farcia measured in units of dollars. Does this make sense?
Thanks,
Egon
its not just a portrait..there is a seal on it to. a signature on it as well. but is says one dollar and federal reserve note.
as far as a monetary token. if it isnt money it is a currency. maybe a currency piece would be more appropriate.
i dont understand what you mean by token.
i dont think anyone classifies teh currency as imaginary substance. it isnt substance.
but if i give up green paper for something i no longer have green paper and someone else does.
Where it says “1 Dollar” it actually means “representing 1 Dollar.” The paper isn’t the dollar itself. A note, or token, is something that represents something else. The word “token” describes physical currency better than the word “note” because not all tokens are notes; there are also metal coins, which are not notes. So the word token is a better generic umbrella term to describe coins and bills.
USA currency is money because it is used as such. A “USA currency piece” is the same thing as a “USA monetary token,” if you prefer the former term. It is immaterial either way and does not change the situation.
Currency, or tokens, are physical. The substance which the tokens represent is not. It is imaginary. Whether someone else classifies it that way is irrelevant. That’s what it is.
If you give up green paper for something than you no longer have green paper and someone else does. That is correct.
This is really diverging from the original question, which has been answered already.
Thanks.
Sincerely,
Egon
No, the paper is the dollar. What else could be?
Saying that a piece of paper is a dollar is like saying that a receipt is a kilogram. A dollar is a unit of weight measurement for some kind of substance, just as a kilogram is a unit of mass measurement. Once again, a piece of paper represents, but is not of itself, one dollar of the imaginary substance which has no name. Also, how could you say that you have $500 dollars in your checking account when there is no physical paper sitting in a box at the bank (which there is not)? The imaginary substance which serves as our money is declared into existence by banking organizations under the auspices of the directorate of the Federal Reserve (someone correct me if I’m wrong here). It is only partially represented by paper and coins. The rest is purely imaginary, existing only on a digital listing inside a bank’s computer. The existence of imaginary money in what is termed a checking account in the USA, among several other things, should be proof enough that the “dollar” is not a piece of paper. This is only one of several points which I have brought up in the course of this thread.
A dollar is a unit of weight measurement for some kind of substance,…
that was a definiti9on and still is for some i guess.
does the govt use a different definition now??
is a dollar a broadly defined unit of a currency??
the paper manifestation included in that definition.
as to why do individuals accept the original 'whatever the" us paper token is question…does te poster accpet any type of paper and coin tokens, from the us or otherwise???
if so why? that may answer part of the question.
For those who haven’t been following this post, my question has already been answered.