http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IJCFc_qkHw

"No, set the Dollar to gold, not the other way around."

You have explicitly set the price of gold at $20.67/oz. That is a price control. Think about it, no one is going to sell gold for less than $20.67/oz. At $20.67/oz, $103.35 is worth 5 oz of gold. That by definition also means 5 oz of gold are worth $103.35. If I sell at $20/oz, and I sell you 5 oz of gold under this system, then I am trading you gold worth $103.35 for $100. That's a stupid trade and I'm not going to make it. Likewise if I charge $25/oz, you would be buying gold worth $103.35 for $125. That's also a stupid trade and you're not going to make it.

So yes, it's a price control. That's why commodity money is a terrible method of ensuring currency strength. Fiat currency is the way to go, but it has to be tied to businesses who have an incentive to manage it well, not to governments who couldn't care less about sound money in their pursuit of financing their debts.

"This is the problem with Anarchists. They don't want the government to do anything, even if it is in the Constitution. If they were Constitutionalists they would understand."

Who cares about the Constitution? It's a pathetically weak document that has abjectly failed its intended purpose of limiting government. American society needs to move past the 18th century. Take inspiration from Enlightenment ideals, certainly -- there's a lot of good political philosophy from the Enlightenment era -- but this cult worship of a manifesto by a gang of criminals which promises that this gang won't bother or harm innocent people as much as other gangs do is maddening.

"1) Eliminate all federal taxes, including, but not limited to, those on income and corporations. Replace with a tariff system on foreign imports."

You were fine until that last sentence.

"2) Eliminate all federal subsidies, including, but not limited to, those to corporations, as well as, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, and Food stamps."

I'm with you.

"3) Eliminate the bureaucracies, including, but not limited to, the NSA, and the TSA."

Go on.

"4) Control inflation by putting a moratorium on printing money. [Until a Gold Standard is put into place, as I said.]"

Disagree here, the banking system needs fundamental reworking, including allowing others to create currencies to compete with the dollar. Better management of the dollar -- whether that means fighting inflation or not -- will follow.

"5) Cut $2 Trillion in government spending. This can be achieved through the things mentioned above, and by eliminating things like the National Parks and other ridiculous public works projects. End all pork barrel spending."

We can do better than $2T, but this is better than the current realistic options, so sure.

"Once again, Anarchy usually leads to totalitarianism, which is the opposite of what we all want."

Sudden imposition of anarchy while the societal infrastructure isn't capable of handling it leads to totalitarianism, sure. I'm aware that this is borderline No True Scotsman, but I have yet to meet an anarchist who sincerely believes that "anarchy tomorrow!" is anything but a catastrophically bad idea. You would need decades of scaling back government before it could be a reasonable end goal. In fact, we're pretty much resigned to never seeing our ideas played out in our lifetimes. So comparisons to the Spanish Civil War or Somalia really fall flat there. If you imposed your own utopian vision tomorrow against the voices of millions of people who object, I guarantee you it would go to shit too.

"2. You don't understand the free market at all."

Says the guy advocating higher tariffs!

"How do you idiots plan on funding the government then?"

If we have to keep it? You scale back government to a minimal existence and charge low taxes across the country. Funding it through tariffs is silly.

"You are not right wing. You are an anarchist."

How are these mutually exclusive? Right-wing anarchists exist; I'm one of them, ILN is one of them, I can start naming writers, economists....

1. Tariffs are the fairest way to fund the government, and they will not discourage foreign trade, because I wouldn't make them high.

4. We've discussed this. A gold standard is the only thing that will keep the dollar steady. We are in danger, right now, of the total collapse of the dollar. That wouldn't happen if we switched to the gold standard.

I am still waiting for an example of where anarchy has worked in the past.

Tariffs were a fundamental part of the Pre-Wilson free market. There is nothing wrong with them.

They may be low at first, that is, until Congress starts raising them again.

You fail to realize the fundamental problem with anarchy.

"1. Tariffs are the fairest way to fund the government, and they will not discourage foreign trade, because I wouldn't make them high."

That doesn't add up. First of all, I wouldn't know why tariffs are in any way a 'fairer' way to fund the government, since it would harm some businesses very hard while other people don't have to pay anything to the government. It just makes no sense to call that fair at all.

Then, even assuming the import and export wouldn't get worse, which it would, obviously, but, assuming it doesn't, the tariffs would have to be VERY HIGH, if you want enough money left to buy yourself some food, since no one else would join your government (oh look, that's an upside of the plan), because the government simply has a load of expenses, just think about national debt. And I imagine no one is going to buy your debt so you can pay off your other debts, even if they would, you're going down a spiral, and ironically need to print more dollars just to be able to pay interest. That causes hyper-inflation and a crash. Then you're worse off than Germany after either of the World Wars. Not exactly desirable.

1. Once again, it would keep the American businesses booming and prevent outsiders from making a profit on us.

2. I would keep them very low (5-7%). Because, if you looked at the rest of my plan, the only thing that the government would have to pay for is Defense and small administrative costs. Thats it.

1. IF OUTSIDERS CAN'T MAKE A PROFIT ON YOU THEY DON'T DO BUSINESS WITH YOU SO AMERICAN BUSINESSES DON'T boom.

2. NATIONAL DEBT AND ENFORCEMENT AND JUSTICE if I remember your plan correctly.

Sorry, I just noticed you pay a little attention with caps on. Not like you'll read this apology.

1. Businesses inside the country will boom. I couldn't care less about the Chinese companies.

2. Your point is?

You don't understand, by reducing imports you reduce exports. When a country imports goods and buys them with its currency, the country from where the imports came, must then use the importing countries currency to do the following thing, loan it back to the importing country, or import goods from the importing country. Take for example China, When you buy anything made in China, you are giving the Chinese US Dollars. The Chinese can use them to either import goods from America (which they do, to some extent), or loan is back to the US, which is what it currently does.

Also, i'd like to give you this question, whats the point of exports, if you cant import.

"Tariffs were a fundamental part of the Pre-Wilson free market."

Tariffs are the anti-thesis of the free-market. I suggest you read up on Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations.

You naively assume that it will cause American businesses to boom but this is a fallacy. Sure some industries which are uncompetitive will benefit, but at the cost to business that actually are competitive. Essentially you would be rewarding inefficiency and penalizing efficiency. Tariffs distort market forces even worse than other forms of taxation like income tax.

Here are a couple of examples from history.

In the early 19th century Britain introduced Corn Laws, which were designed to protect local land-owners, who were finding their own produce was becoming uncompetitive compared to imports. This law benefited land owners, but at the expense of ordinary people who had to pay more for their food. The corn laws also hurt British industry because factory owners had to pay their workers more so they could afford to buy enough food to live. Thus rather than making the country wealthier, the corn laws, while benefiting a segment of society, actually made Britain poorer.

A more recent example: In the 1980s Brazil decided it would develop a computer industry. The industry faced competition from cheaper imports however, so the government introduced measures to protect the developing local computer industry. But this hurt other industries that might have benefited from from cheaper (and better computers) that could have been sourced overseas. The value of computers lay not just in the potential domestic market, but more importantly the efficiency it offered to all industry.

If you are looking for an alternative to income tax (and the like) may I suggest you consider a Land Value Tax as a replacement. Supposedly of all taxation systems this is one that distorts the market the least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

Exactly what i said, the fairest tax would be the land value tax

@spyman: Any American examples?

Remember, we had the largest expansion of the U.S. economy in the nineteenth century, when tariffs were part of the economy. I don't really care what happened in Brazil, I'm talking about the United States. And it is not naive to assume that if we create the same conditions that existed back then, when tariffs were around and the economy boomed, we would have the same result. You people just don't want to accept the truth.

Again, there should be no taxes on land if we have a private property system.

What is your problem? I am saying that we have ZERO taxes, only a tariff on FOREIGN imports. It would be small enough that they would still trade with us, but enough to the fund the government. It worked before and It will work again. Why can't you get that through your head?

"I don't really care what happened in Brazil, I'm talking about the United States"
He gave you an example from our modern age, Brazil in 1980, you're giving us shit from the 1800's.
lol you really are naive

Assuming the same happens if you use a system that has a few things corresponding with a system in the 19th century is indeed very naive.

What you are saying equals saying UK should send a bunch of line infantry with muskets to America if they want to take it because it worked in the 18th century too. Oh, and that that isn't naive.

Ok, sure....

I have to step away from the computer for a few hours. We will continue the discussion later on.

"Why can't you get that through your head?"

Because it won't work. Tariffs worked in the 19th centuries, just like marching to the enemy in a column. Tariffs don't work now, just like marching to the enemy line in a column.

Times change. Why can't you get that through your head?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG6b3V2MNxQ

@spyman: Any American examples?

I can't site specific cases off the top of my head, but I found a site which provides three examples, which I shall post here.

http://economics.about.com/cs/taxpolicy/a/tariffs_2.htm

The gist of the above article is that while there are benefits from tariffs that ultimately these are outweighed by the costs.

A key problem is that it causes prices to rise meaning that consumers have less money to spend which in turn hurts local industry (not just foreign industry).

Here are the three examples provided which I shall post verbatim:

Empirical Evidence on the Effect of Tariffs on the Country Imposing Them
Study after study has shown that tariffs cause reduced economic growth to the country imposing them. A few of examples:

1. The essay on Free Trade at The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics looks at the issue of international trade policy. In the essay, Alan Blinder states that "one study estimated that in 1984 U.S. consumers paid $42,000 annually for each textile job that was preserved by import quotas, a sum that greatly exceeded the average earnings of a textile worker. That same study estimated that restricting foreign imports cost $105,000 annually for each automobile worker's job that was saved, $420,000 for each job in TV manufacturing, and $750,000 for every job saved in the steel industry."

2. In the year 2000 President Bush raised tariffs on imported steel goods between 8 and 30 percent. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy cites a study which indicates that the tariff will reduce U.S. national income by between 0.5 to 1.4 billion dollars. The study estimates that less than 10,000 jobs in the steel industry will be saved by the measure at a cost of over $400,000 per job saved. For every job saved by this measure, 8 will be lost.

3. The cost of protecting these jobs is not unique to the steel industry or to the United States. The National Center For Policy Analysis estimates that in 1994 tariffs cost the U.S. economy 32.3 billion dollars or $170,000 for every job saved. Tariffs in Europe cost European consumers $70,000 per job saved while Japanese consumers lost $600,000 per job saved through Japanese tariffs.

The flipside of the question of steel tariffs is "are there strategic industries that you must maintain in your own economy?" Can you become dependent on foreign imports of steel, cars, airplanes, aircraft, food? This is how Germany was defeated in WWI, a blockade of crucial war materials and Japan was crippled in WWII. So some tariffs have a basis in national interest beyond the purely economic. The counter argument to this is that if country become intimately connected through commercial trade they will develop stronger cultural and economic ties that will would prevent war.

You think Germany would have won if they had tariffs? I hope not.

Other than that I think what you say is pretty logic this time :P

However, America isn't really dependant on other states, sure, some things would definitely be unmaintainable but you are not exactly very vulnerable to attack.

Even if you would be, tariffs as the only income is pretty lunatic. Industry would never boom again and booming industries are what you need to fill such proverbal gaps in the defence.

Besides, Europe and Canada are not willingly going to stop trading with US soon, and the rest of the world is probably not strong enough to stop us from doing so.

What's up shit for brains. You killed me so why do you post to me? How fucking stupid are you?

It was a joke and I crossed a line, I said sorry and I should have thought that through more, I didn't think it was a problem but apparently it was.

What else can I do? The discussion was finally starting to get somewhere and I hope it doesn't get screwed up because I made a joke that I shouldn't have made.

And I didn't kill you and I didn't claim I killed you and I didn't say I was going to kill you. I just meant to mock Sbyvl who's acting like his little theory is fact with my own little theory that isn't fact (or making sense) just like Sbyvl's IMO but that's irrelevant now I suppose.

Steephie, what kind of lipstick do you wear when you cross dress and go out cruising to find a dick to suck?

Remember when I apologized? I'm not taking that back, but surely you understand I'm not going to feel bad about it anymore now? Tell me you can blame me.

Also you are offending certain groups, just to be sure you know before you wake up one day saying you didn't know.

How do you pronounce sbyvl?

You sucking dick doesn't offend anyone steephie. It's a beautiful thing I'm sure. Tell us all about it.

What's wrong with wearing lipstick and sucking dick?

I'd love a direct answer to that question, by the way. Not a dodge.