History of Gold Confiscation

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

Nice graphic.

Someone needs to show this to Schiff and/or Casey.

A well-diversified portfolio should contain assets both physical and wholly ethereal.

[WiW]

What about Nixon's closing of the gold window?

[Qoheleth]

What about Nixon's closing of the gold window?

Not really "confiscation". Promissory notes were made invalid, but it didn't change anything for people who actually held physical gold.

[allthingsluxury]

There is also a very strong history of people just not turning in their gold.

[Mike Christ]

Great visual   Seeing "free world" leaders beside the likes of Hitler would get anyone to start thinking critically of their own gov.  It's all about control.

At the same time, there could also be a history of BTC confiscation...which will be several times harder, as long as the web stays private and free.  If not, it'll be easy, and that's the end of free will.

[Melbustus]

Cool....nice graphic.

But it's missing the key fact that after forcibly confiscating people's gold at $20/oz in 1933, Roosevelt revalued gold to $35/oz in January 1934! What a deal....pay $20/oz, then declare it worth $35/oz months later!

[WiW]

...would get anyone to start thinking critically of their own gov...

lol, until today I have personally never found anyone beside myself to think critically of their own government. The government could start claiming rights to kill people with drones on domestic soil, f**k the s**t up in the economy for years, destroy all personal interest in the name of national interest and people will queue in line to vote again every time.

People need rulers, people want others to tell them what to do. It comforts them. Nothing can change that. People now are extremely skeptical of bitcoin, but you'll see that if/when it gains traction people will simply fall in line - not because they read the source code, not because they understand the benefits, and not even because they understand bitcoin at all. It's because that's what everyone around them is handing them, just like they took fiat. You can change the design of the system, but the system remains.

[poly]

Great visual   Seeing "free world" leaders beside the likes of Hitler would get anyone to start thinking critically of their own gov.  It's all about control.

At the same time, there could also be a history of BTC confiscation...which will be several times harder, as long as the web stays private and free.  If not, it'll be easy, and that's the end of free will.

It's actually outright impossible. I may have any number of bitcoins, and I just need a brainwallet to access it.

[BitcoinAshley]

Some great non-monetary assets to invest in:

-Fruit trees (Can provide massive yield for hundreds of years with little input)
-Seeds, with preference to plants that yield food with high caloric value. You can feed a family on potatoes but not on cucumbers.   
-A community/extended family who would care for you even if your entire fancy diverse portfolio were to completely tank and you were left pennyless.

Gold is great until there are government thugs out on the streets looking to rough up anyone who tries to make purchases with gold after the USD collapses.

BTC is great until there are region-wide power and internet blockages/outages and accessing your bitcoins becomes a once-a-month opportunity rather than once-a-day.

So you should always have something you can use.

[WiW]

Great visual   Seeing "free world" leaders beside the likes of Hitler would get anyone to start thinking critically of their own gov.  It's all about control.

At the same time, there could also be a history of BTC confiscation...which will be several times harder, as long as the web stays private and free.  If not, it'll be easy, and that's the end of free will.

It's actually outright impossible. I may have any number of bitcoins, and I just need a brainwallet to access it.

No security is perfect security. I once had TrueCrypt encrypt my entire laptop's hard drive including OS and everything with a strong password that would take billions upon billions of years to brute force, but I would always say: if you want to get in to my laptop, all you need to do is take me to a dark scary room with a bunch of unidentified sharp tools and I'd blurt it out right after I pissed my pants

Worst case you just need to take some fingers away from me...

[Anon136]

Great visual   Seeing "free world" leaders beside the likes of Hitler would get anyone to start thinking critically of their own gov.  It's all about control.

At the same time, there could also be a history of BTC confiscation...which will be several times harder, as long as the web stays private and free.  If not, it'll be easy, and that's the end of free will.

It's actually outright impossible. I may have any number of bitcoins, and I just need a brainwallet to access it.

No security is perfect security. I once had TrueCrypt encrypt my entire laptop's hard drive including OS and everything with a strong password that would take billions upon billions of years to brute force, but I would always say: if you want to get in to my laptop, all you need to do is take me to a dark scary room with a bunch of unidentified sharp tools and I'd blurt it out right after I pissed my pants

Worst case you just need to take some fingers away from me...

truecrypt has an option to enter a dummy password that will unlock a fake partition for exactly the sort of situation you just described. The same basic principal could be applied to bitcoin im sure.

[Mike Christ]

...would get anyone to start thinking critically of their own gov...

lol, until today I have personally never found anyone beside myself to think critically of their own government. The government could start claiming rights to kill people with drones on domestic soil, f**k the s**t up in the economy for years, destroy all personal interest in the name of national interest and people will queue in line to vote again every time.

People need rulers, people want others to tell them what to do. It comforts them. Nothing can change that. People now are extremely skeptical of bitcoin, but you'll see that if/when it gains traction people will simply fall in line - not because they read the source code, not because they understand the benefits, and not even because they understand bitcoin at all. It's because that's what everyone around them is handing them, just like they took fiat. You can change the design of the system, but the system remains.

I beg to differ about needing rulers.  I believe it is because children are raised with the notion that they absolutely need rulers to survive that keep them stupid, and are trained to laugh at anyone who thinks otherwise--you'll still find them even here, where people call someone else a conspiracy theorist for implying the government does not have society's best interests in mind.  I believe if schools trained people to think, as opposed to training them to shut-down and simply listen, it could be entirely possible to live within a society which denies their rulers and denies anyone who attempts to rule them.  Just look at us, after all; many of us are the ones who slipped through the cracks and realized where we sit in the world, despite what school did.  So if it's possible for you and I, it could be possible to be wide spread.

However, in our life time, I agree; people need rulers, and that's not going to change for our generation, or the next generation, but the generation after that might see the day!

[Anon136]

...would get anyone to start thinking critically of their own gov...

lol, until today I have personally never found anyone beside myself to think critically of their own government. The government could start claiming rights to kill people with drones on domestic soil, f**k the s**t up in the economy for years, destroy all personal interest in the name of national interest and people will queue in line to vote again every time.

People need rulers, people want others to tell them what to do. It comforts them. Nothing can change that. People now are extremely skeptical of bitcoin, but you'll see that if/when it gains traction people will simply fall in line - not because they read the source code, not because they understand the benefits, and not even because they understand bitcoin at all. It's because that's what everyone around them is handing them, just like they took fiat. You can change the design of the system, but the system remains.

I beg to differ about needing rulers.  I believe it is because children are raised with the notion that they absolutely need rulers to survive that keep them stupid, and are trained to laugh at anyone who thinks otherwise--you'll still find them even here, where people call someone else a conspiracy theorist for implying the government does not have society's best interests in mind.  I believe if schools trained people to think, as opposed to training them to shut-down and simply listen, it could be entirely possible to live within a society which denies their rulers and denies anyone who attempts to rule them.  Just look at us, after all; many of us are the ones who slipped through the cracks and realized where we sit in the world, despite what school did.  So if it's possible for you and I, it could be possible to be wide spread.

However, in our life time, I agree; people need rulers, and that's not going to change for our generation, or the next generation, but the generation after that might see the day!

There is no need for rulers even now, these sorts of people that we are talking about are just as happy to be lead as they are to be ruled.

[Richy_T]

Why is there a picture of Thatcher. She was neither in power in '66 nor part of the Labor government *ever*.

[Richy_T]

I beg to differ about needing rulers.  I believe it is because children are raised with the notion that they absolutely need rulers to survive that keep them stupid, and are trained to laugh at anyone who thinks otherwise--you'll still find them even here, where people call someone else a conspiracy theorist for implying the government does not have society's best interests in mind.  I believe if schools trained people to think, as opposed to training them to shut-down and simply listen, it could be entirely possible to live within a society which denies their rulers and denies anyone who attempts to rule them.  Just look at us, after all; many of us are the ones who slipped through the cracks and realized where we sit in the world, despite what school did.  So if it's possible for you and I, it could be possible to be wide spread.

However, in our life time, I agree; people need rulers, and that's not going to change for our generation, or the next generation, but the generation after that might see the day!

It's pretty easy. As children, people need people to look after them and to provide authority in their lives. All you need to do is to infantilize them, stop them progressing to adulthood and you're most of the way there. Look for factors in society which mean a smooth progression from adult ownership to state ownership and that averts the events that bring about self ownership and there are your mechanisms.

[TimJBenham]

Great visual   Seeing "free world" leaders beside the likes of Hitler would get anyone to start thinking critically of their own gov. 

It might be more "great" if the leaders pictured were relevant. Thatcher and Lynch didn't confiscate gold: they were actually politicians who abolished restrictions on holding gold!

[ErisDiscordia]

I beg to differ about needing rulers.  I believe it is because children are raised with the notion that they absolutely need rulers to survive that keep them stupid, and are trained to laugh at anyone who thinks otherwise--you'll still find them even here, where people call someone else a conspiracy theorist for implying the government does not have society's best interests in mind.  I believe if schools trained people to think, as opposed to training them to shut-down and simply listen, it could be entirely possible to live within a society which denies their rulers and denies anyone who attempts to rule them.  Just look at us, after all; many of us are the ones who slipped through the cracks and realized where we sit in the world, despite what school did.  So if it's possible for you and I, it could be possible to be wide spread.

However, in our life time, I agree; people need rulers, and that's not going to change for our generation, or the next generation, but the generation after that might see the day!

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Too often have I heard the argument that "people need rulers", because they are basically "too stupid to think for themselves" etc. Notice how people usually single themselves out from this imaginary group of "dumb masses too stupid for individual thought", just sighing that "yes it would be nice if we could do without government, but just look at all the masses of stupid people unable to take responsibility themselves!". This is counterproductive imo. First of all it makes artificial divisions between people (divide and conquer anyone?) and totally ignores the notion that there is no such thing as "fixed human nature". It's the old nature vs. nurture debate and in things social and cultural I lean heavily towards the nurture-side of the debate. As mentioned by the quoted post: put children in state-sponsored schools, tell them their time is not their own and they are to bow to authority without question, hold this up as a cultural standard, ostracize and ridicule critics (you conspiracy theorist!) and what you get are masses of people unable/unwilling to think for themselves. Change the equation, the environment where people live and ta-daa different sorts of people. The question is how do we get from here to there?

[TimJBenham]

I believe if schools trained people to think, as opposed to training them to shut-down and simply listen,

Ironically that echoes the current propaganda of supporters of state education in my country. In response to the criticism that many of their graduates don't seem to know much they say that they have taught their students to think critically rather than simply forcing them to learn facts.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Too often have I heard the argument that "people need rulers", because they are basically "too stupid to think for themselves" etc. Notice how people usually single themselves out from this imaginary group of "dumb masses too stupid for individual thought", just sighing that "yes it would be nice if we could do without government, but just look at all the masses of stupid people unable to take responsibility themselves!". This is counterproductive imo. First of all it makes artificial divisions between people (divide and conquer anyone?) and totally ignores the notion that there is no such thing as "fixed human nature".

That totally ignores the existence of natural differences between people. People vary considerably in things like intelligence and conformism that are relevant to how much they need or want "guidance" in running their lives.

As mentioned by the quoted post: put children in state-sponsored schools, tell them their time is not their own and they are to bow to authority without question, hold this up as a cultural standard, ostracize and ridicule critics (you conspiracy theorist!) and what you get are masses of people unable/unwilling to think for themselves.

Sounds convincing until you consider that rulers (i.e. the State) have been around for at least 8,000 years whereas compulsory mass education is less than 200 years old.

[ErisDiscordia]

That totally ignores the existence of natural differences between people. People vary considerably in things like intelligence and conformism that are relevant to how much they need or want "guidance" in running their lives.

I didn't mean to totally ignore those natural differences. They're there, you're right. The point I was trying to make is that people usually (in my view) attribute too much weight to those natural differences, whereas I am quite convinced, that culture and environment are much stronger factors. Also while lot of things like conformism, and rational intelligence may be imprinted by random chance early in life, there's considerable evidence that you can reprogram those imprints later on. I just feel that saying "tons of people are stupid by default and there's nothing to be done about it" is not a very beneficial stance to take.

Sounds convincing until you consider that rulers (i.e. the State) have been around for at least 8,000 years whereas compulsory mass education is less than 200 years old.

thanks for bringing this up, it shows me I have to dig deeper with this. This may not be just about compulsory schooling, but about institutions which create Reality Tunnels in general and then force them on the general population by means of coercion, propaganda, guilt etc. Before public schools and media took over this function, I imagine it was primarily the domain of organized religion.

I think we've derailed the topic enough, though

my general point is this: trust people! You're one of them after all.

[bubblesort]

Don't forget the Liberty Dollar in the US.