Sound Money for Muggles By Ron Helwig
Many believers in sound money are fond of coins and other traditional
forms of precious metal bullion. They reminisce about a time when
people carried their silver dollars in a coin purse tied to their
belts. A one ounce coin feels substantial, solid, real. When they hold
one in their hand it makes them feel like they have something of
almost magical value.
But for most people, the heft of a coin just doesn’t impress them
much. They aren’t “true believers”, and so they don’t get that same
feeling of value from it. They’ll ask “what’s the point?”, not
understanding the history and importance of sound money. And for most,
they never will care. They just want to be able to buy stuff. And we
really can’t blame them; everyone has their own priorities, and we
shouldn’t think less of someone because they don’t get enthused about
our favorite issues.
We know from history that the market has overwhelmingly chosen paper
over coins. During the free banking era, well over a thousand banks
issued their own paper notes in over 30,000 varieties. This never
would have happened if people hadn’t desired the convenience of paper
over the fool-proof value of coins. To this day, the mint has a
difficult time getting people to use coins. And to top it off, one of
the reasons why credit and debit cards are doing so well is they
reduce the amount of coins you have to carry around.
These non-believers, these muggles, to use a more fun term, won’t
become activists for our cause. Yet, in order to succeed, we need
them on our side (or at least not actively working against us). This
is why it’s important to realize that instead of changing them to
accept traditional bullion, we need to change bullion to fit them.
That’s where Shire Silver comes in. Our model of using smaller amounts
of precious metal embedded in a laminated card increases the
convenience of bullion to paper-like levels. It also has other
built-in advantages like easy denomination detection for the blind.
The Shire Silver model brings precious metals to the masses. It is
sound money for muggles.
To continue the metaphor even further, we sound money advocates should
stop treating bullion as if its magic. Sound money is a market
product, just like a pencil or a loaf of bread. It doesn’t have any
special features or unique capabilities that render normal economic rules
moot, and it won’t miraculously cure bad economic policies nor will it
get produced at the psuedo-mystical “spot price”. It behooves us to
not act like precious metal Voldemorts, condemning non-believers for
not joining our crusade. After all, we want to trade with them and get
them using sound and honest money. The best way to do that is to make
sound money that works for them, and to treat them with respect as
fellow humans and business owners.
If you’d like to learn more or help, please visit
ShireSilver.com, or
any of the other outfits using the card model.
Ron Helwig is the owner of ShireSilver.Com