George Parker- con men. The most successful con men of US.

I love the way you have connected this kind of frauds to the availability of paper money. I do not have the book "Philosophy: Who needs it", but I read a speech made by Ayn Rand of the same title above. Do you think that paper money should be benchmarked with gold even today?

Oh yes! most certainly it should be. That was the basis on which people agreed to honour the money minted by the government as a means of exchange. People today do not understand the role of money. They think it a means by which one can buy one thing or the other. They do not understand that money was supposed to be a easily storable form of their effort and time which they can use in the future( as men are capable of producing a wide range of goods and services but cannot always store them or are not always required by a person from whom they might want something, this was precisely the problemwith barter system). It becomes clear now money was introduced to do away with the shortcomings of the barter system, it is crystal clear that only men who produced something could take part in barter system, but with the introduction paper money many people without anything to sell can aquire money, through stealing or through altruim or government welfare, government welfare being the most rampant cause. When money is added in an economy without equivalent addition of some goods, the value of money goes down (read inflation).

I am skeptical about benchmarking against gold alone. Gold is a commodity which cannot be produced beyond what is present on earth. While as productivity by various means is an ongoing process. May be not today, but some where down the line bench marking of paper money to gold may not be accurate. I do not have any easy solutions, but my superficial reasoning says that all human effort may out strip the amount of gold on earth.