We constantly view or read, how ‘racism’ is responsible for all the violence, arson, prejudice, and riots occurring currently. Let’s get the ‘racism’ solved first, OK? Let’s look at what force has done for ‘racism.’ Remember school busing of about 50 years ago? Black kids were forced to go to white schools, and white kids were forced to go to black schools. Al this was done with hundreds of thousands of busses, hundreds of millions of gallons of fuel, and outrage by both blacks and whites. That force was a miserable failure. ‘Racism’ by choice, has hundreds of examples. ‘White flight,’ is one. ‘Choice,’ not force, is choosing where you wish to live, be it in a big city, rural, apartment, home, what weather you prefer, or neighborhood. The civil rights legislation of 1965 could never overcome choice, because there are choices in all sections of human life, from picking a mate, where to live, what to eat, wear, and when to do anything. Life has literally thousands of choices an individual may make, and all the laws in all the books will never be able to force anyone to do anything they don’t really want to do. “Birds of a feather, flock together,” is the truest of all the common sayings, and that solves the racism problem, at least in my mind. Black, Hispanic, white, German, Italian, Asian ALWAYS flock together, just like birds and people with different languages or even accents do the same, and all the riots and wholesale destruction in major cities should be ended by force. Get with it governors, mayors, and chiefs of police.
Economics is also fraught with force and choice. ‘Force,’ first of all, are “Legal Tender Laws,” which force us to use dollars to buy and sell things. We choose where to spend our forced use dollars, and one of the greatest economists in history, Ludwig von Mises, described economics (and also racism), in two words: “PEOPLE ACT.” (I had the privilege of selling his widow 10 Krugerrands about 50 years ago.) That covers most of human action if not all, regardless of laws, regulations, edicts, presidential Executive Orders, and even Supreme Court decisions. People act as they see fit, or as they are forced to act because of health, wealth, position, location, and occupation. My Uncle Charles G. Stott, long deceased, started out his career as a messenger boy at an eastern telephone company, and ended up as its president. When he retired, there was a “Charles G. Stott Day” at the telephone headquarters, and he received a rousing retirement party. Hundreds of people started at a large company as a lowly employee and worked their way up over decades. It is the choice of a person as to what they will do for a living, be it work for someone else or for them self. The choices of everything, are literally infinite, regardless of laws.
Money, is but a small part of economics and racism. Influence is a large part of both racism and economics, and parental influence and upbringing, might almost 100% be responsible for our actions, choices and opinions in life. It’s been said that the course of one’s life, has been mostly decided by age six, and I believe that. Two parent families, in a huge majority of situations, seem to raise happy, successful, law abiding offspring, far more often that single parent female families. Our grammar, vocabulary, table manners, and all human actions are usually set in place at that early age, and this adequately describes our occupation at Colorado Gold.
We, as early as we can think and act on our own, are living with dollars and cents, not gold and silver. I got an ‘allowance’ as most kids receive, not in gold and silver, but in dollars and cents. When I was kid, a quarter a week was adequate for my needs of penny candy or save up for a ride at an amusement park. We have all grown up with dollars and cents from childhood, and it is really tough to overcome habits and actions originating from our earliest thoughts and spoken words. In school, we were all taught the use of dollars and cents as in the decimal system. Dimes are a tenth part of a dollar, and a quarter is a fourth, etc. When we discuss, or as I write; pointing out the 100% historic decline to zero of all paper currencies or ‘monies,’ due to ‘inflation,’ it goes against everything we have practiced and made an integral part of our life, plans, and goals. It’s a difficult job to persuade or change one’s thinking against our practice since earliest childhood.
We at Colorado Gold, are not trying to tell you to purchase things with gold and silver! We are saying that in the future, it may be necessary to do so if the dollar fails, but you might say that the dollar has been around since America’s founding, and we can’t disagree, but prices seem to always go up. We do say that the price of everything in dollars, is a direct indication of the strength of that dollar, and that since the dollar’s strength is obviously weakening, (prices of everything going up), it might be the best not to save in dollars, or to store your water in a leaky bucket. We like to point out that the price of gold was $20.67 per ounce for maybe 150 years, and the price of everything else was stable in those times also, because politicians had not yet discovered they could buy votes by promising ever more from the public treasury, known as inflation, or unbalanced budgets, paying government bills with unbacked paper money, becoming similar to Monopoly money. I’d never seen a hundred dollar bill as a youth, now I carry a couple in my wallet.
That economic choice, to save in gold and silver, when the entire economic system of prices, both wholesale and retail, are in dollars, is difficult. When ticket prices, restaurant prices, car prices, fuel prices, and bank accounts are in dollars, we figure that if someone contacts us, it’s usually by logical thought and an intelligent decision made by simply looking at constantly increasing prices of everything, including gold and silver. Not advertising, as we do none. Our success is by reputation and word of mouth. It isn’t too difficult to realize that the U.S. budget will never be balanced, government will always spend more than it takes in, inflation will be with us as long as we exist, and prices of everything will always increase. (My dad bought e new Plymouth in 1940 for $650). An additional reason may be that saving in dollars is a direct loss, since our government says we have 2% inflation, but a savings account pays but half percent interest. And oh yes! You can leave your silver and gold to your kids with no inheritance taxes if you’re ancient like me! don@coloradogold.com.
P.S. If you’re a classical music fan, as am I, I recently found a DVD of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, probably at least 40 years ago, since he died in 1990. It is the ultimate view of a genius conducting one of the world’s great orchestras, NY Philharmonic. E-mail me and I’ll send it to you.
-Don Stott
don@coloradogold.com