Notes on ‘Gold Confiscation Possibility Warning’

By: Submissions

Mark Blair writes: in his essay ‘Gold Confiscation Possibility Warning,’ Jeff Thomas asks for opinions, a most refreshing change.

My thesis is, paradoxically, that Mr. Thomas could well be right about the INTENTION of the government to confiscate gold; but that the U.S. state lacks the power at this point to manage the process to completion. Here is my reasoning:

states need money (and oil and ammunition and other pivotal resources) to support the minions who do the dirty work. Libertarians who have been following the decay of the U.S. state apparatus in recent years are aware of just how much it has weakened (and for simplicity’s sake, we’ll lump all levels of government in together). One example that comes to mind is the issuing by the Oakland Police of a long list of offences that they lack the manpower to investigate.

The theoretical expression of this is:

as a state weakens, it acts in more and more violent and authoritarian (and clumsy and dishonest) ways to preserve its power. However, two things either hamper or prevent the EFFECTIVE implementation of its policies. The first is the quality and number of its minions (particularly quality). The second is the resistance of the populace, which resistance stems from the degree and nature of their political consciousness.

History has plentiful examples of this ‘divergence.’ I personally witnessed an example when I was a conflict journalist in Indonesia during the crisis of the late 90’s. As the government lost general day-to-day control, it announced (through the media, over which it had almost total control) its intention of implementing more and more bizarre programmes; but, as the months passed, the programmes could not be fulfilled because the clumsy and wrong-headed nature of the actions outraged the Indonesians. The government was behind the curve at all times. It lost control first at the periphery, then closer to home, and finally altogether. Suharto, the dictator, resigned.

Now, the citizens of the U.S. are – sadly, I agree with Mr. Thomas – shallow-thinking enough to believe all manner of nonsense (and so they are everywhere else in the west. We are culpable). By the same token, Americans do have a strong culture, when the chips are REALLY down, of involving themselves in politics.

This is what I think might well actually happen:

firstly, the Government would weigh the pros and cons: getting the gold would be good, but doing so would announce to the world just how out of control the situation really was.

Secondly, if the Government judged that it was worth the risk – and we can rely on them to misjudge the issues to about the same extent as they did in relation to, say, subduing the Indo-China nationalist movement – it would launch the confiscation programme.

Then, it would quickly become apparent that things weren’t gonna go according to plan. The ‘collection agencies’ would be overwhelmed; sheriffs would start hammering on people’s doors; the seriousness of the situation that called for the confiscation programme in the first place would begin to be much more apparent; people would dig their heels in; the cost-benefit ratio would drop sharply.

Heavens only knows what would follow.

Mark Blair is a libertarian political theorist. He is dirt poor by choice. His email is mark.blair@internetsat.com.au

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