Debriefed #2 – RJPadavona

Props to RJ Padavona who graciously agreed to be my guinea pig and help me work out some of the kinks in the interview process. He did so at the cost of his own interview perhaps coming across as a little more staged and a little less natural than the next two, including Matrix Sentry which I recorded just last night.

But RJ is so freaking funny that I was confident not even my awkward first steps could mess up his interview. And I was right.

To kick it off, I'd like to draw your attention to a comment RJ left on the blog back in March under the Savings & Capital Theory Open Forum. Here's the link to the comment and here's the full comment with context. RJ was replying to Woland:

Woland said...

FOFOA; The cartoon of "Schiff the elder" island was both entertaining
and informative, however, on said island, the store of value and the
medium of exchange appear to be one and the same. Not the best of
arrangements long term, no?

March 14, 2012 8:10 AM

RJPadavona said...

Hello Woland,

Ironically, Irwin Schiff is now living in the hard money utopia he once wrote about in his comic book.

As you may already know, Irwin was a very outspoken leader of an anti-income tax movement in the US. He is now serving 13 years in federal prison for tax evasion.

In prison, there is always a big black market economy going on and the MoE and SoV are the same unit: The postage stamp.

In the US, we now have what is called the Forever Stamp. No matter at what point in time you buy this stamp, it can always be used to ship a piece of first class mail. In other words, the purchasing power of the Forever Stamp remains the same, regardless of the increase in the official price of postage. It functions a lot like gold.

So Irwin Schiff finally got his wish: A return to hard money.

IMO, this says a lot about a hard money standard: It functions great in a system where you are surrounded by criminals and there is no trust. So, using that logic, I can see why hard money advocates want to return to a gold standard: Because there is no trust in the current $IMFS.

In prison, humans revert back to their most primitive state as a means of survival. Is this the mindset we want to use when developing our new monetary system? I hope not!

I guess this is what FOFOA means when he says going back to an old-style gold standard would be an example of the monetary system devolving instead of evolving.

The gold standard of old gives me the blues:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX009sWzRQg&feature=related

RJP

March 14, 2012 10:14 AM

And now, without further ado, here's RJP:

Coming up next… Aquilus!

Sincerely,
FOFOA