Well, I've had about enough. Bernard von NotHaus is a friend of mine. He has been a guest in my home. He and I have broken bread together. I believe he is a decent and honorable man. And, quite frankly, I am tired of you accusing him and his business associates of things they are not doing.

So the liberty dollar isn't a scam in that they aren't scamming their own direct customers,

Correct.

but they are telling their customers to scam other people into thinking that a '20' liberty dollar is actually worth usd 20, when it is really only worth usd 12.

No, they are not. You insist on applying bad motives to people you evidently have not met, and you insist on assigning a bad character to the behavior of people you have not observed in this behavior. It seems to me you should take a step back and consider what is involved in an exchange of value.

When someone accepts an ounce of silver in tender of payment, it does not matter to you if that ounce of silver was minted by the USA Mint and carries a face value of One Dollar, does it? Yet, the Mint places that face value on the one ounce silver pieces it mints deliberately, and with malice, knowing that in so doing they are preventing most people from being able to spend those silver ounces in most places for anything more than a dollar. In other words, the Mint is deliberately deceiving people into accepting a negligent face value which is not even a tenth of the true value of the ounce of silver.

Yet, you won't accuse the Mint of trying to scam other people, would you? Perhaps you would. A tender of payment is not a coerced payment. Nobody is forcing anyone to take a Liberty silver piece in payment.

The price of silver is published. So, no one is denying anyone the knowledge of what an ounce of silver is worth. The silver pieces are not fraudulent in saying that they are other than the exact weight they actually are - and I've measured a whole bunch of them. Liberty silver pieces are an ounce troy in weight, exactly. And they are of the correct size to be of the density of very pure silver, as they are labeled. Get one, and a micrometer, and see for yourself.

You want to insist that people cannot accept an ounce of silver for $20 worth of goods without being defrauded. But, it is not up to you to determine what is accepted in trade by other people.

You are welcome to refuse an ounce of silver with a $20 face value, and accept an ounce of silver with a $1 face value (or a $10 face value?) or accept a piece of paper with no silver in it which has a picture of Andrew Jackson and a $20 face value. But it is not up to you to determine what I, or John Doe, or Jane Roe accept.

A buyer and a seller make a market. That is the rule. If the buyer offers a silver Liberty in tender and the seller accepts it, then that is an exchange. Value for value. And it is wrong of you to interfere, or call either party names. I assume you call both parties names - the buyer is a scammer and the seller is a fool, in your opinion, yes?

The rule is not "a buyer and a seller and Sameer's good opinion make a market." And it shall never be the rule, except where you are buyer or seller. You have no authority to impose your opinion on others, and even if you had the power to impose your opinion, it would still be an imposition.

worth usd 13 at current silver prices.) And since as I understand if, if you're a "member" you can buy the '20' liberty dollar for a price close to spot.

At a discount to face, but at a considerable premium to spot.

So you're basically telling your customers to pass off a token that they only paid 13 usd for as something worth 20 usd.

No. Nobody pays $13 for Liberty silver pieces today. The last I checked, the prices available were much closer to $18. Be that as it may, no one is being told to "pass off" anything as being worth $20. People are free to accept or reject Federal Reserve notes, aren't they? And those have no intrinsic value - no silver at all.

People are free to accept or reject the Liberty silver pieces. And they have $13 of silver value, plus the added value of being an ounce rather than the large number of ounces required to gain the spot price on the world markets. Plus they have some numismatic rarity compared to the USA silver eagle one ounce coins. Plus they have a useful face value.

Of course they're not worth 20 usd, because no one in their right mind would trade 20 usd for a '20' liberty dollar.

How do you know? Do you know everyone? And whose sanity is in question, when people trade US$20 of goods and services for paper tokens all the time, which have no silver value to them?

Of course "worth" is subjective. US dollars have no "intrinsic" value but they are worth something because you can trade them for goods and services.

And so are silver eagle coins minted by the USA Mint, though they are clearly worth more than their one dollar face value. And, apparently, in my direct experience, so are silver Liberty pieces. A thing is worth whatever it brings in exchange.

What you seem to be saying is that no one is ever allowed to make a profit. Do you think that the person who sells me five pounds of steak at $4 per pound actually paid $20 for what he sells to me at that price? No, certainly not. He paid perhaps $12 for five pounds of steak, or less if he's closer to the source, or buys in greater quantity. He might have added a $1 of labor to the steak by trimming it into some popular shape or cut.

If the seller of beef steak can sell what he buys for $13 at a price of $20, then why cannot the seller of silver pieces do so? Or is profit necessarily a scam?

I guess the liberty dollar people think, "well if we can convince enough people that a '20' liberty dollar is worth usd 20, then it will be worth usd 20". Which is true.

There's another way that a silver Liberty may become worth more than US$20. If the Fed continues to do what it has done for the last 90+ years, then the US dollar is going to continue to decline in value. Do you remember when a dollar was worth 371.25 grains of silver? I do. I still have a silver dime that my Great Aunt Dori gave me which was minted back before Lyndon Johnson declared that silver was "too valuable" to be used for money.

How did we get from silver valued on the world market at about $1.29 per ounce in 1963 to a world market price of $13? We got there because of the inflationary policies of

the Federal Reserve which has, on average, in that time, reduced the purchasing power of the dollar by around 90%.

At that point you'll be sort of like the fed, in that your currency is worth more than its intrinsic value.

If a currency has a face value less than its intrinsic value, what happens? It does not circulate.

A currency which has a face value greater than its intrinsic value remains in circulation. That's Gresham's Law.

Now, it is sort of interesting that the various mints of the various nationalist governments of the world mint gold and silver coins, still. They evidently do so because there is a demand for such things. They do so because they can buy low and sell high. They do so because they wish to fill the market with their products, against the interests of those with whom they compete unfairly - unfairly because they have taxpayers to take up the slack whenever they FUBAR things.

But it is also interesting that all those nationalist government mints put face values on their coins that are below the value of precious metal in the coins. In the case of the USA, the penny and nickel in ordinary circulation have face values less than the value of the metals - so the USA gov't has made an extraordinary rule forbidding Americans to export those coins nor melt them down for metal.

Why do those coins have absurdly low face values? To prevent them from going into circulation to compete with the national paper money.

And why does the Liberty dollar have a sensible face value? So that it can go into circulation to compete with the national paper money.

(And you'll be rich rich rich, because you'll be making these tokens that you can sell for 20 usd at a cost of just 13 usd!

Nonsense. You have no idea. If one buys silver for $12 and takes that silver to a mint, such as the Sunshine Mint in Idaho, do you think they'll provide you with silver pieces for $1 in minting costs? They won't, I can assure you. Once you buy the silver, now $13, and pay a mint to mint it, you also have to pay transportation costs to distribute these.

It doesn't matter if you have a political opinion that the usd is worthless, because all that usd you're pulling in will still buy you an javelin.)

I don't believe the political opinion being expressed is that the USD is worthless, but that it becomes worth less and less over time owing to the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve.

But until then, you're scamming people.

No, they aren't. Those who offer silver pieces as tender in payment are offering a valid tender in exchange. Nobody is required to accept that tender. Anyone is able to find out the world market price of a five thousand ounce contract for silver. So, there is no way to scam people in this matter. The price of silver on the world market is freely available.

Anyone who accepts silver Liberty pieces in exchange is voluntarily accepting the benefit of having a $20 silver piece, which contains an ounce of very pure silver. If they think, as I do, that owning some silver may be a hedge against further inflation, or if they think, "my what a pretty coin," who are you to deny them the choice?

And who are you to accuse anyone who offers that choice as a tender in payment of scamming anyone?

And, even then, if you think the fed is a scam (which I don't),

I'm curious why you think it must be a scam to offer an ounce of silver with a $20 face value, but it is not a scam to offer a flimsy bit of paper with a $20 face value, as a tender in payment.

Is it because there are many more people accepting the paper fiat money every day than there are who accept the silver money? If that is so, then the majority would be the only standard of truth, and the world "must have been" quite flat.