Four years ago, Freegoldtube made a video titled "What is Freegold?" It evolved out of a series of events that began with the stunning collapse in the price of gold, from $1,600 down to $1,380 in first half of April, 2013. That collapse caused Jim Sinclair to email me asking about Freegold, which caused him to then make some confusing posts on his own blog about Freegold, which caused Ein Anderer to suggest that we were in "urgent need" of a short and simple explanation of Freegold.
He persisted, which cause me to respond two days later thusly:
Hello ea,
What you request is, unfortunately, impossible. It is not possible to explain this quickly and simply. The best that you can hope to do is to ignite the interest in someone so that they will expend the same effort that you have expended. You are kind of new, but in time you will see that I am right. Until then, anyone and everyone is free to do what ANOTHER, FOA and I have apparently failed to do after years of effort. ;D
Sincerely,
FOFOA
Apparently I'd thrown down the gauntlet with that response, because several people immediately began taking up the challenge. Freegoldtube made the challenge official at the original Speakeasy, posting the question here simultaneously. In the end, 36 people contributed their own brief definitions of Freegold to the video. They ranged from a single line, to several paragraphs. I'm not sure if anyone totally nailed it, but taken as a whole, the video is very good!
Solitary Monk is the Speakeasy member who's been on the Gold Trail the longest, having read A/FOA on the USAGOLD website from around the time they first began posting there. He's also the source of AFTER (THOUGHTS!), for those who don't remember.
Anyway, I recently asked him a series of questions, culminating with this one: What is Freegold? Here was his answer:
Freegold is when ALL physical gold is 1) FREE from official money systems, 2) owned FREE of all other claims, and 3) is FREEly traded.
I believe that all three conditions are necessary, and together they are sufficient.
If all three of the above conditions are met, then: There would be no full or partially gold-backed currencies, and no ability to exchange currency at the central bank for gold at a fixed exchange rate. There would be no paper gold or other gold derivatives. Gold would not be loaned. Gold would be easily traded at full value. Currency (official money) would be used as the medium of exchange and for credit. Gold would function as the best store of value. The MOE and SOV would be separate. A mechanism to balance international trade would arise naturally.
I’m led to the above brief description from just a few of Another/FOA’s posts. Their first use of the term “Freegold” was as the heading of a post from Trailguide which included this:
2/14/2000; 18:20:51
In our modern world we must remove gold from the official money system, place it in a free market and people will use it as wealth money, not borrowing money. Then the fiat can come and go as the wind!
And here are two more relevant quotes:
Sat Mar 07 1998 13:25
gold, while allowed to be "freely convertible" into any currency, is not allowed to trade "freely". Its price is managed.
5/3/98
Gold is valued by the number of outstanding claims against it. […] The Euro group is going to force those claims into real bids instead of just claims!
At the time Another/FOA wrote, and still today, gold is effectively free from official money systems except for the management of its price. And it is traded freely, except for the management of its price. And the way the price is managed is by creating multiple claims on the same ounce of gold which forces the price down.
So, all that remains is for all but one of the claims on each ounce of gold to vaporize.
Sun Nov 23 1997 09:18
"When a thousand hungry lions fight over one scrap of food, small dogs should hide with whats in their belly".
In the “What is Freegold?” video, Polly Metallic (at 18:22) and Nickelsaver (at 19:09), both stated, in their own words and at slightly greater length, the same three conditions I listed above (and they also listed some of the consequences). They got there first, so they both deserve gold medals.
-Solitary Monk
Sincerely,
FOFOA
