Sound Money for Canada & Canadian Liberty Fest

I'm happy to announce that I am one of the organizers (not affiliated with my party) of the Canadian Liberty Fest, which promises to be one of the largest gatherings of libertarians and people interested in Austrian Economics in Canada. I'm hoping it will be an annual event, so here is your chance to be at the very first one. I will post a link as soon as we have one.
We already have some excellent speakers lined up, Stefan Molyneux among them, and there will be display areas, books for sale etc. from several liberty-minded groups, all for a very low price for the day - lunch included.

 
It will be centrally located in the heart of Toronto and attendance will be limited. Tickets will be on sale probably in early June. Stay tuned.

Thoughts on School Choice

Are you worshipping the wrong god? HAH2012!

If you are reading this, you should be quietly saluting the people on this list, from Ampere to Watt.

They were some of the people that changed the world.

They are some of the people that took humanity from the darkness, from poverty, from scarcity, from the cold, and slowly through their efforts, their discoveries and achievements, brought humanity into comfort, convenience, and global communication. So that you can now sit in front of your computer or tablet device and read this.

Those people made affluence accessible, so that even the poorest people in Canada have luxuries that royalty could not have imagined 100 years ago.

Yes, the planet is where we live, but it does not give us anything that we do not first take from it for ourselves.

There is no need to thank the planet. The god Gaia will kill you or support you, but that is entirely up to you, and Gaia doesn't care.

Thats right, we must actively build our homes, stock them with food, keep ourselves warm and dry, because the alternative is a short brutish existence. As the writer of this article suggests, nature is there to be visited, not worshipped.

Earth Hour is the celebration of ignorance, poverty, scarcity, pestilence, and it's distressingly political. Worse yet, it's the wrong kind of politics, read this.

Leave your lights on, and go see a movie tonight, because you can. HAH2012

The penny dropped.....

Or should I say the penny was dropped in the 2012 Canadian Federal Budget, tabled March 29, 2012, the first by a majority Conservative government. The penny will be phased out this fall.

The idiomatic phrase "the penny dropped," literally means "I finally understand."

In this case, the Conservative government along with a slew of businesses that were lobbying them, finally understood that our money has devalued to such a great degree, that the penny was not only worthless as a currency, it cost more to make than it was worth.

Copper prices, like all commodities have experienced a boom, and copper is such a useful and important metal, governments have long ceased using it as coinage. The Canadian Mint last made pure copper pennies in 1996, a long time hold out.

In the US that happened in 1943, but they made bronze pennies up until 1982.

Canadian pennies are now made of copper plated steel with a bit of nickel, and US pennies are copper plated zinc.

The graph seen here, illustrates what has happened to the value of the Canadian fiat dollar over a very short time, and therefore the penny, all of it in just part of my lifetime (graphs for US dollars are very similar).

A fiat dollar, like any fiat currency, is only worth something because a government regulation says it is.

Paper currency once upon at time, represented or was "backed by" some amount of a real metal, like gold or silver. The metals were too heavy to carry around, hence paper.

I can recall that the penny once had value. It took 3 pennies to buy a daily newspaper when I was a child in Toronto. Penny candy, was just that, candy that cost a penny or two.

Today, most people would not even stoop to pick up a lost penny on the ground. Most view pennies as an annoyance. What happened? Well, it's a long and complicated story, here is where you can start if you really want to find out.

Not only is this an end for an historic coin in Canada, but a large hole is left in Canadian English, though it may take years to phase out. My young grandson will grow-up and he will be mystified by phrases like:

Penny Pincher, penny wise and pound foolish, pretty penny, penny for your thoughts, a penny saved is a penny earned, without two pennies to rub together, penny ante poker, and on and on. Here is an interesting article. It's a sad day.