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Maybe I'm crazy but isn't this obviously unconstitutional? Arizona v. United States was still binding precedent last I checked. States can't just seize the authority to do federal immigration policy for themselves. I think Proposition 3 is probably fine. Proposition 4 is probably fine as applied to colleges but I think is just a repeat of Plyler v. Doe (which was also Texas) as applied to K-12 schools. Proposition 5 also seems fine.
I do not understand the obsession with using precious metals as currency. Why is it better for the value of your currency to be at the whims of a commodity market as compared to managed by a central bank? Are the value of these coins (presumably) going to be pegged to some USD price? Free floating exchange rate? Why would anyone use these as opposed to USD?
Seems like this has obvious equal protection problems? My understanding is the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection applies to citizens and non-citizens alike, as long as they're in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. Seems like classic national origin discrimination that would be an equal protection violation.
Options are always nice. Central banks don't always do a great job managing their currencies and, while metallic standards aren't perfect, they're a workable alternative when your central bankers are having a live one.
Are you talking about state voluntary currencies specifically or about the gold standard in general?
I'll try to steelman a gold standard.
Most currencies collapse. Governments (either elected or autocratic) tend to spend too much money which requires money printing. The dollar has declined by 98% vs gold since the U.S. went off the gold standard in 1971. This is a success story. Within the last 100 years, most other currencies have succumbed to hyperinflation and collapse.
The widely touted boom and bust cycles of the 19th century led to higher growth. Keynesian economics has mostly solved the business cycle post WWII. Recessions have been few, far between, and extremely mild. But the elimination of the business cycle has stalled capitalism's engine of creative destruction. Governments and unprofitable companies lock up a greater share of capital. They need to be rooted out by bankruptcy and replaced. Low interest rates and money printing allow the can to be kicked down the road forever, allowing inefficient uses of capital to persist. The bust cycles caused by hard money limits are a good thing. Growth was much higher before 1971.
For hundreds of years in the Common Law system, the elected representatives of the people have controlled the purse strings. Unelected bureaucrats in the Federal Reserve printing money to buy trillions in mortgages or government debt is tyranny.
A gold standard makes it difficult for the government to spend more money that it can collect. It also allows the government to go bankrupt which can prevent the cancerous growth of bureaucracy.
Let me know if you'd like my case AGAINST precious metals as currency!
I would be very interested to read that case. My understanding was that you get a problem where the amount of precious metals stays constant while your economy grows, leading to either re-evaluation of all currency or a lack of money. More rarely the opposite can happen, as in the case wheee the Spanish discovered a silver mine and suddenly had a mass inflation of their silver currency.
If the economy grows but the supply of precious metal doesn't grow at the same rate, the result is monetary deflation, which is generally undesirable for currency for a variety of reasons having mostly to do with discouraging investment.
That's price deflation. Monetary deflation is an actual contraction of the money supply. A lot of arguments against deflationary currencies rely on conflating the two.
Price deflation is still pretty bad because it shifts gains towards capital and away from workers. Actual contraction of the money supply is even worse, partly because it necessarily causes price deflation.
While economists seem pretty convinced that modest inflation is preferable to modest deflation, I'm personally unconvinced that for modest, predictable rates (which plausibly excludes Gold or Bitcoin) it matters much either direction. There are examples of specific commodities deflating (specifically, "for the same price in dollars next year I can get more/better product": computers, flat-panel TVs, cell phones, even cars) and none of the promised miserly spending habits have really appeared that I can tell. Apple didn't become a trillion dollar company because everyone is patiently waiting to get a better iPhone next year rather than this year.
Modest deflation means that you can earn a low-risk positive real return by hodling currency. Hodled currency doesn't circulate, reducing the effective money supply and causing further deflation, making it even more attractive to hodl. This makes the whole system unstable.
Wealth accumulation by hodling fixed-supply currency makes workers and entrepreneurs poorer. (It makes other hodlers richer, which is why Bitcoin culture is the way it is). Wealth accumulation by investing in new productive assets makes the entrepreneurs whose business you invest in and the workers they employ richer.
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