Gold is limited government, which is more 'civilized' than the alternative by Chris Powell

"Civilized people don't buy gold," Berkshire Hathaway's Charles Munger told CNBC the other day. Echoing his partner, Warren Buffett, Munger said civilized people instead "invest in productive businesses," adding, "Gold is a great thing to sew into your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939." (See http://www.gata.org/node/11324.)

As indignant as such a comment may make certain gold investors, most are probably accustomed to such disparagement by the financial establishment, and greater indignation should be directed toward the mainstream financial news media for not seeking out any rebuttal, even if the rebuttal is obvious enough.

Perhaps first is that gold as money is the primary mechanism of enforcing limited government, and limited government is the first characteristic of civilized government. The distance between gold as money and unlimited fiat money is the distance between limited government and unlimited government, between democracy and totalitarianism.

The trend toward unlimited government lately has become overwhelming, from the stupid imperial wars being waged by the United States every few years to the comprehensive surveillance undertaken under the "Patriot Act" to the "financial repression" that even a recent member of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors complained about a few months ago (http://www.gata.org/node/10839). This prompts our friend Bill A. to chide Munger that the United States in 2012 is in danger of becoming like Vienna in 1939, insofar as anyone now is subject to the abuse heaped on Jews by the Nazis.

Maybe it's not quite that bad yet, but then the capacity for such abuse is the sort of thing gold as money aims to prevent. And of course gold was the first thing the Nazi occupation seized from both conquered governments and individuals, as gold was, as it remains, a protector of individual liberty as well as a power that competes with government's power.