Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company
FRIDAY REPORT OF 11/25/05
The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy
“OUR MONEY MADNESS”
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Our title and quotes below are from http://www.mises.org/story/1971:
“…Here we discover that money is international. It matters not what nation-state or private party mints it. Money can come in all shapes and sizes. It has enduring value for hundreds of years. It can be put in a vault and found by anyone in the future and retains its value. Its merit as money is not dependent on the existence or persistence of any single government.
“The regimes that minted the coins may be long forgotten but the money they made stays as a permanent part of the economic landscape until it is melted. What this suggests is independence for the people who have, hold, and use the money. They are not roped into any regime as such. They go about their economic affairs as independent people. Their money, which cannot be destroyed by the actions of a central government or a central bank, testifies to their status as free people.
“And what is it made of? Gold, silver, or any precious metal, something or anything that will cause a back to ache and the fingers to hurt from sorting them out. Money is heavy, robust, durable, divisible, enduring. It is treasure. It [is] worth hiding when one is in trouble and worth hunting for if one stumbles upon a map to guide you there. As to when it was minted and by whom, it doesn’t matter. Money lasts. Money is true. It transcends the generations. It transcends the nation. It transcends the state.
“…I do think there is a point to buying children coins for presents. Just to hold an older coin of gold and silver imparts a lesson of sorts. It illustrates the reality of a history that is different from our present. I’ve never seen a child disregard a nice gold or silver coin. They keep it in a safe box, show it to their friends, and reflect on the sense of personal empowerment they experience from owning it. Children know what treasure it, even if central bankers do not…
“The reason the government…favors a loose monetary policy, a discretionary rule at the Fed, and ongoing low-grade inflation is the most obvious one of all. It pays the bills. In other words, the reason is no different from that of private counterfeiting. They like to have money without having to work to get it. That is essentially what the Federal Reserve provides the government. It doesn’t have to worry about its bond rating collapsing or its credit standing falling. It doesn’t have to bother with taxing people. It can hide the costs of government in the complications associated with monetary affairs…
“Fiat currency engenders conflict of all sorts, unbalances the economic structure, and puts everyone’s savings at risk. It is for this reason that Alan Greenspan once wrote that the cause of freedom is bound up with the cause of the gold standard.
“Should our monetary system be reformed so that it is based on a pure gold coin standard? Yes it should. This would be the single best reform we could make for the cause of freedom. Its commercial benefits include stability, predictability, and honesty in finance. Its moral benefits include a financial system that does not reward living beyond one’s means. From the point of view of government, a gold standard would tie the hands of the state. They could wish and long for wars, welfare, foreign aid, bailouts, subsidies, and graft, but unless they could raise the money by taxing, all their talk would be pointless. That is a country I want to live in…
“But let me just clear up a few myths about gold. It is not the case that under a gold standard, we would all find ourselves in the position of that young man in Treasure Island, with aching backs and throbbing fingers. Banks would continue to exist and compete on a sound basis. All financial services would continue to exist just as they do now, from credit cards and bank cards to PayPal and stock portfolio checking and all the rest. Indeed, we would see an explosion of financial innovation under the gold standard because so many of the uncertainties associated with inflationary finance would be a thing of the past.
“Money would become truly international, or would tend in that direction as more countries decided to make their currencies as good as gold. And if we managed the transition properly, government would have no monopoly on the production of money. This would be something handled by the private sector, as suppliers competed based on beauty and design and reliability. In an ideal world, all currencies in the world would be different names for precious metals, all interchangeable with each other based on weight and fineness…”
“CAN GLOBAL WARMING CAUSE CATERPILLAR OUTBREAKS?”
by John Roach for National Geographic News
Our title and quotes are from this article:
“Get ready – the killer caterpillars are coming.
“As the weather gets wackier in response to rapid global warming, parasitism against caterpillars will decrease, biologists warn in a new study. This will free the caterpillars to devour agricultural fields and strip leafy forests bare.
“‘That’s really of great concern, especially to agricultural systems where we rely on several of these parasites. They keep outbreaks from occurring,’ said Lee Dyer, a biologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana…”
To read the entire article, click on http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1116_051116_caterpillar.html
IS THIS PROPER MANAGEMENT OF AN ASSET WORTH $180,000?
This week we received the following e-mail: “I am presently deeding my land to my son, and I want to leave him with a contact. We started out in 1996 with John Smith, your nearest manager in Louisiana, but now we’ve been unable to get in touch with him. Is he still there? Can you give us his phone number or e-mail address?”
Smith last worked for us in 1998. Our records show that, if it escaped hurricane damage, the tract would normally be worth $180,000 and that the owner lives 100 miles away. The owner can find a list of other foresters by clicking on http://www.vardaman.com.
The owner is surely wise to do all he can to prepare his son to be the new owner/manager. The essential skill is technique in forest management, but legal, accounting, and taxation advisors are important. That’s why we urge forest owners to buy and study HOW TO MAKE MONEY GROWING TREES by James M. Vardaman, our editor. Its 304 pages contain far more than anyone can remember or pass on by word of mouth. If a landowner already owns a copy, he will be wise to thumb through it once or twice a year.
It was published by John Wiley & Sons in 1964, 1975, and 1989 and has been a steady seller ever since. Vardaman is flattered by the attention from a firm that began business in 1814 and published Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe.
ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE
For those who have wondered what the abbreviation stands for, we quote the paragraph below from “Every Man’s Land, Who Really Owns ANWR?” by Kerry Howley, an assistant editor of REASON:
“ANWR itself, if only a symbol, is a symbol of something more complex than greedy executives or green extremists; it’s indicative of an irresolvable tension over publicly held land, uselessly locked away and yet uniquely vulnerable to special interests. An ANWR owned by greens would be used to further environmental interests (possibly by selling oil and channeling the profits toward more pressing concerns); an ANWR owned by Exxon Mobil would be efficiently leveraged to produce oil; an ANWR owned by everybody is just a question mark waiting for the next administration that needs to prove it’s serious about something.”
To read the complete article, click on http://www.reason.com/links/links112105.shtml
OUR BLOG AND YOURS
Do you keep a blog? We hope so, for you read the things we write about and are therefore interested in the subjects that interest us. We are flattered, and we’d also very much like to read what you write about.
We don’t register on big globes of blogs for it may take us all day to examine all of them, and we might not understand much of it. Therefore, we hope you will send us the address of what you’ve written even remotely connected with the forest economy of the eastern United States. We’d also like to have permission to quote you, and we promise not to argue with you, in print or otherwise.
BOOK SALES
We offer for sale all books listed at http://www.vardaman.com/booksale.php.
NEW SYSTEM FOR BUYING OR SELLING LAND OR TIMBER
For the details, click on http://www.vardaman.com and then on the red horizontal bar “Buy/Sell Land/Timber.” You can offer to buy or sell timber or land. You must post the general area of your interest; be sure to include the state. You must also post your E-MAIL ADDRESS and the URL of your Internet site. Our tracking report will not report the number of visitors UNLESS you enter your URL. If you are selling, you should post the name of the tract. When you have entered all details, click on “Submit,” and what you just entered will appear on our Internet site at the bottom of the page under the red horizontal bar “Buy/Sell Land/Timber.” Be sure to check for and correct errors.
For each tract posted after 05/12/05 and whose owner posted his URL, we charge $0.25 for each visit his ad receives. On each Friday at 0900 Central Time, we will e-mail him a bill for $0.25 for each visit his ad received during the week just ended. You can pay us by e-mailing the money to “Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company” at PayPal or mailing it to P.O. Box 12293, Jackson, MS 39236. We will delete your ad when your payments cease. The new fee schedule does not apply to tracts marked with asterisks::
SELL LAND OR TIMBER
For 107-A. tract in GA, click on http://www.Buythisfsbo.com/pineplantation/
BUY LAND
*For tracts in SC, send e-mail to loblolly@surfbvi.com
For tracts in SC, send e-mail to rich@CHRISTOPHERRADKO.COM
For tracts in MD, send e-mail to meyerstm@comcast.net
For tracts in MA, send e-mail to leonelmtz65@hotmail.com
For tracts in OR, send e-mail to 7200moore@charter.net
For tracts in OR, send e-mail to ptodd@orclinic.com
For tracts in FL, send e-mail to hot63vdub@hotmail.com
For tracts in TX, send e-mail to reedkimbley@hotmail.com
BUY TIMBER
*For tracts in AR, send e-mail to dyork@digitalpassage.com
*For tracts in IL, send e-mail to psftimber@hotmail.com
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