Comments (7)

• Tim

  I got a completely different impression of James Sinclair when reading this article. After reading many of his writings and predictions on various gold sites and via his email list, I cringed a bit when they introduced him, but he comes off as a pretty good spokeman (if someone else does the writing).

  Published: June 5, 2005 6:25 PM

• P.M.Lawrence

  Those last two sentences reflect a fundamental problem in the media, one that became so well known that it even got a name, "Tomorrow's World syndrome", after a British science TV show. The thing is, people are of a number of different types, like "people persons" who end up dominating the media and displacing technical types. They literally have a blind spot on niche programming like technical shows with nerd appeal. They literally do not know that some people are interested in gadgets for their own sake.

  Result: the media types reinterpret everything they hear as an interst in the human side of things. They cannot understand that someone might like cars, but only see them as (say) status symbols connecting people to people. So they end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater, reworking shows to bring in the human side which wasn't even there, and you get programming that tells you about Brunel and hardly even shows you a locomotive - just re-enactments of Victorian passengers travelling.

  The media types have been told this, but it is in their nature to reinterpret even what they are told about Tomorrow's World syndrome, so all those shows eventually become boring even to nerds, just talking heads with no gadgets. Then the media types are puzzled abou how the light died and never even think it might be the very things they liked. If they wanted to target a niche market of stamp collectors they would make a show about stamp colectors, of absolutely no interest to stamp collectors who would only be interested in a show about stamps.

  You can see how this connects to the gold story. The writers and editors literally cannot see that there is anything there, they can only detect the movement of the gold bugs - so that is what they write about.
  

  Published: June 6, 2005 5:21 AM

• Robert Blumen

  PM Lawrence: I am in total agreement with wha you say here and find your comments very insightful. The question is, what to do about it? I don't ever see the mainstream media taking on issues of monetary theory...OTOH I know that gold versus paper and gold versus silver were major issues for the broad public at some points in American history, so perhaps a time could come again when people wish to debate these issues, rather than ogling the nut cases.

  Published: June 6, 2005 8:59 AM

• Mikey

  Robert Blumen- Could it be that the really meaningful debate is not gold versus paper but government versus the free market in determining
  what is money?

  Published: June 6, 2005 12:01 PM

• Bruce F.

  History's "nut cases" have in point of fact been those individuals who take a consistent position on something. This trait is not highly respected if the position taken is one that goes against the grain of what is considered acceptable discourse. It is therefore hardly suprising that the writer portrays the "gold bugs" as he does without really questioning whether or not their positions on gold and money are indeed correct. This is what passes for journalism.

  Published: June 6, 2005 12:19 PM

• billwald

  Boggles my mind that Libertarians accept Gary North's analysis on anything. As a Reconstructionist, his goal is to impose the Mosiac Covenant as he interprets it on the world and most Libertarians - most everyone I know would be disinfranchised. see his website www.freebooks.com

  Published: June 8, 2005 10:57 AM

• Doug

  Bill:

  I would be interested to see if you can post a sourced statement by Gary North where he advocates the involuntary imposition of what you call the "Mosaic Covenant" on a polity that does not wish to live under it.

  Published: June 13, 2005 6:20 PM