Ron Paul discusses Bitcoins, the US Fed and Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors vs. Texas

One Redditor asked a very topical question: How do you feel about Texas banning the sale of Tesla cars? Doesn’t seem very American or Libertarian.

Flickr Creative Commons image by Kazuhisa OTSUBO

Ron Paul: It’s un-American and it’s unpatriotic and it’s bad economic policy, and it should not be any business of the government what car you can buy.

Some background: The sate of Texas, Capitalist Mecca and linchpin of American oil industry, is not too keen on electric cars. Under current laws, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, cannot sell his cars in the Lone-Star state. Governor Rick Perry however has promised to change that. 

The Fed

Ron Paul hates the US Federal Reserve – maybe even more than gold investors currently do. He has blamed the Fed for everything from the financial crisis to a weak dollar. He also blames congress for giving Ben Bernanke and Co. control over US monetary policy. In fact, the pivotal event that pushed Paul into politics was when Richard Nixon “closed the gold window” in 1971 – a pretty dumb move according to the Doc.

So without further ado, here is Ronald’s most recent rant about the Fed.

Redditor: Dr. Paul, you have been the most outspoken critics of the Federal Reserve. However, no matter how much I look into your positions on the Fed, something is still a little unclear. Would you prefer to have the Federal Reserve powers returned to the United States Congress and have congress control the money supply and interest rate, or would you rather those powers be left to the free market and have private competing currencies?

Ron Paul: The second. I would allow the market to do it. I would not trust Congress either. But the guidance can come from our Constitution, because it says we are not allowed to print money and only gold & silver can be legal tender and there is no authority for a central bank. But I like the idea of competing currencies, especially in a transition period, because it would be hard to take what we have today and suddenly have a gold standard without some problems.

Bitcoin
Cryptocurrency has been all the rage lately. Who wouldn’t want to know what Ronald has to say?

Ron Paul: My thoughts on Bitcoin and the other currencies is that they ought to be legal unless there is fraud involved. The government should not get involved in regulating private money if there is no fraud. I do not take a position on Bitcoin and other proposed currencies in a technical fashion, but I understand the political ramifications of them and I think that government should stay out of them and they should be perfectly legal, even though I don’t endorse (technically) one over another.

Climate change

In 2009 Congressman Paul told Fox News that if cap-and-trade legislation dies it would be “a major victory for people who believe in sanity and markets.” He also said that the greatest hoax of the past century has been the “hoax on the environment and global warming.”

Four years later, Ron explains his views on battling climate change to Reddit:

“Well – thinking that I have the power, authority or knowledge to change the climate. Does man have much influence on the climate? Probably, a little bit. Regarding pollution, nobody has the right to pollute their neighbor’s property. But when I look at the history of the issues, temperatures have gone up and temperatures have gone down, a long time even before the industrial age, so I would not claim that I had any unique ability to regulate the climate.”