The floating absolute as a threat to all standards

By Scott Hyland

Recently, I read an article entitled The Floating Dollar as a Threat to Property Rights that was adapted from a speech delivered by Seth Lipsky on February 16, 2011, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona. The article caught my attention primarily because it dealt with the issue of redefining the value of a standard.

According to the article, at the beginning of February,

[I]t was discovered that the standard kilogram — a cylinder of platinum and iridium that is maintained by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures — has been losing mass. You may think that this is impossible. Of all the elements, iridium is the most resistant to corrosion, and the cylinder is kept in a facility at Sevres, France, where it is under three glass domes accessible by three separate keys. The cylinder itself is more than 130 years old and is what the New York Times calls the 'only remaining international standard in the metric system that is still a man-made object.' The new urgency to redefine the kilogram comes from the fact that its changing mass 'defeats,' as the Times put it, 'its only purpose: constancy.' [1]

The article goes on to ask the question, "What if we just let the kilogram float? ... After all, we let the dollar float." This is a very interesting concept that reveals what seems to be an uncontrollable epidemic within our society — the fluidity of standards. You may ask, what is meant by the fluidity of standards? It is the idea that permits time-tested standards to be redefined or even removed by certain people who no longer deem them relevant. Some sharper readers may have already realized the oxymoronic nature of the phrase — fluidity of standards.

How can a standard be a standard if it can morph into something other than the original standard? What is the purpose of a standard anyway? Referencing the New York Sun, Lipsky displays the threat of the floating dollar through the folly of the floating kilogram, "Why not float the kilogram? After all, when you go into the grocery to buy a pound of hamburger, why should you worry about how much hamburger you get — so long as it's a pound's worth?"

Lipsky continues this line of thought by pressing it to the extreme in three primary areas where standards are absolutely necessary: currency, weight, and time:

No doubt some will cavil that the fact that the dollar floats makes it all the more reason for the kilogram to be constant. But what's so special about the kilogram? If the fiat dollar floats, one has no idea what it will be worth when it comes time to spend it. If the kilogram also floats, it will simply be twice as hard to figure out what something we're buying will be worth.... Or let us consider a compromise. Let's go to a fiat kilogram — that is, permit the kilogram to float — but apply the new urgency to fixing the dollar at a specified number of grains of gold. To those who say it would be ridiculous to fix the dollar but let the butcher hand you whatever amount of hamburger he wants when you ask for a kilogram, I say, what's the difference as to whether it's the measure of money or of weight that floats?

For that matter, one could go all the way and fix the value of both the kilogram and the dollar but float the value of time. You say you want to be paid $100 an hour. That's fine by your boss. But he gets to decide how many minutes in the hour. Or how long the minute is. You know you'll get a kilogram of meat for the price a kilogram of meat costs. But you won't know how long you have to work to earn the money.[2]

It is clear, from these excerpts, how the floating dollar poses a threat to property rights. Although this is a major issue and must be addressed, this economic crisis will never be resolved unless we are able to diagnose the source of the problem. The floating dollar is just a minor symptom of a much greater disease plaguing our society.

Our country is experiencing the peril of neglecting time-honored universal standards. It is so obvious that even a brief survey of the last half century reveals a pattern of floating everything from marriage to human life. We witness one attempt after another to reinterpret and redefine the most sacred documents in our land until they are censored into oblivion.

The Constitution is no longer viewed as the law of the land but has become nothing more than a living document enslaved by the whimsical desires of those who swear to uphold it only to use it to conform to their own slanted cravings. Unfortunately, what they fail to realize is that by overruling and redefining the Constitution, they undermine the very authority by which they derive power and ultimately render their own positions impotent.

Just as we try to make adjustments to the value of our currency to remedy the condition of our economy, we have also tried to make adjustments to the value of our Constitution to remedy the condition of our society. The Constitution only works when those who are empowered by it are willing to submit to and cooperate with it. What has happened? For years this document was venerated as something near biblical.

The source of this problem stems from the fact that contemporary changes can only be made when traditional obstacles are removed. The very nature of law requires the reflection of the image of something much greater than the governed. Therefore, there had to be a legal decision to remove or float the ideas upon which the Constitution historically rested in order to reflect another set of ideas.

We questioned the very existence of the one Absolute upon which all other standards rely — God. As a result, our culture, to a large degree, is rarely exposed to any public display of the Creator who endowed us with "certain inalienable rights" that can only be guarded by the large scale recognition of certain standards that do not, must not, and cannot change, no matter how much legislation is passed or how many times another court decision is passed down by the signal of banging a gavel.

We have failed to recognize the intimate relationship between property and morality. Our Forefathers did not fall prey to the same oversight. I, too, end with a question that George Washington asked in his Farewell Address on September 17, 1796:

Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert [sic] the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? [3]

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© Scott Hyland