Writes Brian Engle: "Yesterday, I was getting my oil changed and happened to overhear a comment from a woman talking to her friend about having to write a paper on monetary policy and the gold standard. She was complaining about how horrible her book was on detailing the gold standard, and how it only spent a couple of pages discussing it, but she had to write a 3-page paper on the system. I told her there's been entire books written on the gold standard, and specifically mentioned Rothbard's What Has Government Done To Our Money?, and Ron Paul's The Case For Gold. I said she could borrow my copies if she couldn't find them, and also mentioned she could find them online at mises.org. I asked what class she was taking that she had to write a paper on the gold standard; she said international business. I told her a friend of mine had written his doctoral thesis on the gold standard, so I knew a little bit about it. There were a couple of other people there also getting their oil changed, and all of them seemed to be interested in our conversation; some even chiming in about inflation, real money, gold and silver coins, and the current talk about getting rid of the penny because the metals used to make it had increased in price to the point that the government was actually losing money minting them.

"I've had a few conversations with people about monetary policy lately, but a jiffyLube waiting room was one of the last places I would have expected to hear 4 or 5 'normal' people carry on an educated discussion about monetary policy, fiat currency, and the case for a gold standard."