Today's Environmentalists Are Really Luddites

AccessBlaster said:
The dollar was backed by the gold standard until the early 1970s. Since then, it has been a fiat currency. The dollar’s value rests on confidence, not commodity backing.
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The opposite is true, gold is the ultimate fiat. Why is gold valuable?
Oil, on the other hand, is pure, real, tangible wealth.
 
I can appreciate your creative thinking but, you can't just redefine a word because it doesn't fit your senario.
 
Thales750 said:
The opposite is true, gold is the ultimate fiat. Why is gold valuable?
Oil, on the other hand, is pure, real, tangible wealth.
Click to expand...
Gold is tangible, but is not wealth, it's a commodity, same oil and crops.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, explains gold as an exchange currency.

From AI

In One Sentence​

Adam Smith believed gold is valuable because it is costly to produce, physically suited to serve as money, and widely accepted—but it is not itself the source of a nation’s wealth.

A nation with a large gold reserve but low production will send gold to producers receiving product. In time if that nation doesn't improve production will run low on gold. The produces will continue to produce products plus have gold.
 
Thales750 said:
Interestingly, many everyday people have such strong emotional reactions to anything that would clean up the environment.
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in their defense, it could be because they've heard too many horror stories about ridiculous requirements by the government to spend inordinate amounts of money to preserve some tiny thing - just sayin
 
RonPaii said:
Gold is tangible, but is not wealth, it's a commodity, same oil and crops.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, explains gold as an exchange currency.

From AI

In One Sentence​

Adam Smith believed gold is valuable because it is costly to produce, physically suited to serve as money, and widely accepted—but it is not itself the source of a nation’s wealth.

A nation with a large gold reserve but low production will send gold to producers receiving product. In time if that nation doesn't improve production will run low on gold. The produces will continue to produce products plus have gold.
Click to expand...
You just proved my point. Gold is nothing like a crop or oil. It's only value is demand, and a belief in it's value. The very definition of fiat.
Take a look at the international Oil trade, untill recently it was 100% US Dollars. A huge contributing factor in in the Reserve Currency status of the US dollar.
The dollar is an IOU a certain amount of Oil. The entire world runs on it.
 
Isaac said:
in their defense, it could be because they've heard too many horror stories about ridiculous requirements by the government to spend inordinate amounts of money to preserve some tiny thing - just sayin
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Exactly the point of the climate change division propaganda. As I said a red herring.
 
AccessBlaster said:
Scarcity and perceptianton comes to mind.
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Can't eat it, can't power a civilization with it. Not really worthy of basing a global economy on it. Now security and oil, that is a whole other level of backing for a reserve currency.
 
There is a possible explanation for why gold has been a base of currency.

IF, as a counter-example, you bring something like a slab of beef as the item you trade to get something else - like maybe a really good knife or spear point - congratulations, you just entered a "barter" economy. But one problem with that is the ephemeral or consumable nature of the bartered goods. The other, of course, is determining what constitutes a fair trade.

On the other hand, because you DON'T eat gold and it doesn't wear out (at least, not in people's lifetimes), it is a durable entity that can become a SYMBOL of what you have to be traded. Gold is too soft for making decent weapons, so it is inappropriate as an actual traded item for its own value - or at least that was true until the goldsmiths learned to make jewelry. Lump iron and steel have usefulness in making things, so they wouldn't be appropriate as an exchange medium; they have other, better uses. Copper and bronze are also relatively soft, plus there is usually lead in copper (the ores frequently occur near each other) which makes them poisonous, long-term. Technology had to develop (a lot, in some cases) in order for other metals to become useful. Gold, being relatively inert, became the standard for that symbol of value.

Once mankind developed the idea of an abstracted or symbolic measure of value, it would follow that they needed something as a medium of exchange as an accounting artifice - though they might not have called it "accounting" when it was first started. It was just "counting" then. We started with counting shells and pretty rocks, but we graduated from that LONG ago. But eventually, the idea of durable symbols of value made it easy for folks to carry those symbols rather than actually carrying trade goods.

If you have established an exchange rate - which in this context would look like a grocery store ad - you would have knowledge of how many grams of gold it took to buy that slab of beef mentioned earlier.

EDITED BY TDM to fix a word that must have been the result of my browser's autocorrect.
 
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However rational one might try and be about gold, it is a simple fact that it is valuable simple because it has always been valuable and its value is ingrained into most cultures. Wedding rings, anniversaries, everyday expressions like 'gold-plated' .... It's a simple truism that it's valuable because it's valuable. Silly, I know.

Not to mention is looks good and fascinates us.
 
AccessBlaster said:
Gold has an air of legitimacy, it’s tangible, and its value is dependable.
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Money is whatever people are willing to accept as money. Every time that you accept a promise of future payment, directly or indirectly you create money.

The Gold Standard was abandoned because a commodity standard is unstable. The relationship between the commodity and rest of the economy is variable. Money is lent out with the lender receiving interest. There is nothing to prevent a financial crash if loans default causing deflation resulting in more defaults.
 
AccessBlaster said:
Maybe not a global economy, but nationally it worked until congress figured out they could print money.


Yeah, things have evolved.
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Exactly, one of the fundamental reasons that the United States became the richest nation in the history of the world and the history of the human race at least. Not only as an amalgamation but individually so many people nowadays listen to Trump when he says how badly America has been treated by all of our partners overseas. The reality is that the United States with being the reserve currency of the entire planet based on oil made us the richest and the richest and the richest and the most powerful Nation ever.
 
The_Doc_Man said:
There is a possible explanation for why gold has been a base of currency.

IF, as a counter-example, you bring something like a slab of beef as the item you trade to get something else - like maybe a really good knife or spear point - congratulations, you just entered a "barter" economy. But one problem with that is the ephemeral or consumable nature of the bartered goods. The other, of course, is determining what constitutes a fair trade.

On the other hand, because you DON'T eat gold and it doesn't wear out (at least, not in people's lifetimes), it is a durable entity that can become a SYMBOL of what you have to be traded. Gold is too soft for making decent weapons, so it is inappropriate as an actual traded item for its own value - or at least that was true until the goldsmiths learned to make jewelry. Lump iron and steel have usefulness in making things, so they wouldn't be appropriate as an exchange medium; they have other, better uses. Copper and bronze are also relatively soft, plus there is usually lead in copper (the ores frequently occur near each other) which makes them poisonous, long-term. Technology had to develop (a lot, in some cases) in order for other metals to become useful. Gold, being relatively inert, because the standard for that symbol of value.

Once mankind developed the idea of an abstracted or symbolic measure of value, it would follow that they needed something as a medium of exchange as an accounting artifice - though they might not have called it "accounting" when it was first started. It was just "counting" then. We started with counting shells and pretty rocks, but we graduated from that LONG ago. But eventually, the idea of durable symbols of value made it easy for folks to carry those symbols rather than actually carrying trade goods.

If you have established an exchange rate - which in this context would look like a grocery store ad - you would have knowledge of how many grams of gold it took to buy that slab of beef mentioned earlier.
Click to expand...
Yup, to all of that. But that doesn't change the fact that gold is an artificial value. There's a good old days aspect to the whole entire people looking at the gold standard as better times. We are seeing the beginning of the end or at least the dilution the American dollar being the absolute reserve currency of the planet. It's probably one of the big reasons why we've had so much opposition to any technologies that would eliminate the need for us to use oil as fuel.
 
Does anyone want a barely -used, like-new vintage Rolex from the 90's in perfect condition - in it's original box, with it's original attestation paperwork, basically like it was just bought? worth $5k-$10k. steel plated with minimal gold.
Courtesy of my deceased father in law.

PXL_20260209_020512628.jpg
 
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