Actually, the sole reason a gold standard as good has little to nothing to do with perceived social value. It is because it is a limited resource. THAT is why it is good as a standard for value. You can't just create more of it whenever you want, and devalue the currency. Because it is finite, actual wealth must increase, not through artificially increasing the money supply, which devalues the dollar and causes inflation.
Yeah thats true. But basing it on something that is semi measurable is better than faith. My personal belief is that valuing any earth mineral is taught. I do not value stones. Statistically speaking, weve never had a gold standard and an 18 trillion dollar deficit either
Yes and no. Scarcity is a determinant of supply. That says nothing of the demand society sees in it. We do not automatically value all goods just because they are scarce.
No one said we did value all goods. We are applying what he says to gold, wheras youre generalizing What hes saying to be correct, in which case, with gold youre wrong. Knowing your history would explain why golds worth is measurable and important to society and how it came to be that way.
Society doesn't have to demand gold. It's just something which is finite, which can therefore be an actual standard which underlies the value of money, rather than simply a belief in the value of money, which is what upholds our current system. X amount of gold represents the total wealth of this country. Each dollar is worth the total amount of gold divided by the number of dollars circulating in the economy. There is a real world 'something' which defines the value of the dollar, not simple accepted belief.
^and to that extent, any resource being finite is simply a measure of its probability on earth and does not take into consideration the infinite possibility that all resources may not be limited in the span of the universe.
It's not true that floating currencies are solely determined by 'accepted belief'. They are determined by the value of goods and services within the economy. Goods and services have real value. Honestly, what you are talking about is Mercantilism. The Spanish and Portuguese tried that system in the 15th-16th centuries, and it didn't work out.
Note: this is a tangent from the larger discussion of sort of communist utopianism. Really in this communist utopia, there would be no need for money, in my opinion.
And the gold standard is based on the aggregation of bullion. No gold, no gold standard. Regardless of what you want to call it, it's an awful policy. It completely removes the ability of central banks to assuage market failures.
Nope, I'm talking about the gold standard...which existed less than a century ago, in this country. And a fiat currency, which is what we currently have, IS upheld by belief. There is nothing real world which correlates to the money. It's still the same basic formula, total wealth divided by total amount of dollars, except now what we're dividing our total wealth by is just paper slips which can be printed at will, rather than something physical and limited.
Nothing about this is true. All goods and services on which money is valued are as tangible and as real as gold will ever be.
So a person's wealth in this country is defined by his goods and services, and not his number of dollars? Because if so, then wealth is backed by something semi-tangible. If someone's wealth is defined by how much money(fiat money) they have, which is how I thought it worked, then it's defined by paper which can be printed at will and is backed by nothing.
The money is representative of the goods and services. Just as it works in the gold standard, where the paper is representative of the value of gold. It is the mandate of central banks to print money in accordance with the growth in real value within the economy. There are exceptions, and the fiat is not perfect. However, I assure you that for every problem that exists in fiat currencies, there are 3x as many problems with the gold standard.
I truly believe capitalism sucks BUT it's the best government system so far. America makes it look horrible because of our "Federal" Reserve which has absolute power over our government and keeps our wars going and the prison industrial complex working. (Sadly extremely efficiently.) as long as our government is a slave to the FR we cannot and will not grow as a country. The sad thing is, we're not just stalling we're going backwards (quickly) it's sad and I hate to look around at beautiful women who've sold their souls to Instagram and guys who Believe every word that idiot racist bill o'reily says. No one in Rome thought that empire would end and a lot of people believe the USA will last forever. The truth is it won't, but it could if man wasn't swallowed by greed. Capitalism DOES work, but only in a fair system where banks don't decide who succeeds and eats and who fails and starves.
Just tossing this in. Apparently there is a garage full of diamonds in africa just being stored. Why? The answers simple enough. Don't ask about the validity of this claim though I would trust the source.
It is a well known fact that the diamond trade is monopolized. If they didnt limit the market, their abundance would make them worthless. Post edit: apparently til recently http://www.kitco.com/ind/Zimnisky/2013-06-06-A-Diamond-Market-No-Longer-Controlled-By-De-Beers.html
I pretty much agree. I'm not certain that greed per se is the main problem though. After all, greed and the natural human desire to improve ones condition, coupled with equal opportunity, is what fuels capitalism and is the secret to its successes. Unfortunately, greed and the accumulation of wealth also favors the accumulation of more wealth. Furthermore, wealth has the disproportionate effect of being able to influence laws and regulations that permit the tilt of the playing field and the skewing of the important notion of "equal opportunity" and the incentive that is intimately connected with that dynamic. Money buys political favor and therefore laws favorable to the further acquisition of wealth for an increasingly shrinking percentage of people to the exclusion of an increasing proportion of those with less wealth and ability to offset the money -> political influence -> more money dynamic. However, after saying all that, the rich getting richer and the poor get poorer isn't necessarily the only possible course for a greed-incentive based system. As a nation's wealth increases, so does the per capita standard of living except for the most despotic of nations. There is a certain lifting up of the entire nation's population, even among its poor. Unfortunately, this "trickle down" effect diminishes with increasing wealth disparity as tax laws, government efforts to combat the effect through inefficient economic micromanagement, and a zillion other factors, actually serve to exacerbate the problem. But a positive, trickle down effect in standard of living also requires an efficient, productive, and competitive workforce, as well as limited bureaucratic overhead. All of these economic promotional factors are dramatically diminishing in the US with the election of each new governmental body. The table is tilting more and more toward the billionaires and their political and economic agendas as crony capitalism increasingly devastates the middle class and produces a few very rich and powerful individuals and the have-nots class expands. Just my opinion...
a persons wealth is not determined by money. Its determined by money AND all availible assets such as goods and property Sent from my LG-E739 using Grasscity Forum mobile app The thing I think is funny is that 100% of the things people say they don't like about capitalism are not the result to capitalism Sent from my LG-E739 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Is the source the movie 'Blood Diamond' ? I wouldn't be surprised. The diamond industry is an oligopoly, and oligopolies tend to have the market power to control the supply in such a way by colluding.
[quote name="yurigadaisukida" post="20490600" timestamp="1408726162" The thing I think is funny is that 100% of the things people say they don't like about capitalism are not the result to capitalism Sent from my LG-E739 using Grasscity Forum mobile app[/quote] Elaborate please