The amount of effort required to print vast numbers of bills is miniscule compared to that required to mine and refine the ore necessary to produce 1Toz of gold. Further, the amount of effort required to bump a bank account database number from $1 to $1x10^20 is infinitesimal compared to the amount of effort required to lift one shovel of said ore. Fiat values can be created at whim to any value - as so many prior and current examples demonstrate.

I mean this in no ad-hominem way, but it is clear that you do not understand the nature of money. If you assert that the difficulty in diluting the supply of gold (compared with the ease of producing fiat currency) is somehow not a strength, then the fallacious arguments are most definitely yours.

Yet here you are right if you mean gold's intrinsic value does not change much. This is so precisely because it is difficult to produce (read dilute). Meanwhile, the values of fiat currencies can and do change rapidly.

Yes, gold's value over said time period has changed by very little (difficult to produce - little dilution). The dollar's value, by contrast, has dropped significantly (Federal Reserve increasing supply of dollars).

Relative to the ease with which bank databases can be updated and currency bills printed, difficulty (along with rarity and durability) does indeed explain its use as a store of value. It has been used over millennia for just these reasons.

I don't understand what you're saying WRT the older bills.

Wishful thinking has nothing to do with it. When the $US was disconnected from gold in 1971, it was around $40/Toz. It is now around $1350/Toz. Yes, it peaked in 1980. But Volker increasing the interest rates to over 20% stopped it and made the paper more attractive. Today, with US federal debt running at ~$14x10^12, that is not going to happen again.

Whether or not you think I am deluded, you might want to look around the world at recent central bank activities regarding the metal. Are they also wishing? :-)

For brevity's sake, I was using an illustrative example. One can do more research from there. Also, I don't see where I implied that the FOREX, etc. is being duped. I do imply that the CPI is less truthful than it might be since the introduction of all its "adjustments".

To re-iterate: I'm saying that compared to commodities not benefiting from some technological advantage, the $US is suffering approximately equally due to an increase in its supply (and I did reference short term issues wobbling the chart). Ergo, it is not so much that gold is going up in value, but that the $US is going down in value. Holding some such commodity preserves overall purchasing power during such $US devaluation.

Whoever is right/wrong will in time become clear.

Yes, that is true at the moment for $US. But as happens so often with fiat currencies, it might not always be the case.

Besides, fungibility and edible quality is not the same thing. :-)

Compared against products and commodities less affected by technological improvement, your argument breaks down. For example the gold/oil ratio has wobbled about approximately 15 for many decades (see http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2010/1/11/499953-126321202518847-Joseph-Brom_origin.png). Yes, there is significant short term fluctuation due to current events, but the long term average remains stable. Compare the above to the graphs of gold and oil priced in $US (they're all over the web). Since the $'s disconnect from gold (Nixon's closing of the "gold window" in 1971), you see how the prices turned upward (reflecting the "printing of money").

Products benefiting from technological improvements are less affected by currency devaluation and thus to some degree hide the aforementioned increase in money supply. The US CPI takes advantage of this through various manipulations (substitution, hedonic adjustment, etc.).

So, it is quite reasonable to argue that with the US Federal Reserve's recent interventions, there is an epic bubble not in gold, but in the supply $US. :-)

It depends upon your horizon. When the $US was detached from gold by Nixon in 1971, it was near $40/Toz. It's now around $1350.

Are dollars (or bank account database entries) edible?

Experience indicates otherwise. Gold, being very difficult to produce, rare and durable has often been used to store and exchange value in times of economic collapse (and other extreme situations). As a current example, look at Zimbabwe. It has suffered economic collapse. The last Zimbabwean bills printed were denominated at $100 TRILLION (I have one - cost about the price of a cup of coffee). Zimbabweans now use grains of gold to store wealth and trade. A little research will yield many recent and historical examples.

On the subject of perceived or intrinsic wealth: if there is to be a medium of exchange, then gold has one tremendous advantage over fiat or paper/electronic currency. It cannot be printed essentially ad infinitum. Another brief foray into history shows how often governments descend into that trap - destroying their economies in the process.

It is an interesting exercise to compare the US dollar denominated inflation rate of goods & commodities with the gold denominated inflation rate from the time the dollar was disconnected from gold in 1971.

Just my $0.02 worth (heh).

I get beat up (metaphorically speaking) whenever I express my opinion on this subject. There is a continual erosion of the "difficulty" in the tests. The technical aspects are being de-emphasized. The Morse requirement is gone and the knowledge of electronics is going.

Too many people complained that they couldn't pass even a 5WPM Morse test. Putting aside for a moment arguments over relevance, 5WPM is not hard. It required maybe 20 minutes of exercise a night for a month. But that was too much. I hear the same argument now regarding the technical requirements, "I don't plan on building my radio, so why do I have to study electronics?".

The result is that now many license holders today are unable to build a TX or RX. They are essentially appliance operators - glorified CB users. If you doubt me regarding this technical observation, take a look at old Ham magazines/books (from a few decades ago). How many people capable of passing today's licensing tests could understand them without additional study? There are all sorts of interesting digital/satellite/etc. technical facets now that could replace at least some of the old knowledge exams. But were they to be reflected in the tests, the complaints about them being too hard would escalate.

Yes, I generalize. But that's the pattern as I see it.

I hope you'll take this in the spirit in which it's meant (i.e. - not ad hominem). Given your uninformed technical opinion, you need to study more on the subject of Amateur Radio. If you do, then you'll realize just how fallacious your assertion is. Regarding the messianic complex - that's a separate issue.

... it must be admitted that the man is prepared to put his money where his mouth is.

Interesting contrast to my experience: I find black ink on paper (using standard TR font) easier to read than the lower contrast text on eReaders and monitors. Flat panel monitors have no detectable flicker like the old CRT monitors (even at high vertical refresh rates with no interleaving) - but their contrast is poorer.

In my case, the "tangible" aspect of turning physical pages seems to make the information stick better. Perhaps that's due to familiarity with the format.

You are right - I was just reading the proposed payload capability of the Ares V - it's a Saturn V class really.

Still, what are the odds of NASA succeeding in getting funding? The agency hasn't had any priority for decades - and it's not going to get any better with the massive federal debt and other pressing economic issues. And even if development work on Ares V is (re)started, will its schedule again slip year-for-year?

While it's easy to armchair quarterback, it is a fact that on-orbit assembly and rendezvous are now not in any way novel or unusually dangerous. Piecemeal launching using smaller vehicles and Earth-orbit assembly (as was proposed early in the Apollo days before the Saturn V was proven) is a reasonable approach.

There are many heavy lift launchers out there now in the private sector. Surely it would be much cheaper and quicker to validate one of the existing designs. SpaceX has had two for two successful launches of their Falcon 9. Their economics are excellent too - and without the use of dangerous and difficult SRBs.

Even without including the new kid, there are many viable existing designs.

Is it possible to buy music online without lossy compression? On the basis of my admittedly limited search, on-line music all seems to be compressed using lossy algorithms. CDs (jazz, classical, fine recordings, etc.) provide such uncompressed/lossless source.

I'd like to have archival quality for the source music. Also, when playing discretely instrumented classical music on a good hi-fi, compression artifacts are sometimes noticeable.