Yes, I'm really keen to trust a random guy at a yard sale running my card through a mystery device....
Yard sale, online sales, a convenience store. You cannot really trust anyone at your level.
Yes, we've been waiting for this fiat money crash, as we've been told the end is nigh, for decades now. Still waiting.
The gold standard discussions are always interesting because they all assume that gold has some sort of intrinsic, non-volatile value.
Let me tell you about a guy my wife used to work for. Back in the late 70's. The "failed" president Carter was in office, Civilization was going to collapse into a Mad Max world of shortages, and our money was goint to be worthless. The end was coming, and if you didn't prepare, you were toast.
Now I was happy to use his connections to buy silver bullion, (still have it) but the important part of my anecdote is one time we went ot his place for a party. His entire basement had been converted to a sort of prepper paradise. He had barells of wheat seed, and canned survival food. He had rifles and bullets - in several calibers.
His plan was that when the collapse of civilization happened imminently, he would trade people "Bullets for Bread", I told my wife that the flaw in his plan was that as na old dude, he was going ot be a prime target if his apocalypse happened. He'd be muhc better off to hope for the Rapture.
His wife used to hate it when they had their survival food weeks, whne they ate the food that was going out of date. Yummy - no MRE's at that time (which aren't half bad)
Since the paranoid are predicting the apocalypse all the time, eventually one of them will be right. Doesn't make for an excuse to act like that for the other millenia that we don't collapse.
It really doesn't help that much of the "you should buy gold!" press in the last five years has come from people who have a vested interest in the price of gold rising (like Glenn Beck) so they can sell it off at a profit and recent buyers will be hit with a loss. Pretty much the opposite situation from the one Beck et all describe would actually happen if we went back to the gold standard.
Yup, the paranoid being preyed upon by the grifters. Simply divide the world's GDP by the total amount of gold ever mined, and you'll see the futility of it all. Actually attempting to go to the gold standard now would achieve the massive collapse that these kooks all lust for, ironically.
Fiat money is simply a numbers game.
All money, every single system is 100 percent a numbers game. Probably as close as we can get to a system of real worth would be wheat, but still way too volatile.
We were given a warning in 2008 that that numbers game will not continue but that's obviously fallen on deaf ears.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
Explain how those were the result of fiat currency.
The irony is that the rich have got richer since then because they bought into hard assets - art, shares, property, land, gold, silver, rare artifacts (there's a reason they did that) - while those who had a regular salary and saved in dollars, euros or whatever have got continually squeezed and could afford less in real assets. It never ceases to amaze me how the ignorant get attached to their little fiat currency denominations.
Odd - I did well in both 2001 and 2008, and although I have hard investments, I simply didn't invest where the "smart" people said I should. I invested in what I knew would work. That's where most of my money went, and then returned with profit.
Even more odd is that you think that the fiscal insanity was caused by fiat currency, when in fact, most was caused by lack of regulation, mortgage originators who had no fiscal stake in the process, leading to mortgages to people who never should have them, and the insanity ne plus ultra - the 50 year morgage. a favorite of 80 year olds.
Just simple math that was bypassed, a crisis that would have been easily avoided, And not one thing to do with fiat currency, as if it did, people like myself who avoided the insanity would have suffered along with those who partook of it.
If you wish to argue, refer to the depressions noted. There were some, like the panic of 1837 where people lost trust in paper currency, interestingly enough not too long after th eUs tried to establish a mint ratio of gold to silver. Many other recessions were driven by speculation, or one of the biggies, post war days of reckoning, When we go to war, we often make emergency appropriations, which is kind of like war on the layaway plan. Eventually those have to be paid for, usually by inflation and or recession.
Good luck with that, because they are increasingly unlikely to want your useless electronic numbers that you place so much value on. The ECB is going to create a whole lot more of them.
So do you have your precious metals in a well armed fortress? Dude, any Government that can make everyone's electronic money worthless, can take your Gold, especially if you invest in it like most people....... electronically.
Because unless you can lay your actual hands on all your investment metal and have substantial means to defend it, you'll be in the same boat as the rest of us when your fiatpocalypse happens. Even people you think are idiots, like me.
This. Gold is exceptionally volatile, and basing an economy on it is not a wise move.
Ahhhh, yet another idiot who cannot separate gold from its meaningless fiat 'price'. If gold is money, how can it have a price?
Ahh, the name calling. So powerful such a way to automatically win an argument. Well played. You must have won every time in debate class.
Of course the gold has a fiat price - now. Specie, exchange, or bullion, of the Gold or bimatallic standards - there is simply not enough of it to sustain the world economy now.
Rather than call me names, perhaps you wish to discuss my premise, that you cannot base economies on it. Especially now.
Or is all ya got the playground 5th grader attack? Up to the Challenge?
Seems like some bullies with luperas would be able to come up with cash very very quickly.
Blind or intentionally obtuse? I'd guess both.
Here's your nightmare scenario:
Ermagherd!!
Of course, you'll probably accuse me of being overly paranoid, nevermind the fact that this sort of shit does happen, regularly. Because that's how sheeple think - anyone more paranoid than them is "too paranoid."
Holy crap, Guess anyone not as paranoid as you is a sheeple?
You are a prepper aren't you?
That you've never had any problem paying using cashless in the past is not an indication that you will never in the future. If they decide to freeze your accounts for some reason with no cash in the system anymore, you can't even get a cab.
well of course not. But your scenarios means that your cash can and will be stopped right at your employers paycheck to you.
The system you fear has been in place for years, and unless you do everything through an alternative barter type economy, where your work is bartered, and all your expenses are too, you aren't going to get away from the intrusive hand of the guvmint.
Otherwise, you'll have just a little more cash than I do, to last maybe a week before you're as broke as the rest of us? I won't get a cab in week one, you won't get it in weeks two.
Actually, it's quite easy to argue that the gold price fluctuations are not volatility in the price of gold, but in the value of the dollar (or whatever currency you are comparing it to).
Yes, that is an arguable point. I've used it as an investment medium in the past. But here's the dig.Not many make all that much on it. In typical amateur investment fashion, people tend to buy high, and sell low.
As an example, I had invested in 1 oz silver bars back in the late 70's at around 15 dollars an ounce. Around 1980, it hit almost 50 dollars an ounce, In the 90's, it was about 5 dollars an ounce until around 2003. Around 2011, it was around 47 dollars an ounce, and has now fallen to around 20. While the investors will tell you that it was almost 400 percent appreciation from 1975 to now, When should I have cashed it in? In 1980, or 2011? During some volatile years? The same motives that get us to invest in precious metals are the same ones that cause us to keep them when they are the most expensive.
Precious metals are simply too volatile an investment, and there are two lines the people selling them use:
When it's rising, it's an awesome investment, better than anything else Get in on this, or you'll be a loser!
In the long inter-valued times, it's a hedge against the inevitible downfall of Western society, and shouldn't be viewd as an actual investment. Somehow or another you'll trade your gold for bread when whatever apocolypse is the latest trend happens.
Are we assuming all transactions humans do are with merchants?
Naive as hell!
Hard to say. My son, who isn't in business, takes credit cards through his iPhone. Just a card swipe and there ya go. Comes free with a PayPal account.
Pretty nice actually, will probably be a hit at yard sales. The times, they are - a - changin'.
As opposed to gold, which has never seen the price move.
This. Gold is exceptionally volatile, and basing an economy on it is not a wise move.
The idea that fiat currency is somehow less stable than gold is not proven out by the facts. If a person were to check out the dates of depressions and recessions, at least in the US, they will quickly see that the economy is actually more stable after we left the gold standard.
What is more, if we were to take the entire amount of gold ever mined and tried to apply it as the standard, we'll see right away that there just isn't enough gold, or else the gold would be insanely expensive per ounce. Especially as we in the US don't have all the gold ever mined. Which in the end would render any currency actually based upon it immediately worthless.
So we were on fiat currency long before we went to fiat currency.
I'm not in a place where I can easily look up the stats at the moment, but I did post the supporting math in here a while back.
the abolition of printed cash drives a wedge between 2 and 3. at the first whiff, run.
Shouldn't you be complaining about not being on the gold standard?
Seriously dude, your paranoid fantasy came true years ago, when we went off the Gold standard, and decoupled gold form the dollar.
It's all a game, and there was always too much paper floating around to make a gold standard serious. And as soon as we went total fiat, it didn't matter whether the money was printed, or a checkbook, or auto-deduct or credit card.
Maybe Somalia might work for you? I don't know how they handle money - mostly barter, I suspect - but it's probably more in line with your ideals. The rest of the world will just move on, and stand in line for their mark of the beast. The good news is they can pay for that online.
The moment cash was eliminated, you could kiss your precious freedom goodbye. That is not a joke, and it is not a fantasy.
Yes, I went totally cashless about ten years ago, and still lament the loss of my freedom.
If there is anything worse than having an itemized statement of all my purchases, and paying it off every month, then getting cash back, I don't know what is, unless it is....
The nightmare scenario of automatically paying your bills. Jesus, that's awful.
Some times I wonder if the doomsday preppers haven't taken over Slashdot these days. We've always had a strong streak of libertarianism, but half the comments these days read like they are posted from a bunker in Idaho. The second, fakey one, because we don't want the Guvmint finding the real one by tracking our phone. Back to the rabbit holes everyone!
More of that high-quality Slashdot/Dice.com editing.
Is there any other kind?</snark>
Well then you do it! Seriously dude you show thes asshat editors that make a spelling mistake and show them how a really smart person does it. I am looking forward to seeing many articles from none other than Safety Cap.
In a breach of playground protocol, I triple dog dare ya.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
