Go re-read my post. Companies like Boeing or Airbus won't develop super-expensive planes unless carriers will buy a *lot* of planes.

Sadly, there aren't enough of the 1% who need/want to fly across the oceans on a regular basis for carriers to need a fleet of planes.

He (she?) was at one point soldier. Tell me that his/her parents never thought that he/she might never die.

And tell me that his parents never noticed that their short, soft boy-girl was "sensitive", and might one day crack under the pressure? Especially when he/she did something that he/she *knew* would piss off the government...

I bet they'd show a tape of a white American (preferably a cop) shooting black kids...

Let's go for the trifecta!
1) School shooting,
2) by a black guy,
3) with a Muslim name.

Exactly. Just wait until some guy with a thick accent named Abdul Mohammad Mustafa buys a couple and they wind up in Syria or Palestine...

But there are a lot more cars (and people to buy them) now than 100 years ago. That's a big problem, and why I said that the GS is unsustainable.

It does?

See that? It's past tense.

So... he's not even an actual biologist???

But wouldn't that be just a regular biologist who specializes in "a-thermal" extremophiles? Or maybe the kind of geologist that studies things like stromatolites?

Philosopher, astrobiologist, futurist, nanotech entrepreneur.

WTF do astrobiologists actually do besides suck at the government teat?

And futurists... gah. Those idiots are Miss Cleo rejects.

So what is "paper money"?

No. It only has the value that we believe it has. Just like... fiat money!!!

The only difference between metals+land (aka physical assets) and fiat money is that they'll be around long after fiat money has gone away. Unless, of course, the government seizes it, it corrodes away (silver, titanium copper, etc), gets flooded out, is lost, stolen, misplaced, etc.

If we had stayed on the gold standard, what would have happened to the US (and world, for that matter) economy when the population is growing faster than the new supply of precious metals?

The world population increased 75% from 1960 to 1999. Did the amount of gold increase 75% in that time? No. Population is going up exponentially, but the gold supply is going up linearly.

We also have more "stuff" (cars, bigger houses, TVs, gadgets, computers, etc) than we did 50 years ago. That "stuff" has to be paid for, which would require even more gold.

Thus, commodity-based currency eventually became unsustainable.

Do you actually know the definitions of money and currency? 'Cause... when *I* look at the definitions of "currency" and "money", they're God damned similar; i.e., a metric ass-load of comparison.

Are you a gold bug ("Someone who considers one commodity, usually gold, "the appropriate measure of wealth, regardless of the quantity of other goods and services that it can buy"") with tendencies towards conspiracy theories? (Not that you'd think or admit you are, even if you actually are...)

Of course I know that it's the US$ is fiat, and based on faith in a government that's $18T debt. That does not make it less safe than gold, silver, the Yen or Renminbi.

Exactly.

(My paternal grandparents grew up in the Depression, but still had no fear of banks. They were pretty darned cautious, though, by only using a big local *bank*, not S&L, that survived the Depression. Their parents probably didn't use banks in the 30s -- and *maybe* not in the 40s -- but definitely did in the 50s.)

What?