Well, don't delude yourself. Removing the human factor from the equation; nothing has value, intrinsic or otherwise. Gold is perhaps the only material known to man that has, since the beginning of recorded history, maintained a value. Many times during our history this value was greater than that of other men's lives. Just sayin'.

That's mostly because gold does a good job at possessing the characteristics of a medium of exchange:

1. transportability
2. divisibility
3. high market value in relation to volume and weight
4. recognizability
5. resistance to counterfeiting
6. memory

Other materials with similar characteristics have "maintained a value" the same way gold has--not because of any intrinsic store of value.

Who cares about the rest of the speech? I am only talking about the series of tubes comment. It's not the whole speech people make fun of, but just that comment.

The use of the phrase "series of tubes" to mock Stevens is just shorthand for referring to the surrounding context of the speech where he made it painfully clear that he had no idea how the Internet worked. Nobody's actually making fun of him for the series of tubes comment itself.

How about the liberty to keep and bear arms? How about the personal choice to go without health insurance if I deem that it to be in my best interest?

You do realize you said, "more," not "different," right?

And it sounds like it would be a really cool app, too... combine realty listings with Google map overlays. Integrate everything nicely with the GPS... mmm, metadata. *drools*

Redfin has an iPhone app that does pretty much exactly that. It actually is pretty handy.

There's also a big difference between "no better than the rest of the world" and "correlation between FOSS and sexism". The first I can certainly believe--there's no reason to believe that the FOSS community is any less sexist than the rest of the world. You're going to find a lot of sexist individuals just because that's the status quo in society today.

But there's no reason to harp on FOSS developers in particular unless there's evidence that the FOSS community is more sexist than the rest of the world (which I, at least, haven't seen). If that evidence isn't there, then keep on fighting the good fight against sexist pigs in general, wherever you find them.

"Oriented" not "oreientated".

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/oriented

Yes but what about those who DO save money (like me). The Federal Reserve is de-valuing my paper investment that's stored in the bank. Yeah I get interest of about 1% but it doesn't offset the constant 4% devaluation.

I certainly hope you're not saving your money in a checking account. If you are, I must admit I have very little sympathy for the constant devaluation of your "savings".

Comments, criticism (including flamebait and trolls), etc., are welcomed. I am not a "professional economist", just a nerd that's been thinking and reading, and I know that I've grossly simplified many things, but think that I've captured their essence. I've no problem with others proving me wrong, so long as they actually do so.

I think the part you're missing is the reason for the move from gold (or silver) backed currency to fiat currency. The reason wasn't because the "supply of goods and services outstripped the availability of money"; the reason was the boom-and-bust cycle. The idea was that by manipulating the money supply, the Federal Reserve would be able to soften and smooth the boom-and-bust cycle, making the "busts" much less severe. (It's no coincidence that the Federal Reserve was created shortly after the Panic of 1907, and subsequent reforms have happened after every "bust" since then [like the Great Depression].)

Now, there is no small debate about whether this manipulation of the money supply has actually done anything at all to quell the boom-and-bust cycle. Some have suggested that these boom-and-busts are inevitable, and by delaying when they happen through manipulation of the money supply, it simply makes the inevitable bust that much worse. (Personally I think it is possible to smooth out the bumps, but that requires minimizing the economic good times as well, which I think historically hasn't been a very popular Federal policy.)

Of course, there are also others who assert that the purported reason for fiat currency is a lie, and that the real reason behind fiat currency is to "print money" on demand, inflating the currency and enabling the government to pocket the difference--but when you look at the amount of revenue gained by "printing money" compared to the usual methods governments have of raising revenue (plain old-fashioned taxes), it seems unlikely that this is anything but a fringe benefit of fiat currency. In any case, I don't think there's any debate about at least the purported reason for the Federal Reserve and fiat money.