Journal damn_registrars's Journal: I can never get libertarians to answer this question... 7
Why is a gold (or other precious material) standard so important for currency; especially considering nobody uses it today?
I've heard a lot of libertarians on slashdot touting the rationale for a return to the gold (or any other commodity) standard for backing currency. I'll admit they have some sense to it, though I'm far from being fully on board. Earlier this week in the discussion on the libertarian endorsement for POTUS it came up again. It came up in a reasonable comment, so I wrote a reply asking for more information.
In particular one of the big challenges I see with it is that no economically important country today uses a gold (or similar) standard for their currency. Even the British Pound Sterling is no longer pegged on a pound (or any other unit of weight) of anything. Now, you can go for the parental argument of "all your friends jumping off a bridge" at this point, which would not be fully invalid. However the matter remains that if it is so terribly unstable to do this then it would reason that we should have had a worldwide economic collapse by now. Similarly if you use a precious metal like gold as the basis of currency - particularly one like gold that is also used in industry - you end up with an ever-decreasing supply of currency. This doesn't bode well on a planet with an ever-increasing population.
I've heard a lot of libertarians on slashdot touting the rationale for a return to the gold (or any other commodity) standard for backing currency. I'll admit they have some sense to it, though I'm far from being fully on board. Earlier this week in the discussion on the libertarian endorsement for POTUS it came up again. It came up in a reasonable comment, so I wrote a reply asking for more information.
In particular one of the big challenges I see with it is that no economically important country today uses a gold (or similar) standard for their currency. Even the British Pound Sterling is no longer pegged on a pound (or any other unit of weight) of anything. Now, you can go for the parental argument of "all your friends jumping off a bridge" at this point, which would not be fully invalid. However the matter remains that if it is so terribly unstable to do this then it would reason that we should have had a worldwide economic collapse by now. Similarly if you use a precious metal like gold as the basis of currency - particularly one like gold that is also used in industry - you end up with an ever-decreasing supply of currency. This doesn't bode well on a planet with an ever-increasing population.
Gold's not really the point (Score:2)
And...that's pretty much it. No mechanisms for inflation, or recession/depression. No methods from preventing the currency market being cornered. Just pie in the sky BS.
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The point is a currency which is easy to use (e.g. gold coins), whose worth is determined by the market and not some central planning authority.
From my vantage point in the current market the value of the US (Fiat, of course) currency is more influenced by the market than by the fed. If I want to sell some widget that I own and I say it is worth $5, then the $5 is a stand in for that widget. What difference does it matter if the $5 is backed up by gold somewhere or not?
The other big problem I have raised (I mentioned this in the comment of my own that I linked to) is that any valuable resource (gold, platinum, whatever...) is finite. Gold is
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ISTR that all the gold in the world would fit in a cube 10 meters on a side. How does anyone plan to make change from a speck of gold? Eventually, the gold would have to be held in a central place (hey, since people would be banking their gold there, why not call it a bank?), and issue notes representing various portions of that gold - we could even call them bank notes.
In other words, no matter how you slice it, we eventually end up back where we are today. That's why they're called libtards ...
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In other words, no matter how you slice it, we eventually end up back where we are today. That's why they're called libtards ...
Are the liberals in Canuckistan calling for this? The main champions of the gold standard in the US are the Paullowers and Randians (not even two sides of the same coin, they are the same face of the same coin). These people are conservative on everything except for military action - and on that they oppose it only because they don't want to pay for it. There is nothing the slightest bit liberal about them in this country.
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Nobody here is calling for any sort of gold-based currency. What's the point - you'd have to exchange it for another form of fiat currency to spend it. Might as well just go to straight barter.
There aren't many libertarians (libtards) up here. Medicare is something that even the right-wing conservative party wouldn't dare touch. They also (a couple of weeks ago, after more than a decade since it became the law) finally removed the words "between a man and a woman" from their party's platform when it came t
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Also, libtards is an insult reserved solely for liberals. The common insult for libertarians is 'fucking moron'.
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Also, libtards is an insult reserved solely for liberals. The common insult for libertarians is 'fucking moron'.
Ahh, yes. I missed that she was going for "libertarian" rather than "liberal" there. That makes a whole hell of a lot more sense. If I'm grouping libertarians in this country I opt for the shorter term "paullower" as it describes the overwhelming majority of them.