Lots to unpack here and I’m not looking to tackle all of it, but going back to any metal standard is a terrible idea. The value of a Fiat currency is based on the shared belief in it’s value, whereas a metal standard currency has its value in the shared belief in the value of the metal. No gain, but pushing the problem one step down the chain.
The substantial downside of metal standard currency is that it causes a scarcity in the metal compared to the amount needed for currency, leading to deflation. Suddenly you have a currency which encourages people not to spend as the currency is expected to be worth more in the future; the currency fails at it’s only job: facilitating trade.
The value of metal isn’t arbitrary,bits valuable because the metal is actually valuable. You can use copper for electronics, silver for medical instruments, gold for all kinds of things from semiconductors to low impedance buses.
There is no deflation of metal currencies or inflation. This is a common lie of corporate sellsmen trying to sell everyone into their pyramid scheme. The value slowly drifts over time and it is possible for the value to change more significantly with the discovery of new sources or technology which makes extracting easier. The point is though that compared to fiat currencies, it’s extremely stable and over generations. This makes the currency truly valuable, something people can save and give to their grandkids and it will be roughly the same value. People can retire for example without ever needing to put their money at mercy to the rich in speculation markets.
What is actually happening is the economy is growing but it’s being spread across all the currency holders, not just sucked up by the state and the corporate class. The is what you call deflation, but it’s what I would call economic appreciation. Simply put prices have to meet workers halfway.
The only real downside compared to fiat currency, and this is really the only one in actuality, is that money is harder to obtain without producing something of real value. This means that governments can not spend money to stimulate the economy, and the economy cannot carry massive amounts of debts which cannot be realized effectively. Interest rates would be high because interests would have to cover the people who default.
This is not a bad thing, this is an honest economy. It would be hard to imagine a modern economy operating like this, because it’s so fueled by cheap debt and wasteful spending, and huge bureaucracies, but those things come at the expense of the worker, who has the least bargaining power of all. With a hard currency, whatever a worker wants is honest. It can’t be stolen from them. It can’t be taxed outside of income effectively without near extortion/Mafia level tax schemes.
The middle class would absolutely thrive under this system, because they would possess one of the most valuable things under a hard currency system, labor. Since a worker is paid wages, they cannot really be duped by people. Once that money is in their hands that value has passed to them.
This also fixes so many other issues, like economic bubbles, economic instabilities and recessions and depressions. It fixes the value of hard assets like land since people have to pay taxes on land if they own a lot, where workers should have property taxes, only businesses that deal in commercial selling of land, people can actually afford land.
It would cause all kinds of issues with the way the economy is currently set up. Massive mega corporations would be bankrupt nearly overnight. Since they aren’t actually producing much real value for their costs. The stock market would tank, requiring the state step in and subsidize basic necessities for a few years, maybe even a generation. People would make a run on the stock market to withdraw their retirements they foolishly gambled with, trying to beat inflation.
Yet at the end of it, you would be left with a healthy and functioning economy. A small upper class, a large middle class, and a mild class of poverty striken people.
This could be handled pretty well by giving back half of all tax revenues in the form of UBI equally to everyone and setting up public clinics instead of having the extremely expensive Medicare system. You could offer doctors an abolition of their taxes and UBI to work there for the more meager wages, to encourage lots of high quality and older doctors to work there after they have acquired some private wealth that they would like to protect more from taxation. The federal bank instead of giving loans to banks, could give loans to people to build small affordable house. People can get one per lifetime and have the payment garnished from their wages or UBI. That way you could stimulate the economy more in times and also help to keep house prices low, so that the average worker can actually aquire wealth and raise up in class over generations.
This is how an economy should be designed. Freemarket socialism, fair and level taxes, hard currencies, UBI instead of welfare, public funding of private education that is the students choice, publicly owned infrastructure, utilities, and a cost effective public healthcare system that provides basic care, access to cheap medicine, and pain management for end of life care if people are poor.
With UBI and the state helping everyone get an apartment without high taxation, the economy would both thrive and everyone would have some basic social security. People would not have to work if they lived a meager lifestyle and could eat and acquire basic necessities. This would also make the labor market honest. Nobody would choose to work unless the wages were mutually beneficial. Most people would be happy. Women could stay home and raise children without being stuck in poverty and an argument away from homelessness or virtual prostitution with people having free time to pursue other things besides work, culture would thrive, technology would thrive and people would be happy, and also the economy would thrive because we would produce the best works on the planet.
This starts with cutting the rich off the tit of the tax payer. Cutting the materialistic geriatrics off the tit of the working person. This starts with people rejecting Reganomics and embracing free market private socialism instead of stupid communism or stupid capitalism fueled by fiat and authoritarianism.
The value of metal isn’t arbitrary,bits valuable because the metal is actually valuable. You can use copper for electronics, silver for medical instruments, gold for all kinds of things from semiconductors to low impedance buses
Yeah, because necessary computer chips, medical instruments, and other electronics won’t become extremely expensive or scarce from being MADE OF MONEY!
There’s a finite amount of metal in the world and an ever-increasing demand for both things made of metal and currency. Combining the two would inevitably lead to a point in the far too near future where only very rich people can afford to use money and/or only rich people can afford to build anything out of the money metals.
There is no deflation of metal currencies or inflation
Except when there’s not enough of it in existence for both making the things of it AND for being all the money. Which is already the case.
This is a common lie of corporate sellsmen trying to sell everyone into their pyramid scheme
Maybe not the BEST thing to mention pyramid schemes while trying to convince people that inherently finite resources can cover several exponentially increasing needs in perpetuity…
The value slowly drifts over time
Until it’s suddenly currency again AND still needed for making important stuff with.
the discovery of new sources or technology which makes extracting easier
Which will STILL be much more expensive and require extra security once extraction equipment contains wiring and circuits made of literal money.
The point is though that compared to fiat currencies, it’s extremely stable and over generations
Which it has been because it’s been considered raw materials for production of goods for generations. That flies out the window the moment its value becomes intertwined with all levels and types of commerce
something people can save and give to their grandkids
If they’re EXTREMELY rich compared to most of the world’s population.
it will be roughly the same value.
No.
People can retire for example without ever needing to put their money at mercy to the rich in speculation markets.
Very few people, sure. Probably significantly fewer than now.
The is what you call deflation, but it’s what I would call economic appreciation
It’s what I call becoming richer by already being rich, which is basically the stock market but with less effort.
this is an honest economy
Overly simplified to the detriment of most people ≠ honest.
Simply put prices have to meet workers halfway.
Would be lovely, but the reality is that most workers would no longer be able to afford anything made of the money metals and would probably be underpaid even more than they already are since there’s actual scarcity added onto the artificial scarcity.
The only real downside compared to fiat currency, and this is really the only one in actuality
Nope. I’ve mentioned a few already at I bet you’re going to say something else in a bit
that money is harder to obtain without producing something of real value
Not if you already have it and it appreciates. Like the current system, but even moreso, it’ll be up to the ones who hoard the most riches to determine what has “real value”.
This means that governments can not spend money to stimulate the economy, and the economy cannot carry massive amounts of debts
Which would be awful. Without tools such as deficit spending and government debt, every recession could take years or decades, if not be permanently insurmountable since you can’t just create emergency metal.
Interest rates would be high because interests would have to cover the people who default.
Which would mean that only rich people would be able to afford to borrow money, further enhancing the “get richer by already being rich” effect
This is not a bad thing
As long as you are one of the lucky few already in possession of a lot of wealth in metals.
I could go on responding to all the rest of your fallacious arguments in turn, but if you haven’t gotten the point yet, let me just summarize it for you:
TL;DR: Going back to economies based on physical metal would be absolute weapons grade idiocy.
I’ll be honest I don’t feel like responding to every single one of these points. I think I summed it up pretty well in the last post even if you disagree. I’ll respond to one or two or a few, which I think covers most of your points.
Stuff being made of literal money - this isn’t really true because you can extract more of it and recycle it. It’s also not just one metal but many metals. The way it worked in history, is that gold was used for things like large transactions, and long term savings, where most people used silver as the everyday currency. Copper is also a good option, relatively valuable but also very fungible with the downside of oxidation which silver and gold doesn’t have at normal temperatures. You can also have iron, nickel, platinum, and other coins. One of the core ideas is that the state doesn’t issue currency directly, as they like all human beings are not responsible enough to have that kind of power as a monopoly, but they simply ensure fair use by making counterfeiting and fraud illegal. This is how much of human history handled money.
An economy without inflation or debts isn’t bad. It is bad for the rich, but not for the workers. It’s bad for the rich because mega corporations cannot compete with small businesses in a hard currency system. In the past things were worse because of technology. They didn’t have much of it. It’s a different era now.
Hard currency doesn’t appreciate just because you are rich. This happens in fiat currency systems. The reasons corporations snowball in wealth, is because they have access to low interest and no interest loans, and real valuable assets where workers do not have any access to any valuable asset to store wealth in. The most valuable asset a worker has that actually holds value is a home, and even this has lost about 30% of its value over the past 50 years, despite being higher quality. It also isn’t a long term store of wealth and has property taxation attached to it, which means the only people who can ever get wealthy in our society, are people who get past a threshold of about 20+ million a year currently. They then snowball towards being extremely wealthy just on compound interest and stock appreciation alone. For every 1% of people who get wealthy this way, 99% of people get poorer year after year, and with absolutely no control over this process, as is the entire design of fiat currencies.
Also to close, I would like to just say, that virtually every human who has ever lived in history would disagree with your fiat currency nonsense. It wasn’t until the age of mass media and compulsory education that governments and corporations could really force people into paper money and 401ks. It has been tried a few times in history, always by tyrants, and always has directly preceded the complete collapse of their society and culture.
This is because the most valuable actual thing on this earth is people, and if people are not treated with decency and paid fairly, then your society collapses. You cannot cheat people out of their wages. America as well has degenerated nonstop since it’s adoption of fiat currencies. Economic growth in real value has been stagnant since the 70s. Most of the fake stock market is IP and real estate bubbles and overpriced companies that will never recover the valuation that they have in real value, only through inflation. Fiat currencies have also created a situation where the old and adults in general sell away their children’s futures and force them into debt without their consent so they can live lives of opulence and excess without having to actually work for it. This scam has went on for so long that now nearly half of Americans cannot find a job or will not work for the terrible wages and our IQ is dropping, and less then a quarter of people even own property without debt. The ones who do mostly own a worn down old wooden house. This is what fiat currency creates. It is find mentally just greed and unfairness and irresponsibility and an attempt for a terrible and inefficient state and corporate class to cling on to power for another century until the people starve and finally overthrow them.
Lots to unpack here and I’m not looking to tackle all of it, but going back to any metal standard is a terrible idea. The value of a Fiat currency is based on the shared belief in it’s value, whereas a metal standard currency has its value in the shared belief in the value of the metal. No gain, but pushing the problem one step down the chain.
The substantial downside of metal standard currency is that it causes a scarcity in the metal compared to the amount needed for currency, leading to deflation. Suddenly you have a currency which encourages people not to spend as the currency is expected to be worth more in the future; the currency fails at it’s only job: facilitating trade.
The value of metal isn’t arbitrary,bits valuable because the metal is actually valuable. You can use copper for electronics, silver for medical instruments, gold for all kinds of things from semiconductors to low impedance buses.
There is no deflation of metal currencies or inflation. This is a common lie of corporate sellsmen trying to sell everyone into their pyramid scheme. The value slowly drifts over time and it is possible for the value to change more significantly with the discovery of new sources or technology which makes extracting easier. The point is though that compared to fiat currencies, it’s extremely stable and over generations. This makes the currency truly valuable, something people can save and give to their grandkids and it will be roughly the same value. People can retire for example without ever needing to put their money at mercy to the rich in speculation markets.
What is actually happening is the economy is growing but it’s being spread across all the currency holders, not just sucked up by the state and the corporate class. The is what you call deflation, but it’s what I would call economic appreciation. Simply put prices have to meet workers halfway.
The only real downside compared to fiat currency, and this is really the only one in actuality, is that money is harder to obtain without producing something of real value. This means that governments can not spend money to stimulate the economy, and the economy cannot carry massive amounts of debts which cannot be realized effectively. Interest rates would be high because interests would have to cover the people who default.
This is not a bad thing, this is an honest economy. It would be hard to imagine a modern economy operating like this, because it’s so fueled by cheap debt and wasteful spending, and huge bureaucracies, but those things come at the expense of the worker, who has the least bargaining power of all. With a hard currency, whatever a worker wants is honest. It can’t be stolen from them. It can’t be taxed outside of income effectively without near extortion/Mafia level tax schemes.
The middle class would absolutely thrive under this system, because they would possess one of the most valuable things under a hard currency system, labor. Since a worker is paid wages, they cannot really be duped by people. Once that money is in their hands that value has passed to them.
This also fixes so many other issues, like economic bubbles, economic instabilities and recessions and depressions. It fixes the value of hard assets like land since people have to pay taxes on land if they own a lot, where workers should have property taxes, only businesses that deal in commercial selling of land, people can actually afford land.
It would cause all kinds of issues with the way the economy is currently set up. Massive mega corporations would be bankrupt nearly overnight. Since they aren’t actually producing much real value for their costs. The stock market would tank, requiring the state step in and subsidize basic necessities for a few years, maybe even a generation. People would make a run on the stock market to withdraw their retirements they foolishly gambled with, trying to beat inflation.
Yet at the end of it, you would be left with a healthy and functioning economy. A small upper class, a large middle class, and a mild class of poverty striken people.
This could be handled pretty well by giving back half of all tax revenues in the form of UBI equally to everyone and setting up public clinics instead of having the extremely expensive Medicare system. You could offer doctors an abolition of their taxes and UBI to work there for the more meager wages, to encourage lots of high quality and older doctors to work there after they have acquired some private wealth that they would like to protect more from taxation. The federal bank instead of giving loans to banks, could give loans to people to build small affordable house. People can get one per lifetime and have the payment garnished from their wages or UBI. That way you could stimulate the economy more in times and also help to keep house prices low, so that the average worker can actually aquire wealth and raise up in class over generations.
This is how an economy should be designed. Freemarket socialism, fair and level taxes, hard currencies, UBI instead of welfare, public funding of private education that is the students choice, publicly owned infrastructure, utilities, and a cost effective public healthcare system that provides basic care, access to cheap medicine, and pain management for end of life care if people are poor.
With UBI and the state helping everyone get an apartment without high taxation, the economy would both thrive and everyone would have some basic social security. People would not have to work if they lived a meager lifestyle and could eat and acquire basic necessities. This would also make the labor market honest. Nobody would choose to work unless the wages were mutually beneficial. Most people would be happy. Women could stay home and raise children without being stuck in poverty and an argument away from homelessness or virtual prostitution with people having free time to pursue other things besides work, culture would thrive, technology would thrive and people would be happy, and also the economy would thrive because we would produce the best works on the planet.
This starts with cutting the rich off the tit of the tax payer. Cutting the materialistic geriatrics off the tit of the working person. This starts with people rejecting Reganomics and embracing free market private socialism instead of stupid communism or stupid capitalism fueled by fiat and authoritarianism.
Yeah, because necessary computer chips, medical instruments, and other electronics won’t become extremely expensive or scarce from being MADE OF MONEY!
There’s a finite amount of metal in the world and an ever-increasing demand for both things made of metal and currency. Combining the two would inevitably lead to a point in the far too near future where only very rich people can afford to use money and/or only rich people can afford to build anything out of the money metals.
Except when there’s not enough of it in existence for both making the things of it AND for being all the money. Which is already the case.
Maybe not the BEST thing to mention pyramid schemes while trying to convince people that inherently finite resources can cover several exponentially increasing needs in perpetuity…
Until it’s suddenly currency again AND still needed for making important stuff with.
Which will STILL be much more expensive and require extra security once extraction equipment contains wiring and circuits made of literal money.
Which it has been because it’s been considered raw materials for production of goods for generations. That flies out the window the moment its value becomes intertwined with all levels and types of commerce
If they’re EXTREMELY rich compared to most of the world’s population.
No.
Very few people, sure. Probably significantly fewer than now.
It’s what I call becoming richer by already being rich, which is basically the stock market but with less effort.
Overly simplified to the detriment of most people ≠ honest.
Would be lovely, but the reality is that most workers would no longer be able to afford anything made of the money metals and would probably be underpaid even more than they already are since there’s actual scarcity added onto the artificial scarcity.
Nope. I’ve mentioned a few already at I bet you’re going to say something else in a bit
Not if you already have it and it appreciates. Like the current system, but even moreso, it’ll be up to the ones who hoard the most riches to determine what has “real value”.
Which would be awful. Without tools such as deficit spending and government debt, every recession could take years or decades, if not be permanently insurmountable since you can’t just create emergency metal.
Which would mean that only rich people would be able to afford to borrow money, further enhancing the “get richer by already being rich” effect
As long as you are one of the lucky few already in possession of a lot of wealth in metals.
I could go on responding to all the rest of your fallacious arguments in turn, but if you haven’t gotten the point yet, let me just summarize it for you:
TL;DR: Going back to economies based on physical metal would be absolute weapons grade idiocy.
I’ll be honest I don’t feel like responding to every single one of these points. I think I summed it up pretty well in the last post even if you disagree. I’ll respond to one or two or a few, which I think covers most of your points.
Stuff being made of literal money - this isn’t really true because you can extract more of it and recycle it. It’s also not just one metal but many metals. The way it worked in history, is that gold was used for things like large transactions, and long term savings, where most people used silver as the everyday currency. Copper is also a good option, relatively valuable but also very fungible with the downside of oxidation which silver and gold doesn’t have at normal temperatures. You can also have iron, nickel, platinum, and other coins. One of the core ideas is that the state doesn’t issue currency directly, as they like all human beings are not responsible enough to have that kind of power as a monopoly, but they simply ensure fair use by making counterfeiting and fraud illegal. This is how much of human history handled money.
An economy without inflation or debts isn’t bad. It is bad for the rich, but not for the workers. It’s bad for the rich because mega corporations cannot compete with small businesses in a hard currency system. In the past things were worse because of technology. They didn’t have much of it. It’s a different era now.
Hard currency doesn’t appreciate just because you are rich. This happens in fiat currency systems. The reasons corporations snowball in wealth, is because they have access to low interest and no interest loans, and real valuable assets where workers do not have any access to any valuable asset to store wealth in. The most valuable asset a worker has that actually holds value is a home, and even this has lost about 30% of its value over the past 50 years, despite being higher quality. It also isn’t a long term store of wealth and has property taxation attached to it, which means the only people who can ever get wealthy in our society, are people who get past a threshold of about 20+ million a year currently. They then snowball towards being extremely wealthy just on compound interest and stock appreciation alone. For every 1% of people who get wealthy this way, 99% of people get poorer year after year, and with absolutely no control over this process, as is the entire design of fiat currencies.
Also to close, I would like to just say, that virtually every human who has ever lived in history would disagree with your fiat currency nonsense. It wasn’t until the age of mass media and compulsory education that governments and corporations could really force people into paper money and 401ks. It has been tried a few times in history, always by tyrants, and always has directly preceded the complete collapse of their society and culture.
This is because the most valuable actual thing on this earth is people, and if people are not treated with decency and paid fairly, then your society collapses. You cannot cheat people out of their wages. America as well has degenerated nonstop since it’s adoption of fiat currencies. Economic growth in real value has been stagnant since the 70s. Most of the fake stock market is IP and real estate bubbles and overpriced companies that will never recover the valuation that they have in real value, only through inflation. Fiat currencies have also created a situation where the old and adults in general sell away their children’s futures and force them into debt without their consent so they can live lives of opulence and excess without having to actually work for it. This scam has went on for so long that now nearly half of Americans cannot find a job or will not work for the terrible wages and our IQ is dropping, and less then a quarter of people even own property without debt. The ones who do mostly own a worn down old wooden house. This is what fiat currency creates. It is find mentally just greed and unfairness and irresponsibility and an attempt for a terrible and inefficient state and corporate class to cling on to power for another century until the people starve and finally overthrow them.