frankj1 wrote:from a different thread...
ray, even ardent supporters of virtually any politician (except Trumpers) know what happens as the bastids settle in, but as rfenster keeps trying to explain to you, 98.2% of the people are dedicated to making things work for themselves and loved ones once they realize what the rules are, fair or not...like paper money, for example.
Great, you win, we know it has no intrinsic value. But it's still taken in trade for goods and services everywhere (that matters) in the entire world. Even you have to trade your gold bullions in for paper if you want to buy a cigar at the shpo.
Though consider the concept of "value" in a capitalist (or even socialist) civilization for a moment. What is a piece of art worth? A talented Quarterback? A bowl of soup? Most of us would answer "whatever the market is willing to pay". Well, we are part of "the market" and it appears that the vast majority of the world's population is willing to accept a representative "value" of certain paper that is well above the value of the tree pulp material from which it is made. No one feels paper itself has innate qualities and properties of significance, but it's globally accepted as representing purchasing power.
Yup, crazy for sure. Hocus pocus too. Bet that you don't tear it up and throw it away though.
So we'll keep trying to amass more of it and use it until such time as you are inspired to leave the discount cigar forum you use a pulpit and lead the world to share your valid conclusions about reintroducing precious metals as currency.
This may require you put on pants and leave the basement...but we will support your efforts. (try to laugh, it won't hurt)
Frank, your sageness is overrated.
I don't need a grammar school level understanding of what money is.
The questions are, do you believe money belongs to us (the people) or the government and their central bank cartel?
A commie once told me that money belongs to the government and the central bank...yes he was a good little Marxist who read his Communist Manifesto.
Do you believe we should have a sound monetary system, one that honestly serves commerce, protects purchasing power, and hinders government corruption and enormous debt? Or no, we should bury our heads in the sand with the "vast majority of the world's population" and take whatever punishment the current system hands out until its inevitable collapse with a GREAT GREAT DEPRESSION? Then the vast majority will then wake from their slumber and ask "I don't git it, how could this have happened to us, who i responsible for this? And the majority of statist experts and politicians will say "no one could have possibly predicted this" That's what they always say whenever a bubble bursts. Of course, they ignored every warning by those that rightly predicted it.
Do you even have any idea how the U.S. and the world have got to this point? OK, I know you don't.
Murray Rothbard wrote a little book in 1963 titled "What Has Government Done to Our Money?" It had to be updated in the following decades to reflect the changes that led to the current totally fiat system. In it, he explains the phases that European and American monetary policy went though since WWI that led to the decline of commodity-based money to the totally fiat funny money system we now have.
Rothbard's prognosis is as perceptive today as it was then. I know there are some people here who don't want to hear it. ๐ ๐ ๐
Quote:As we face the future, the prognosis for the dollar and for the international monetary system is grim indeed. Until and unless we return to the classical gold standard at a realistic gold price, the international money system is fated to shift back and forth between fixed and fluctuating exchange rates, with each system posing unsolved problems, working badly, and finally disintegrating. And fueling this disintegration will be the continued inflation of the supply of dollars and hence of American prices, which show no sign of abating. The prospect for the future is accelerating and eventually runaway inflation at home, accompanied by monetary breakdown and economic warfare abroad. This prognosis can only be changed by a drastic alteration of the American and world monetary system: by the return to a free-market commodity money such as gold, and by removing government totally from the monetary scene.
https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money