This seems at odds with big chunks of the economy. When you buy any consumer tech, you do so knowing full well that that the widget will be half the price in 2 years. That’s enormous deflation, yet the economy in electronic widgets apparently functions just fine.
Edit: I suspect much of the problem is the economists assumption that people’s priority in life is to maximise their net assets in the long run, when in fact most people just get on with life.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha … hahahahahahahahahahahaha
You can also add value to your potatoes by making them into vodka.
You’ve all read Atlas Shrugged, I take it? For those who haven’t, the main character, a godlike fascist wet dream who alone is the saviour of humanity (whose name I forget so for no reason I’ll call him “Stalin”) loses faith in fiat currency and replaces it with trading in small pieces of real gold. I think there’s more to the novel than that but it’s so ghastly I’ve blotted it out of my memory.
It’s exactly the opposite of Lipwig’s ideas. The entire plot of Making Money was about the man in the golden suit’s attempts to remove the city from the gold standard, and it mercilessly mocked people who fetishize shiny yellow rocks throughout the book. The eventual “Golem Standard” dollar is a wonderful metaphor for the source of all value being Labour, and the backing of a currency being the full faith and credit (and implied military might) of the country that issued it.
This is also why Going Postal and Making Money are (in my opinion) the best two Discworld novels. Not only are they great novels in and of themselves, they’re also carefully argued political and economic satire.
This is a funny statement how? There is a fixed amount of bitcoins. Once they are all released, there can be no more. Government currencies can be printed as much as the government wants, creating inflation. By definition, bitcoin is completely non-inflationary.
Again, stop comparing bitcoin to the price of the US dollar and try to imagine the US dollar pegged to bitcoin. Or to gold. This takes away the governments power to inflate a currency, which hurts everyone.
Short-term economic variances do not really apply. Gold is a long-term hedge against inflation. It is not a great investment either. For over 2000 years, gold and silver have been used for this goal.
A common indicator of this is the price of a loaf of bread. In 500 BC, one ounce of gold bought approximately 350 loaves of bread. This ratio (with of course some variations) has held up for thousands of years. Not a great investment but simple security.
Or would you have rather had all your savings in Venezuelan bolívars?
Citation needed.
If you are going to go for bonkers Mormon currency accept no substitute for the original. Get yourself a several hundred dollar bill (low denominations are I believe more collectible, I digress) from the Kirtland Anti-banking Society. Backed by pure real estate. How can it go down? God isn’t making any more of it. Get in now!
First one I found quite quickly. There are lots of these comparisons around for different commodities.
What would you prefer to own today? $200 dollars from 1900 in paper money or 10 ounces of gold purchased for $200 in 1900? (Gold was around $20 an ounce in 1900, when the US had a gold standard.)
Good lord, we’ve got the BB shop pushing goldbug nonsense now? 
(I freely admit to an almost draconic desire to own some gold coins, because of how heavy and shiny and yellow and golden they are… 
But I’m well aware it’s not an especially rational urge, and that going on gold standard would be a disastrously bad idea.)
You misunderstand. I’m genuinely not going to argue with anyone who thinks currency needs to be tied to gold. That’s just genuinely stupid and life is far too short. I simply wanted a link to exactly what civilisation a loaf of bread was worth 1/350th of an ounce of gold in 500 BCE. I have some obvious candidates and there are interesting things to learn about what money is based on from them (credit) but I don’t want to argue that (as it’s utterly pointless to argue about gold based currency which would not have been the case in any of those middle Eastern civilisations that I’m thinking of) just wanted to know specifically which one and when.
Bills will always maintain at least the intrinsic value of being able to wipe your ass with them. Try and do that with gold.
Most people may spend money as soon as they earn it, buying stuff they think they need right now, but most money belong to a small minority of people. What those people do have a disproportionate effect on the economy.
Only an imbecile would purchase currency to spend. In case you forgot, it works like this-first you earn, then you spend, then your spending becomes someone else’s income. And it all starts with the government spending into the economy.
Widgets go down in price due to efficiency gains.
Yes, agreed, it’s exactly the opposite. (Separately It would have been sweet to see M von Lipwig tackle the taxation system in another book as was hinted at towards the end.)
It just struck me that that might be the opposite of a disaster. Without the no-limit economy, we might have to figure out a way to live within our planetary means. Food would still be grown. Houses would still be built. Anything we could do now could still be done, but not for speculative money.
That’s why I think a joul standard would be good. Divide up the actual energy each operation makes/uses and see what your real world profit is. That’s how you understand real efficiency.
And another thing - hoax or not, I still really want one of those gold bills. Something so beautiful deserves to exist.
If that were true, then the exchange rate between gold and silver wouldn’t fluctuate much. See how the price charts split dramatically in 2013?
That’s due to increases in gold speculation.
There actually is something to that, if you look at the “barter value” of gold. Very roughly speaking, it has stayed consistent. (Very roughly) For instance, in the mid-1800’s the value of an ounce of gold would buy you a pretty nice suit. Today, the same is true. The actual dollars changing hands is vastly different, but the goods obtained fairly comparable. Roughly and trying to smooth out the peaks and valleys. Yeah, as far as I can tell, economics is black magic.
