I just am not seeing the necessity for this. All money is basically a promise put into IOU form, and depends upon both the giver and the receiver to agree upon the value. That’s why inflation happens at all, on a very macro scale, as promises tend to lose value over time. And broken promises often lead to things like hyperinflation, when the one backing the promise breaks their word.
The gold in this little work of performance art is not really all that valuable, as it can’t be used like an ingot. It’s also not of any value if no one will accept it.
Since 2010, Planet Money has had several episodes about the Gold Standard, including interviews with people who believe we should return to it. Overall, their conclusion is that this choice would be both foolish and dangerous, but they do allow the people who still believe in it a good chance to explain their point of view.
Episodes 252 and 253 are specifically about the Gold Standard.
Your point above was that the fact gold buys the same amount of bread it did 2000 years ago proves that gold is noninflationary, but doing the same comparison over a ten year period between bitcoin and pizza is somehow out of bounds? Your argument is devolving into parody.
Certainly governments can and do get up to fuckery. Pegging money to a gold standard will not eliminate fuckery from governments, though. It will merely encourage different types of fuckery.
This. Exactly this. Gold and silver as a basis for currency caused Panics in the US, roughly every 20 years: 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1933. These caused huge financial hardships, with the Panics of 1893 and 1933 being the worst [in no small part because in an agricultural society, a the effects of a financial panic are offset by peoples’ ability to grow and trade food. Not so in an industrial society, which in 97 and 33 the US mostly was.] Fears about the fluctuation in the prices of precious metals played a huge part in those panics. The US went off the gold standard in the early 1970s, and since then we’ve had recessions, but the financial hits have been much smoother. The recessions of the 1970s and early 1980s were caused by another commodity–oil–and the 2009 recession caused by rich people fsking with the system. Being off the gold standard has resulted in a remarkable steady economic system.
For all the books weirdness, the main character being fascist was not one of them. It’s a highly anti-authoritarian anti-government book.
After reading it years ago, I was confused why anyone worshiped the book. And the only reason I could see to vilify it was for the actions of the people who worship it (who seem to interpret it badly). The book is a fable, like something out of Aesops fables, intended to dramatize some point. About as useful as tortoise and the hare or scorpion and the toad. For Atlas Shrugged, the “moral” seems to be that entrenched interests will try to remain entrenched. Not that controversial. Big whoop-de-do. How the protagonists dealt with it; that’s silly fiction that too many readers seem to focus on and turn into a weird fetish or hatred.
And yeah, it’s written rather badly. Ghastly would be a fair assessment. The book ain’t worth the effort to love or hate.
The result would be a period of staggering deflation, and once (if?) the economy recovered it would be the same size as today, only the dollar (and other currencies) be worth a lot more.
They’d be worth whatever gold was worth. And when some company struck it rich and mined a few tons of gold, the economy would crash. Or, when there was a rumor that gold was going to become scarce, or become more common, the price would fluctuate one way or another, wiping out peoples’ ability to purchase. At least, that’s how it consistently worked when we were last on the gold standard.
" The sinister Cobra Commander inserts himself into the plot of Atlas Shrugged , accompanying the characters and trying to comprehend the difference between Rand’s heroes and villains, and discovers for himself that even evil has standards
Not sure that’s a useful concept if gold is the basis of “worth”. I don’t support a gold standard, but saying the economy would have to shrink because there isn’t enough gold is silly. As you point out, it would just get more unstable without a central bank that could compensate for fluctuations.
I like the coal mine in hyperinflation Germany that issued its own currency convertible into coal. Since everyone back then needed coal it was easy to understand the value of the currency and little trust was needed when you could just walk up to the mine and collect your coal if you couldn’t buy anything else for it.
No, it was highly authoritarian, unless you were one of the rich industrialists. Objectivism is based on hierarchies of money, and hierarchies are based on unequal distributions of power.
The story of Joe Bloggs, apprentice sanitation worker at Galt’s Gulch, would be very different to the story told in Atlas Shrugged.
I always think of the John Rogers quote about Atlas Shrugged:
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
WTF? Of course it does, as its price is expressed in dollars. Maybe you meant its value does not fluctuate, but there’s no way of knowing given how it is priced, and in any event they are digging more gold out of the ground all the time so its value must be changing, anyway.
Sorry if others made similar points already - too many posts to get through; it may take a while.
But there would be no sanitation workers. Because everyone at Galt’s Gulch thinks such work is beneath them and would never consider work for a collective need such as public health.
