At 07:03 PM 11/19/01 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >On 19 Nov 2001, at 17:40, Tim May wrote: > >> On Monday, November 19, 2001, at 05:03 PM, David Honig wrote: >> > >> > Yes, but what this thread has ignored is that gold (and other >> > densely precious things) were valued *in and of themselves* and so >> > using them as money was not symbolic. You traded your goat >> > for a goat's worth of gold; if trust evaporated overnight >> > the gold is still worth something. >> >> Not really. It was still a matter of belief that that gold coin, or gold >> nugget, would be worth something. >> >> "In and of itself" is a very vague and intangible concept. >> >> --Tim May > >I understand your point, you can't eat gold, it won't keep you >warm and dry in a storm, it really is mostly only good for >you in that other people will also give you stuff for it BUT >I think the other side is pretty clear also. Gold isn't like, >say, the good will of the king, which becomes wortheless as soon >as there's a new king. I suspect that it never ocurred to most people >during gold standard days that gold could in principle become >wothless (although alchemists understood perfectly well that >being able to turn lead into gold is only the key to riches if >you alone posess the secret). > >Anyway, there are very good reasons why gold is better than >anything else as a basis of currency.
BTW, I wasn't arguing it is "better" nowadays; I'd think the kilowatt-hour (aka joules) would be more useful today. I was thinking about how the use of inert metals (etc) arose historically. At first the 'trust' was minimal and it was a 1:1 trade for the more portable gold. >2) Gold does not rust or decay. Again, very important if you >have to keep reserves. Also why it was available to cavemen, and why it was shiny, which was attractive. >3) Gold is uniform. Diamonds are all different, oil comes in >a plethora of types and grades. Tobacco was used as money >in the early days of the american colonies, with the (easily >predictable) result that people smokes the good stuff and used the >crappiest stuff they could find to pay their debts. Nothing >could be purer than pure gold. Isotopically pure gold :-) Watts are 'uniform'; so is an N% solution of ethanol (if you want to put your joules in your car, etc.) >4) Gold is elemental. It's much more plausible that somebody will >come up with an economic way to synthesize, say, diamonds than >gold. > >5) Gold makes women sleep with you. I don't know why they >like it, but they do. They sleep with you because of your large cattle herd only they have accepted abstracted value and settle for gold or stocks...
