Comment on I promise I'm not
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days agoThe 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.
DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
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.