Submitted 2 weeks ago by Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net to [deleted]
https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/fabcb9ff-cbe2-4c1a-8024-642ce0f7787a.jpeg
Shortly after Donnie finds out…
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
The Radical Left wants you to eat bugs and kale. Not on my watch! We are building a massive reserve of Big Mac Coins. High quality, high value! I met with the Hamburglar—great guy, very misunderstood—and he agrees: the Mac Coin is going to the moon. Crypto is fine, but you can’t eat a Bitcoin! A total disaster for Sleepy Joe, but a HUGE win for your stomach! 🍔💰 #BigMacStandard #FastFoodFinancials
Far too coherent, this was definitely written by an intern not DJT himself. ;-)
BitCoin? 🙂↔️🤚
Big Mac Coin? 🙂↕️☝️
While a big mac has intrinsic value, the value of the coin is based on trusting McD honouring the agreement. Will they still accept the coins 10 years from now when they have forgotten they were issued? Will they be sued out of existence after their meat substitute mushroom burger left in the sun for too long comes alive an eats 9 customers and and a minivan?
The value of the dollar is based on trusting the US central bank and/or governmemt to be responsible enough.
While you should not blindly trust either McD or the government, the latter has a longer track record, even though they seem like they are going to eat a metaphorical minivan soon.
I dunno, I wouldn’t take a bet on wether the US will outlive McDonald’s or vice versa.
Also, the gold standard was based on trust too. You trusted that the government would honour your request to exchange dollars for gold. There was nothing magical about being on the gold standard.
Money is just IOUs created by the government. The government uses them to pay for goods and services it wants. If the government wants someone to guard a building, they pay in IOUs. Then, every year, the government taxes everybody in the country and demands that they return a certain number of government IOUs to the country. It’s this obligation to pay taxes that gives their IOUs their value.
The person who was paid to guard a building is left holding a pile of IOUs. Fundamentally, they’re worthless. But, there are other people in the country who have to pay taxes and aren’t doing jobs for the government. So, the guy with the IOUs goes to the farmer and says “I know you’re going to need to pay taxes and don’t have any IOUs, I’ll trade you some of my IOUs for some of your vegetables”. After that exchange the farmer has enough IOUs to pay the government at tax time, and the guard still has enough to pay his own taxes.
Also, the gold standard was based on trust too. You trusted that the government would honour your request to exchange dollars for gold.
You also trusted that the supply of gold would not suddenly increase and devalue gold as a commodity. Or that demand for the specie doesn’t collapse because… let’s say, hypothetically, the world’s largest economy stops keeping it as a reserve currency.
The former happened in the second half of the 16th century, in an event known as the Price Revolution.
The latter was part of the Nixon Shock, following the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold.
Incidentally, Nixon exiting the Gold Standard could more rightly be pinned on Charles DeGaulle.
In February 1965, French president Charles de Gaulle announced his intention to redeem U.S. dollar reserves for gold at the official exchange rate. By 1966, non-U.S. central banks held $14 billion in U.S. dollars, while the United States had only $13.2 billion in gold reserves, of which only $3.2 billion was available to cover foreign holdings.
In March 1968, the London Gold Pool collapsed.
In May 1971, West Germany left the Bretton Woods system, unwilling to sell further Deutschmarks for U.S. dollars.[10] In the following three months, the U.S. dollar dropped 7.5% against the Deutschmark, and other nations began to demand redemption of their U.S. dollars for gold.[10] On August 5, 1971, the United States Congress released a report recommending devaluation of the dollar in an effort to protect their currency against “foreign price-gougers”.[10] Also in August, French president Georges Pompidou sent a battleship to New York City to retrieve French gold deposits.[11] On August 9, 1971, as the dollar dropped in value against European currencies, Switzerland left the Bretton Woods system.[10] Pressure intensified on the United States to leave the Bretton Woods system. On August 11, Britain requested $3 billion in gold be moved from Fort Knox to the Federal Reserve in New York.[11] As Paul Volcker, then Undersecretary of the United States Department of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs, later put it:
Will they be sued out of existence after their meat substitute mushroom burger left in the sun for too long comes alive an eats 9 customers and and a minivan?
Idk if I’m going to pick a fight with a restaurant chain that can harness that kind of firepower.
Honestly I’d bet McDonalds will outlive the US government. It’s one of those companies that is literally too big to fail
Since McDonalds doesn’t keep a Big Mac in a vault for every coin they issue, but rather make one whenever a coin is spent, it’s the exact same principle as other currency. And like other currency, its value derives from everyone’s trust in McDonalds’ ability to keep making Big Macs in the future.
It’s not the same principle because it’s always one Big Mac. All the dollar stores are one dollar and up stores now.
Yeah, but a Big Mac today isn’t the same it used to be, either.
They still use 1/10 pound patties, but they weigh them uncooked, and meat today has more water in it that’s lost during cooking.
It’s not the same principle because it’s always one Big Mac.
Big Macs used to sell for $.50 and now they sell for $8. So one could argue the coins are actually a hedge against inflation.
Incidentally, US Forever Stamps serve a similar purpose.
Why do people assume gold has intrinsic value? I just saw today they were freaking out about how much gold is fluctuating, it is just as imaginary as the dollar.
Technically the Big Mac does provide some form of intrinsic value in the form of food for the homless. but for the average person it would actually give them more value to take the big mac away so it has sorta a negative value, negative intrinsic value, I think I just invented that.
This comment actually made me think and look it up. I never thought about this. Why is gold valuable?
Yeah you were basically right. Because societies decided it would be. I mean gold has some practical applications but nothing that would justify it’s price.
First link I found says this:
Gold’s value is ultimately a social c- onstruction; its worth is sustained by ourcollective agreement about its importance and our belief in its future value.
Gold’s physical properties—its lustrous quality, relative scarcity, durability, and difficulty of extraction—reinforce and justify its perceived value.
Unlike other precious metals, gold strikes a balance of being rare enough to be precious but abundant enough to serve as a practical medium of exchange.
So I guess rare enough yet abundand enough and durable enough.
Wild tbh
Planet money had great episode on this topic if you’re interested npr.org/…/-price-of-gold-periodic-table-elements
That’s a bit light on the “balance” many metals are precious and fairly rare, their physical characteristics like being poisonous, being visually indistinguishable from various cheap metals or malleable to the degree they will wear out as a coin are some issues.
Now look up conspiracy theorists who are obsessed with gold standard and its abandonment.
But without gold how will we ever make high quality HDMI cables?
Btw, we just transmuted our first gold just recently.
Even so, in a scenario where all the currencies fall apart, Gold and Silver are very probable to become the basis of wealth.
Nowadays, stuff like SiIicon and Copper are pretty high value (and similarly, Germanium), but they really depend a lot upon hard to measure purity which goes with high-technology.
So Gold and Silver, which are easier to determine with lower technology (unless someone uses high-technology to spoof them) and also easier to make into useful products, will tend to hold intrinsic value.
Value of iron and others, break down due to abundance, while steel depends upon technology and expertise.
Also because gold and silver are what people will mentally default to. Even if you develop a quick, easy, and free test to determine the purity of cobalt or neodymium and demonstrate how they’re more functionally valuable, people will still default to trading au and ag to buy the amount of those metals they need. Copper would be next.
So why gold? Because everyone knows that enough people will trade for it, in the same way you know your landlord, grocer, and bar will all take your country’s currency, and that’s why you accept it in exchange for your labor
The word “fluctuating” implies the price of gold has been going up and down. That is not what has happened since the Commander-In-Thief took office.
Market price of one ounce of gold over the last five years: Image
That’s a zoom out of 5 years Gold prices don’t move in a straight line. On a day‑to‑day and week‑to‑week basis, there are ups and downs - it zigzags it is absolutely fluctuating but the bigger problem is the sharp incline which suggests it is in a bubble.
And none of any of that has anything to do with anything I said.
Gold is nothing but an uncertainty indicator proxy, if gold price goes up, people are unsure in the market and future returns and thus buy gold, if the price is low the market and economy feels stable and people don’t buy gold
Question for you:
Is there any gold involved in the process of you typing and posting that comment?
Could there maybe be, I dunno, gold, literally as a direct component in, or vital to the manufacturing process of … maybe some kind of computer chip or something?
That coin is clever because some people would rather keep the coin and the coin probably costs less to make than the Big Mac.
Yeah my first thought was “dang that’s neat how do I get the coin?” and I don’t even like Big Macs.
seems like OPs statement rings true if they’re worth upwards of 5 dollars
This feels like a viral ad
It’s working, I want a Big Mac coin! McD messed up my order plenty of times, and I never got a voucher, they just fix the problem. And I’d feel weird pretending to be upset, just to get a nice shiny Big Mac coin.
our money has no value anymore since it was taken off the gold standard
Our money has value because it can be redeemed to pay down US-based debts, particularly tax debts. This is - and has always been - the real value of any currency. Go ask David Graeber for the details. But the TL;DR; is that we use coinage as a form of extortion. “You need to give us stuff to get coins which you can then pay us to avoid the threat of state violence.” Roman soldiers working overseas were paid in coins, while they were charged with collecting these coins as a tax, in order to integrate conquered economies into the Roman Empire. You had to provide goods/services to the soldiers so they could take them off you every taxation period.
Literally, money is a protection racket.
Also, who the fuck wants to eat a Big Mac? That shit’s disgusting.
Sounds like we are one step away from Mcdonald crypto coin backed by the big mac
It would be, if enshitification didn’t exist. Who knows if McDo decides one day to reduce meat or other expensive ingredients? Or substitute ingredients?
Guarantee there’s terms and conditions somewhere that make these coins worthless under probably a thousand different conditions.
It’s like Schrodinger’s Currency.
It’s either full value or zero value.
We got McBretten Wood system before gta vi
GTA is for scabs now anyways
The dollar is backed by being able to exchange it for not going to prison for tax dodging
The golden arches standard
Bout fucking time
until they just decide the promotion is over and they don’t have to accept them anymore
How old is this post? USD was fully off the gold standard by 1971.
Except that Big Mac is the worst beef burger McD has.
So to me the value is negative. I will pay to not eat it.
You don’t have to eat it, just like you didn’t have to exchange your money for gold.
I will not believe a single person who likes BigMacs.
I never met one in person.
You can pay me for you not to eat it. Thats fine
if they plastic it’s only a matter of time before someone starts counterfeiting.
It wouldn’t even need to be all that good. It’s being exchanged by a minimum wage teenage employee, whom I PROMISE YOU does not give a shit.
I’ve seen people spend that hollywood prop money at mcdonalds. The kind that says “this is not valid currency” printed in decent size text.
So the counterfit doesn’t need to be exact.
That’s a felony though isn’t it? While a fake plastic coin likely no one will care.
Big Macs are gross though.
You don’t have to like them. You just need to believe that there is someone that believes there’s someone that likes them. Simple.
Come to think about it, mass buying food vouchers wherever possible during times of extreme currency instability is probably not a novel idea.
People traded black market food-voucher derivatives in the Brazilian hyper inflation…
It made it easier to redeem all of them as soon as you got a hold of them, because they wouldn’t buy the same thing through the entire month. Natural gas vouchers were more stable, though, so those only traded at face value.
The McDonald’s corporation is probably more stable than the US treasury at this point in time.
Fiat currency is socially constructed and would cease to exist if we stopped believing in it. It’s just that the value of gold works exactly the same way.
Isn’t fist currency based on taxation and the value represented by the tax?
We have communal effort, we tax the community to pay for that effort to pay the workers, and the value created by that labor is thus the value of the currency.
The work makes debt, we tax to pay down that debt. The currency represents the movement of the value between parties.
So long as movement is sustained we have value that backs the currency.
Thus so long as we have community we have value.
How is the USD stacking up versus the Big Mac coin.
You know, if you were someone who eats there frequently, Big Mac coin forgery might actually be a profitable endeavor…
Little_mouse@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Given the existance of The Big Mac Index, which seeks to compare global currencies and their respective buying power, this is actually fascinating.
Rubanski@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Interestingly, Taiwan has one of the lowest big Mac prices but that doesn’t really correlate with their purchasing power
blarghly@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Honestly, even more fascinating. …why???