Assuming everything you said is true, what do you propose be done about it?

-ITL-

Use an energy standard.
Energy is the most vital commodity there is, just about.

All paper money would have to be backed up by electricity or oil.

This will massively inspire people to generate their own power using renewable sources like wind and sun.

(credit for the idea of energy as money should go to Sid Meier of Firaxis)

A few points.

a) the United States has not been on the gold standard since 1933 and completely since 1971. In fact, there is no government currently in existence that is on the gold standard. So why should the US government of all organizations "supposed to be" on the standard to begin with?

b) gold and tungsten have a variation in mass. Basically, if you put two similar sized bars of "gold like material" next to each other, one of solid gold and one of gold plated tungsten and equated them... the gold would be heavier. The weight would exponentially increase in the varied amount of gold/gold-plated tungsten weighed. Would this mean that the people being duped (Asians in particular since they are the target of this gold scam) would not especially pay attention to this fundamental fact and weigh the product they were buying?


It's funny because in all of the conspiracy theories, no one ever really addresses the gigantic, whale sized "conspiracy" going on with the production with excess currency supply. It's on the news everyday.

I dont think Sarah Palin would mind this at all...

The real story of gold and the horrors it can tell , small Swiss commemorative coins issued in the sixties, subsequently found to contain large amounts of mercury..It transpired the gold was from Jewish victims of the holocaust, taken from their teeth fillings and paid to the Swiss bankers for war debts.

Well vid, as the paper-standard crumples, the going argument seems to be a return to the gold standard. I propose energy, as this can be used and generated and would be a catalyst to promote clean energy.

Any transaction requires a certain amount of faith in the honesty of the other; so trying to blame the asians for not weighing the gold they bought is to blame the victim.

Since energy is an intangible substance, how could it possibly measured?

Also, how would energy be exchanged?

Also, where would the energy be stored?

Also, what about individual consumers who can't generate energy in significant amounts? Would they have any voice in this system?

Also, how could the supply ever truly be calculated?

Let's start with that.

-ITL-

The problem is that the argument is faulty. As amazing as it sounds that America will be turned into a "rouge nation," the gold standard could never again be implemented within the framework of modern economies. One very simple reason is that supply is quite a bit less than demand. Suppose tomorrow that all of the world switched to the gold standard. What then? Gold supply is much much much less than the demand required to back all the worlds currency. You would have to recall trillions of dollars (valued) in order to legitimately back paper currency.

Another point is that gold standard does not replace paper currency, it reassures it in a tangible, commodity. Just to make that clear. Therein lies another fundamental flaw of a solid gold standard? the fact that gold is not a standard anymore, but an incredibly diverse commodity. It is as much a constant as tulip bulbs were in the 1630's. Take this past Friday for example. On the news that Dubai (UAE) would default on $80 Billion dollars in debt, there was a mad mad rush to the safety of the US dollar and an abrupt pullout of gold (a near 5% loss at one point). What does this mean? People are remembering the thousands of bubbles that have happened before and realize how over inflated gold is right now. Gold is not safe. So why should a government back its currency with it?

On the subject of energy, look to Dubai again. Recent speculation is that Dubai is going to sell off large parts of their energy reserves to compensate for the debt. Great? except that oil is a limited resource. It will pay off the short term losses, but look at the UAE as a whole. They have not generally invested in infrastructure beyond tertiary business and oil production. What happens when the Oil runs out? But there in itself is another point. Dubai has access to a resource that has constant projections for production, refining, distribution, etc. Heck, OPEC knows what you will pay at the pump half a year in advance (another conspiracy theory that no one talks about). You propose clean energy. What if there is a cataclysmic volcano eruption that blocks out the sun for 30 years and we develop an infrastructure in solar energy. What if we build thousands of windmills and find out that windmills are horribly inefficient. What if, and this is the kicker, we realize that even if we develop a 100% stable, reliable form of clean energy in the form of a trillion hamsters in a giant spinning wheels or cold fusion, there is no way to store that energy. Mass battery technology has not essentially changed much in the past 50 years. Where do you store it, how do you manage to monetize a fundamentally depreciating resource (unlike gold) even more problematic than oil?