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To: american spirit
Gold is just something, whose value fluctuates and has been used as currency, here and there. Some nations have based their monetary systems on salt; yes, SALT! For millennia, salt was more precious than gold.

You can call our money " fiat ", till the cows come home and pine for the days when gold and silver was used, but what you ignore, is that metal coinage has been debased and tampered with, from ancient Roman times on ward.

Do you know WHY the slang term " two bits " came about ? It's because gold doubloons were hacked at, and " two bits " of it, were used, when a smaller price/coinage was needed. They didn't use scale, it wasn't accurate at all, and so much for your idea that gold or silver is better than paper money.

Crooks used to " shave " the edges of coins. Coins are farm easier to damage than paper money.

Money, whatever form it take, from gold to silver, to salt, to pepper, to cowrie shells, to beads, is only worth what others agree it is!

194 posted on 02/05/2004 2:43:33 PM PST by nopardons
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To: nopardons
You've hardly covered any new ground here but more than anything else you can think of, gold has endured longer with more widespread acceptance than anything else out there...whether it's beads, pepper or FRN's. The point is we had a much more stable inflation rate and debt levels before being taken off the gold standard.
197 posted on 02/05/2004 2:51:03 PM PST by american spirit (ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION = NATIONAL SUICIDE)
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To: nopardons
Money ... is only worth what others agree it is!

That's an interesting comment. It says money is ALL relative.

Why the same logic might be applied to the Constitution -- the Constitution only means what others agree it is! Those others being, perhaps, the Supreme Court, or maybe the Democratic Caucus, or maybe the Trial Lawyers. It's all relative too!

Or to the Bible, why that only means what others agree it means! It has no absolute meaning.

Fiat everything!

Doesn't work. Oh, for a while it does. Sure. Small meanders are transitive. One can find one's way from point A to point B with assurance. But in after some time the accumulation becomes a tight knot of cornel bark, its intricate twists and turns no longer allow any examination of value. There's nothing to say about it besides that it is a tight complex knot, incapable of ever being untied.

Do you see the knot of paper? Of fiat money?

It is there, it is huge, it is complex as all get out.

209 posted on 02/05/2004 4:59:11 PM PST by bvw
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