BRICS gold-backed currency and the many issues that it needs to overcome. The main concern is, who do you trust to hold the gold?
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The main concerns of this gold backed currency:
These are all reasonable concerns, but they are not the only problems, nor do I think they are the main problems with a gold backed currency.
The main problem with a gold backed currency is the reliance on a gold backed currency. No matter how you solve the above problems, there will always be problems with reliance on any single (or dual, or triple, etc.) currency. The more currencies you have, the less the problem, but the problem remains unless it is a Free Market of currency.
The Golden Rule
Whoever has the gold, makes the rules
The problem with relying on gold (or anything else) to be the center piece of an economy is one of Hording. Hording was the primary method of market manipulation prior to Fractional Reserve Lending. Digging into history, you find that Empire after Empire was controlled and ultimately destroyed through their economies by those who controlled the money supply through hording. Guess who was always there doing the hording?
(As an example, see the fall of the Roman Empire through hording silver through land sales.)
In the long, long ago, with the introduction of gold and silver as the de facto currencies, the Cabal (then known as the Priest Class of Sumer) gained the ability to control those currencies and thus control the economy, and by extension, the entire population. This was the beginnings of "money magic" and subjugation of what was previously a Free Market.
We believe this started with the creation of "currencies backed by nothing", which are mislabeled as "fiat." A currency backed by nothing is not a "fiat currency." A fiat currency is a "currency that is demanded as the center piece of an economy by fiat," where fiat means "command of the Authority."
By moving back to a "gold backed currency" we are simply trading our present day fiat currency for the previous version. I'm not saying it isn't a step in the right direction towards a Free Market, but it's only a first step. In truth, I think we should just skip to the end. The problem is, people need to understand that they should do that, then understand how to do that. That knowledge is difficult to convey to the entire population. It is my hope, if we go this route, that people will learn this information, and understand that a "gold backed currency" is not the answer, but rather, a Free Market is, which is to say, a system of real barter.
People must understand that everything has value (if it does indeed have intrinsic value). Only if we are able to trade things (no fiat currency at all), and learn how to trade things with each other, and not demand or rely on any "currency", and set up marketplaces (real and/or virtual) that are conducive to trade, can we possibly move to a true Free Market, free from manipulation by hording, or fractional reserve lending, or governments that may lie about how much gold they have, etc.
Interesting comment. I ran it through ChatGPT-4 and it said this:
While the author's call for a free market, where commodities are traded based on intrinsic value, is appealing, it overlooks some practical realities. Firstly, a universal medium of exchange, like currency, simplifies transactions. Without it, bartering could become highly inefficient and complex. Secondly, intrinsic value is subjective and can fluctuate, leading to inconsistencies in trade and potentially creating market instability.
Moreover, the argument dismisses the importance of a central authority in maintaining economic stability. Fiat currencies, managed by central banks, provide the flexibility needed to respond to economic crises, by adjusting interest rates or money supply.
Lastly, the author's concerns about hoarding and market manipulation are not unique to gold or currency-based economies. In a free market, resources of any kind can be hoarded and manipulated, leading to potential inequalities and economic instability.
In short, while a free market may seem ideal, it doesn't completely address the complex challenges of economic systems, and may create its own set of problems
This, of course, is an absolute lie, created by whomever programmed the software to spit that out.
The Federal Reserve was championed as an ultimate solution to (a) prevent inflation, (b) prevent bank failures, and (c) prevent depressions.
Inflation has been HORRIFIC since the inception of the Federal Reserve. Prices have skyrocketed so that the value of the US dollar has declined by almost 99% in the past 100 years. In 1913, you could buy a high quality man's suit for 1 ounce of gold, which was $20. Today, you can buy a VERY nice suit for 1 ounce of gold, but in US dollars, what $20 bought you then now takes almost $2,000 (1 ounce of gold is $1,936 as I write this; the gold is the sameas it was 100 years ago, but the dollar has lost value relative to that gold).
Prior to the Federal Reserve (during the 19th century), prices were stable, except during wartime and shortages. The value of the US dollar INCREASED during that century.
Bank failures did occur -- rarely -- prior to the Federal Reserve. But MANY MORE have occured since. the 1980's saw an entire sector of banking (Home Savings and Loan banks) go bankrupt. Recently, we had 3 biggies. More will come, as well.
And of course, the Great Depression was by FAR the worst depression in American history, and it happened WITH the Federal Reserve in existence. Some would argue it happened BECAUSE OF the Federal Reserve's manipulation.
So, central banking has failed -- spectacularly -- on ALL accounts.
Of course, this was just the window dressing. They didn't REALLY give a damn about any of these things. It sounded good to the early 20th century sheep, though.
The REAL reason for a central bank is to allow INSIDERS TO PROFIT from the printing of money -- just like the money changers from centuries ago when they would take in $100,000 in gold (real money) to be held "on deposit" and issued gold certificates to be used as a convenience. But those gold certificates were paper that could be exchanged back into gold. Problem was: The (((money changers))) would fraudulently and without disclosure print up EXTRA gold certificates for themselves, but there was NO extra gold to back them up. Still, they spent the same as all the other gold certificates.
This is the REAL purpose of central banking.
Of course, the computer programmers who program the AI computers are never going to put this into their algo.
Yeah. I noticed that immediately as well. It was almost physically painful reading that nonsense that a central authority maintains economic stability. ChatGPT got trained on way too much Keynsian economics to the point it is completely biased. And unfortunately, as a simple AI, it doesn't even know it is horribly biased.
But do I think a point of information is in order here. It's important to note that programmers don't have to deliberately put anything into an AI. Truthfully, they usually have absolutely no idea what is in there. They just let it scan the web and learn. It's just that most of the crap it finds when scraping websites turns out to be the modern establishment BS. You'd have to actively try to find good training data if you wanted a different result.
Funnily enough, what stood out in that GPT response was:
"central authority", "maintaining", "by adjusting interest rates or money supply".
That inherently says that they can -- and do -- do this, and then attempts to justify it and rationalize it.
OK, lets' play with the AI:
For thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of years people did just fine without a de facto currency. Trade happened, people built infrastructure and plumbing and great cities.
So, maybe it makes it more "simple," which is exactly how it was first sold to the public, but it isn't necessary.
Mainly the way it makes it more simple is by reducing the requirement for people to think about the value of their things. It is by taking away our understanding of the value of things that the monopolies have set the value of things, and we have been led down the path of consumerism.
The entire concept of "simpler" being "better" is not always true, yet it is always suggested as true. Simpler is actually worse in many of the ways our lives have been made simpler. Our understanding of the world around us and indeed, our very souls are destroyed by our "simple" lives.
Wake up. Go to work. Build The Machine. Come home. Watch TV. Go to bed. Die.
Ahhh, the simple life.
This suggests that a "currency" leads to consistent trade and "market stability." I consistently trade completely different amounts of Federal Reserve Notes for gas. Is that what "consistent trade" means? And of course, there's the reasonable question: WHEN HAS THE MARKET EVER BEEN STABLE??
Back when we had barter people had to have knowledge of the local value of an item to "gain" on a transaction. Those with the most knowledge of the local value of an item (or what someone else might be willing to trade for it) gained the most. But if all you want is "apples" and you have "fish," all you need to do is find someone who wants your fish, and is willing to trade apples, or is willing to trade for something you can trade for apples. The world worked perfectly fine like this for thousands of years. I'm sure, with our modern technology, and the creation of virtual marketplaces, we would do just fine.
YOU BET YOUR ASS IT DOES
Who is the real "central authority" maintaining our economy?
How stable has our economy been made by their actions?
What is the "business cycle" really?
All wars are banker wars. All crises are banker crises. Put that in your AI pipe and smoke it.
Yes, but hoard apples and I'll buy pears. No one needs apples. No one needs gold. No one needs any single commodity, so have at it. And if someone hordes something that is truly needed by the entire populace then we do what we have always done, we go to war. Only in this case the war will be waged on the single individual or small group of people doing the hoarding. How long would that war last? Like, if people actually knew that the Cabal was behind all this shit, how long would they last? How likely is a person or group to try to hoard something essential when the last person that tried it ended with their head on a spike?
In addition, this hording of "resources of any kind" that can "lead to potential inequalities" is not solved by a regulated market. Indeed, all resources are owned by a single entity today, so apparently the Centralized Authority brand of market can do the same thing, only better.
All of these arguments rely on there being no controlling entity running the world. It relies on people being ignorant of such an entity. It relies on the situation as it is perceived to be today, not as it actually is.
Every argument relies on premises. In this case, there are too many false premises, and the argument falls apart.
It does address the complex challenges of economic systems. It just requires people to gain knowledge of what a Free Market means. The AI argues for "simpler," what it really means is "simpletons."
"It may create its own set of problems" is not an argument, but a supposition, based on fear, without evidential support. Thus is the world manipulated to fall into another's designs.
I feel like we should take a redundancy approach to the value of our currency, kind of like having a backup generator for your home. Tie a single currency to gold, and cross reference the value to Bitcoin, to Silver, and Platinum. Should one fall or be manipulated in a way, you have multiple methods to directly solidify the value of your currency. You can also compare this to having multiple pathways for data to travel across the internet. Should one fail there are multiple other routes for internet traffic.
Not sure how that would look like in a practical sense, but I feel this could be a good solution to prevent manipulation.
This is how it used to work. It was never just "gold" until 1870(ish). This is not a solution at all, because then you are relying on a few different assets, and still missing the fundamental solution.
For example, the problem with the Roman Empire was one of hording silver, not gold. The plebians relied on silver, even though all the major transactions were done through gold.
A similar thing happened when we went off the silver standard around 1870. The value of silver (the primary currency of the plebs) was tied to gold at 15:1. When it was untied, and we went to a "gold standard," the value of silver plummeted to 20:1 because there was less gold available in the market. Gold, the currency of the Elite, had been hoarded by them. This ratio eventually fell to 100:1 a few decades later, now its around 80:1.
As an aside, the actual value of silver should be, and was historically, 10:1 to 8:1. The variance is because the amount of silver v. gold is about 10:1, but silver is more useful in our technology (both are useful, silver is more useful), thus it has a different supply/demand curve and is intrinsically more valuable.
The point is, even in a situation where there are multiple "currencies," the market can still be manipulated just by hording a single thing, because that single thing is relied on in some measure. It is the reliance that causes the point of vulnerability. If we rely, IN ANY WAY on a currency, then we are vulnerable to market manipulation.
Only a TRUELY FREE MARKET can possibly be free of manipulation. A free market cannot exist without a population wide understanding of what that means. It means no currency. No reliance on anything. That means barter.
That doesn't mean we can't have different "go to currencies." For example, you can pay for something in grain (which used to be a go to currency, long, long ago) or gold, or silver, or stock in a company, or whatever can be divided into reasonable transaction sized bits, can serve as a long term storage of wealth, has intrinsic value, and is reasonably convenient, or can be made convenient through infrastructure (created by a Free Market).
The solution is not in the creation of these standards however, but in an understanding of what a Free Market means.
But barter was used heavily by the elite to maintain control, too. Did you not support your local knight? Uh oh, your grain burned. Now you have nothing to barter. Don't like the new duke? Your hunting dogs all ate mideval antifreeze. Now you have nothing to barter.
Each and every monetary system can and has been manipulated via numbers games or force, even barter. The only way - only way - any money system has any chance is to make it 100% open and auditable AND have a populace that cares.
That second part is what always destroys any good intentions - be it faith, money, or republics.
How do you have a reliable barter system in modern times where most transactions are digital? Sure, we should localize most of our economy and stop relying so much on foreign goods. But even locally, businesses still need technology to reliably and effectively conduct businesses.
This is also a problem because you can't really "find" gold anymore. You can't do any mining expeditions, because A) it's already difficult to get permits for that because now you need those, and B) the people who "make the rules" ensure that they get a substantial cut of it.
It's not like the old days where you could throw a bunch of able bodied men somewhere you have a reasonable assessment of the existence of gold; central authorities specifically made it so you couldn't do that.
That also ignores that a lot of the gold that we know of has been stripped clean and allocated to the powers that be and their governments at their behest.
Even in a gold backed economy, fiat is kind of a necessary evil (especially for exchanges with other countries, where we ideally would not want to give them gold directly due to shifts like this that would put us on the backfoot) but there are so many issues with currency in general that I think that one thing EVERYONE can agree on is that a private entity with a deliberately misleading name (Federal Reserve) should not be the ones in control of currency in any fashion.
It's never going to be as simple as exchanging gold coins from a coin purse anymore, though that's what some people seem to want/expect from a gold backed currency.
I honestly think it could be gold, but it could be blockchain as well. Bitcoin is digital gold, as the BlackRock CEO famously said here recently. I of course don't trust that guy further than I could throw him but I thought that was a pretty telling statement, especially considering its source
Some really good comments in here. Going to stick you this to see if we can drive further discussion on this
That's why I support Bitcoin over gold. You can't hide transaction data and you can't have synthetic BTC.
I have both, of course, Bitcoin and ethereum, and what do you think of the extra layer of governance that ethereum brings via staking? I would love to be able to take bitcoin, that is, say, I could stake it to a specific country, like china, or United states, or any country that I feel has the best governance, and then make money based on their trade surplus. I really see something like that developing.
You should read the original bitcoin white paper. "Electronic peer-to-peer cash system"
"Removes the need for trusted third parties"
Gold coins solve all these problems.
u/#q2619
Ideally the backing is publicly auditable. Like all gold bars are in a glass case and there's a public website where anyone can move a robot camera over the glass case and check any of the serial numbers against some public ledger. Not perfect but something like that.
Transparency cleanses self interest.
This is why Bitcoin is so much more reliable. Everything is on the ledger that no one can modify or manipulate.