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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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.
It's not just barter, but barter is a fundamental part of a Free Market. The markets you are taking about were not free at all.
This is almost a restatement of my argument, except replace "money system" with "economic system."
What I'm saying is that barter doesnt give us a free market any more or less than fiat or single commodity does. All it does is add complexity to the marketplace that is exploitable.
Barter is a weaker option because it can target specific people or groups to destroy, where a single commodity or fiat model has the manipulations spread across the entire market place.
A "fiat or single commodity" are the same thing. If all trade must use some commodity as intermediary, that is what "fiat" means. Whether it has intrinsic value or not has nothing to do with "fiat". See my post that elaborates this above.
No one is stopping people from using an intermediary in a Free Market. You can use any intermediary you want. You can trade WHATEVER you want, at any time, in any trade deal.
A Free Market does not exist with restrictions. That is the definition of a free market. A demanded currency is a HUGE restriction to trade, and thus to a free market. Who enforces that trades pass through a fiat currency? Who makes the fiat (demand from an Authority) in the first place? Who regulates that fiat currency? A fiat currency can only exist with a regulatory body. There is no free market if trade is controlled by a regulatory body.
There must also be legal incentives to use a fiat currency, to enforce the fiat (command from Authority) that demanded it's use as intermediary, otherwise people will just use whatever the fuck they want (free market). This is always done (as far as I have found) by taxation. You must pay taxes (specifically income or property taxes) to the King in the fiat currency, and everyone has to pay these taxes, thus everyone uses the fiat currency. But taxation on what is already yours is thievery. A thus taxed people are an enslaved people. A fiat currency is used exclusively to enslave people and to enslave trade.
How? I'm wracking my brain and I can't even contrive a situation where this becomes a true statement, much less be some ubiquitous vulnerability.
Any centralized authority (which is what a fiat currency is) is always the first thing that is created before the takeover of anything. Indeed, my investigation suggests that gold and silver as currency itself was exactly such a centralization of authority. Centralized Authority is Cabal Plan 101. First you convince the public that they need a Centralized Authority, then you create it, then you put your agents in it, then you control the control structure itself. You can't control a decentralized entity. It's too robust. That is the entire purpose behind every Centralized Authority in existence, and every single one was either created by, or subverted by, the Cabal.
A free market is the ultimate decentralization of authority. It is FREE to do whatever both the market, and the individuals making a trade want to do. That includes what trades are going to happen, how they are going to take place, if some intermediary is going to be used in some trade deal, and what that intermediary is.. The defining characteristic of a Free Market is that it, and the people, are FREE TO CHOOSE THEIR OWN PATH. If a free market and a free people are not free to choose their own path, then they are not free at all.
It isn't that barter "gives us a free market." That's putting the cart before the horse. It's that a Free Market only exists with barter.
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.
There are many ways to create a digital Free Market. We have plenty of digital marketplaces already. We just don't think in terms of trade. As for making "transactions" easy, you can use gold if you want. You can use whatever you want as intermediary that fits into the criteria I created before. For example, if you want to pay in "stock," if all stocks are tied to their own NFT, paying in stock is as easy as paying in [insert your favorite digital currency here]. If gold, silver, platinum, nickle, iron, copper, bismuth, etc. have storage places and are tied to similar digital currencies (1:1) with sufficient infrastructure that the digital can be turned into the actual in a reasonable way, then again, you can use your stores of those items as "currency" in digital transactions.
And this is just off the top of my head. You can use anything as intermediary that fits the criteria listed in my previous post.
But the finer details aren't really important (at this time). What's important is helping people to understand why they should care, because at the moment, they don't, exactly as they have been trained.
How difficult can that end up? Your mortgage company only wants gold, car loan is silver, water bill is grain, power bill is apples and on down the line of bills it goes