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?
(www.youtube.com)
🗣️ DISCUSSION 💬
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (49)
sorted by:
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.
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.
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.