Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> and until someone demanded to "see" the gold, no one would have a clue 
>> anything had changed. 
> 
> Right. And with some 300 million people in the country, using gold to 
> transfer value between banks, shipping too much of the gold elsewhere 
> leads to you getting caught.
> 
Actually... not likely. Shipping the stuff would be too risky, which is 
another reason not even the banks probably *want* to have to do it. 
Moving data is a lot less costly, harder to steal, and, well, you get 
the point. Even back when there "was" a gold standard, we **still** 
opted to keep it all safely locked in a central location, and just trade 
slips of paper around, which specified who "owned" it.

> (This, basically, is exactly what FDR did when they set up the federal 
> reserve.)
> 
Yep. And, again, if you never move it, all you have is the "keepers" 
promise that it still exists, and a bit of paper claiming you can come 
and get it, if you need to.

>> Such a standard, as I have tried to point out, is meaningless on its 
>> face, since you are still trusting someone to "honestly" have what 
>> they claim is being used to back it, 
> 
> Yes. Except if it's the government doing it, you don't have to trust 
> them to honestly have what they claim. They can just say "No, we decided 
> to give away all your gold. Tough crap."
> 
There is a quote, which dealt with dictatorships vs democracies, from 
the Heinlein novels, which I think I will paraphrase and mangle a bit to 
illustrate the futility of this idea:

Centralized banking = The presumption that who ever holds the "central" 
depositor is honest, won't cheat, and no one can steal anything from 
them. Oh, sure, that's going to work...

Private vaults = The presumption that 5,000 independent places won't 
ever collude to steal, personally steal, cheat, get robbed, or otherwise 
"lose" the valuable thing their entire solvency is supposed to be based 
on. Come again?

>> The very idea that they *is* a real difference between these in terms 
>> of how the money itself gets used, and what ever trust is placed in 
>> it, is, I am sorry, but... delusional.
> 
> So you're happy taking corporate stocks as payment for your salary 
> instead of cash? The company you work for will pay you in corporate 
> stocks, but they won't buy them back from you for actual cash. Instead, 
> they just say "Trust us, the value is actually there."  That works for you?
> 
> Cause it's the same thing.
> 
Umm. Cash can't "lose" value, but it also can't **gain** any either. 
Yes, if things go bad, and you had $500 to start with, you might only 
have $100, but if things go well, you might start with $500 and end up 
with $5,000. If you opt for cash, you **only** get $500, and you might 
as well just eat the money, because its going to be worth shit by the 
time you actually need to use it to buy food. And, just to be clear, 
even if I had $500 and it was still "worth" $500 when I retired, it 
might be worth nothing the next day, for **precisely** the same reason 
the stock would be, because the "backing" for it, no matter what that 
"is", fell in a hole.

Or, to put it another way, it doesn't matter whether the "money" I have 
says Franklin, or Starbuck's, if people don't want to take it, or value 
it as what it says on the damn paper, both are ***just as worthless***.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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