On 2/8/2011 10:01 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Mind, here is my reasoning in this.
>
> I'll simply note that I disagree with your reasoning as oversimplified
> and just leave it at that. You're not taking account of the relative
> ease with which some people (i.e., the treasury) can manipulate the
> amount of fiat currency floating around, nor are you taking account of
> the fact that there are multiple fiat currencies so manipulable.
>
This is true, but that is merely one of the things that alters the 
valuation, perhaps more drastically than otherwise. However, going back 
a few centuries, you find people using promissory notes, and the like, 
which may not have always been valued as, "X amount of Y", though this 
is perhaps more common, but could have been written as, "the value of X 
amount of Y", or some such.

Of course its simplified. But the point isn't wrong. As long as you are 
using some form of currency to *stand in* for the value of something 
else, there is no certainty that your gold coin from Upper Vib isn't 
going to be worth less in Lower Vob, nor than a sudden influx of gold 
into Vib won't suddenly law waste to the presumed value of the same coin 
in Vib as well.

Case in point, if you want to talk inflation. I have been reading one of 
Samuel Clemens books, in which he is describing the silver rush in 
Comstock mines, at Virginia City. You could probably, at the time, buy a 
newspaper for two pennies in some place like NY, but if you wanted a 
copy of the paper in and around the silver mines, you had to pay, 
according to him, something like $50. Everyone had stocks, or coins, in 
pocket, in amounts staggering to normal people, any place else, and they 
handed about bits of stock between them like tissue paper, but 
everything cost stupid amounts of money too, and it didn't much matter 
if you had $500 cash, or $500 stock, both where near worthless in the 
city. The only difference was that it was US dollars, so, once you got 
out of the city, that $500 meant something. But, no one was eating 
silver, or otherwise using it for much, other than coin, so had, 
somehow, the rest of the country suffered something that had devalued 
the dollar to the point of being worth less than 0.04 cents (the value 
difference between a $50 paper and a 2 cent one), what would the value 
of all those silver coins been? By my math, roughly 20 cents. (Well, 
unless you sold them to some place where it was still worth something to 
someone.)

Everything is, as I said, fait. If you can't eat it, wear it, ride it, 
build with it, or take shelter in it, its a fiat currency. And the value 
is entirely dependent on what someone is willing to trade for it, 
whether its some fool spending a $50 'metal value' silver coin, for a $1 
candy bar, or the fed inflating the amount of coins on the market until 
the cost of making a penny is 20% higher (or what ever the ratio is) 
than what you can buy with it. And, in the end, if things really go bad, 
you might be better off with a 10 gallon jug of nickle based pennies, 
for the metal value, than you would with the equivalent paper money, but 
the nickle from them will *still* come no where close to repaying the 
loss of having your $200, or what ever the fiat value of those coins 
was, dropping to the purchasing power of $2.50, due to a complete 
collapse of the currency.

I suppose.. You might be able to sew the paper money together and make 
clothes though, so.. maybe it could be "worn", in the above definition 
of non-fait. lol

-- 
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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