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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Ah.. I see.. So, this differs how from say.. a king ages back declaring,
> "Use the money stamped with my image, or else."?
No, that would be fiat money too. Except it was gold, so people would accept
it even if it didn't have the king's face. The king's face was simply
certification that the coin was the right weight.
> Still not seeing how
> you have any kind of trade using money, without it being fiat.
When the value of the currency is not dictated from the top down.
> Someone,
> someplace, has a press, or a mine, or *something*, which at which they
> define the currency,
No. When everyone agrees on the currency without someone using force to make
it currency, it's not fiat currency. Gold with the roman king's face on it
wasn't fiat because you could take it to greece and melt it down and turn it
into greek money. The value wasn't "a coin with the king's face", but "one
ounce of gold."
> and using something else isn't generally considered
> a good idea. Something about it turning worthless, or possibly even
> getting you killed in some cases, if you cross a border and try to spend
> the wrong state's, countries, or what ever, coin/paper money, or what ever.
Whether people will kill you over trying to spend gold with the wrong face
stamped on it hasn't anything to do with whether it's fiat currency.
> Money is money.
Yep. But some is fiat currency, and some isn't. Fiat currency is usually
made fiat currency by having the government saying "you must pay taxes, and
you must use *this* currency to pay them." Otherwise, there's no real way
to force people to try to accumulate the currency that isn't otherwise valuable.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
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On 2/12/2011 10:40 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Ah.. I see.. So, this differs how from say.. a king ages back
>> declaring, "Use the money stamped with my image, or else."?
>
> No, that would be fiat money too. Except it was gold, so people would
> accept it even if it didn't have the king's face. The king's face was
> simply certification that the coin was the right weight.
>
>> Still not seeing how you have any kind of trade using money, without
>> it being fiat.
>
> When the value of the currency is not dictated from the top down.
>
>> Someone, someplace, has a press, or a mine, or *something*, which at
>> which they define the currency,
>
> No. When everyone agrees on the currency without someone using force to
> make it currency, it's not fiat currency. Gold with the roman king's
> face on it wasn't fiat because you could take it to greece and melt it
> down and turn it into greek money. The value wasn't "a coin with the
> king's face", but "one ounce of gold."
>
Right.. In other words, a commodity (even if it may be used on the basis
of the content). Doesn't change the fact that bottom up definitions,
versus top down, just means a smaller pool of people get to threaten you
if you try to pay them, say, 10 silver for a horse, like you did two
days ago in some other city, when they insist, locally, that it costs
25. Someone is still threatening to take measures, if you don't pay up
(even if the main measure is that you just showed up, to use Twain's
history of Victoria city again as an example, from some place where 100
silver coins would last you a year, to find that you can't even rent a
room for less than 10 a day). Your non-fiat just means that there is no
consistency **anyplace** as to what the value actually is. And, we get
that BS enough from, for example, 100% of the hotels where I am, which
mysteriously double their prices the moment spring break hits. Without
some "general" agreement that X really is X, this just gets
astronomically worse.
That a system with stable values is *just as* prone to disaster as those
that do not have them is not really relevant. People where going broke
right and left, at the drop of a hat, back in "boom times", when mining
was all the rage, and all it took was for them to move a few hundred
miles, and find that their pouch of gold dust was worth almost nothing
there, due to how much was being pulled out of the ground, or that the
mine hadn't panned out, and every bit of stock they had in them had just
gone from a speculative $50 a sheet to toilet paper. And, the only thing
"backing" any of it wasn't a government tax code, but the "assumption",
that you could hand it to someone and they would treat it as money.
And that is my point. For the people using that sort of, "I trust this
is worth X of Y commodity", whether it was feet in a mine, or physical
coin, you can become a pauper 500 times faster under such situations
that you would with a fiat system. The only danger of fiat systems is
that, when some idiots are allowed to screw it up, it hits everyone in a
country at once, not just everyone in the local mining town. Yet... I
tend to suspect that a) the consequence is not quite as severe, and b)
the recovery from such a disaster will be faster too, since there is
someone responsible for making sure it gets fixed. Its not just a mad
rush of Caveat Emptor, followed by 3/4 the population finding they have
completely lost *everything* they own, over night, because they can't
afford to keep any of it and not starve to death.
--
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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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Doesn't change the fact that bottom up definitions, versus top down,
Definitions of fiat on the Web:
an authoritative decree, sanction or order; a command or act of will that
creates something without, or as if without, further effort; an arbitrary
decree or order
You seem to be arguing that because the merchant has the choice of how much
to charge, that makes what he's charging you fiat currency. That makes no
sense. That's just isn't what the word means.
No more than "police" means "anyone who stops you on the street with a gun"
or "elected politician" means "anyone who tries to convince you they're
right." The word has a definition. You're taking a completely orthogonal
measure of value and trying to say that makes everything a fiat currency.
> And that is my point. For the people using that sort of, "I trust this
> is worth X of Y commodity", whether it was feet in a mine, or physical
> coin, you can become a pauper 500 times faster under such situations
> that you would with a fiat system.
I don't think whether it's a fiat system or not has much to do with it.
Observe Zimbabwe. Observe Iceland. I don't really understand what sort of
point you're trying to make, but "fiat currency is safer" is prima facia
nonsensical.
If I have gold, certainly it will be worth less where lots of people have gold.
> Its not just a mad
> rush of Caveat Emptor, followed by 3/4 the population finding they have
> completely lost *everything* they own, over night, because they can't
> afford to keep any of it and not starve to death.
Except that's *exactly* what happened in Iceland. And Zimbabwe. And war-time
Germany. And etc. Primarily because something like gold, while arbitrary,
is recognized everywhere as valuable, while something like the currency of
the Confederate States of America really has no value outside of the
confederacy, and when the war is lost, so is the value.
Indeed, we even have a word, scrip, to indicate fiat currency that is
intentionally of no value outside the very specific circumstances in which
it is issued. You can't have a commodity-based scrip.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
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On 2/13/2011 3:08 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> Its not just a mad rush of Caveat Emptor, followed by 3/4 the
>> population finding they have completely lost *everything* they own,
>> over night, because they can't afford to keep any of it and not starve
>> to death.
>
> Except that's *exactly* what happened in Iceland. And Zimbabwe. And
> war-time Germany. And etc. Primarily because something like gold, while
> arbitrary, is recognized everywhere as valuable, while something like
> the currency of the Confederate States of America really has no value
> outside of the confederacy, and when the war is lost, so is the value.
>
OK. Not going to belabor the point. There are circumstances where it can
be worse. My point though is that, for the average person, its not
terribly relevant, since the average person is neither going to have a
lot of ready coin to melt down, under systems where that sort of thing
is used, nor will it help them at all to only have a few hundred in
worthless scrip, instead of millions. The key issue is whether or not
the system that defined the scrip/currency remains. Short of the fall of
a government, there is, presumably, some capacity for recovery of "some"
of the value. There are exceptions to that, but those are ones where
there is already other unstable conditions, i.e. Zimbabwe, or limited
sources of income to everyone in general, including those responsible
for defining the standard.
I will say that if the Rethuglicans keep pushing for tax cuts to
companies outsourcing jobs, cuts in spending on helping people that are
short changed by this idiocy, and the left keeps doing stupid shit, like
Obama's proposal to cut grants for students (what, now suddenly the do
nothing, but charge you an arm and a leg in interest via student loans
people are OK, when they where declared to be worthless a few weeks
ago?), thus reducing the number of people that *might* still find jobs
that don't involve hamburger buns, the next financial idiocy the people
with money come up with might result in the US currency having the same
monetary value as the Mexican one. You have to take sane steps to
maintain the value, and keep the economy stable. Sending more than 40%,
or worse, of your labor some place else, raising pay rates for the top
to 50+ times what the bottom makes, then insisting that taxes need to be
places on those low earners, not the guys paying less than 20% what they
did in the 50's, while our economy gets *worse*, not better.. its a damn
stupid, and insane, method of ensuring that any currency has any damn
value. Especially since, even if we tried to melt down the change in our
pockets, it would be worth less than the cost of making the change.
Heard some idiot the other day at a winter festival thing we had here
babbling about, "If this doesn't stop, we might need to do what Egypt
did.", and the only thought I could come up with was, "Unfortunately, if
it happens, it will be idiots like you doing it, for the wrong reasons,
based on the wrong assumptions, and the *new* government will be made up
to so called conservatives, who will proceed to do **exactly** the same
stupid shit that caused the problem in the first place, because you
don't pay attention, you just listen to the bullshit coming from the
people screwing it all up in the first place." I don't care if you used
every dime you made in the US, unless you where making $50,000 a year,
on gold, or the like, if things go that bad, there is no one you could
sell the shit too that would save you from instant poverty anyway.
> Indeed, we even have a word, scrip, to indicate fiat currency that is
> intentionally of no value outside the very specific circumstances in
> which it is issued. You can't have a commodity-based scrip.
>
I actually looked up the definition of "fiat currency", not fiat in
general, and the definition given was a bit less specific as to what it
meant, stating merely (I don't remember the exact wording), that it was
currency representing a value, where the value itself was not *in* the
material it was made of. You definition is a bit more specific than
that, which may be part of the issue when trying to make my point.
--
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();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> I actually looked up the definition of "fiat currency", not fiat in
> general, and the definition given was a bit less specific as to what it
> meant,
Googling "define:fiat currency" gives a number of essentially identical
definitions that basically say "value set by the government."
http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Afiat+currency
> currency representing a value, where the value itself was not *in* the
> material it was made of.
Initial fiat currencies were established by taking away the gold and saying
"this paper is worth X ounces of gold." It was only later that the pretense
of having something whose value would be recognised even without the
government's authority to tax came into play. So I can totally see a
definition like that being reasonable.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
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