[discostu]

Wow I'm finally not alone. The history of money clearly shows that gold backed currency is just as imaginary as anything else. Unfortunately it's a shared halucination that mankind has believed in for thousands of years and some people just don't want to shake it.

Thanks for this, I'll be bookmarking it for quick use in the regular "we love gold" discussions here.

[Deuce]

The history of money clearly shows that gold backed currency is just as imaginary as anything else.

The issue is not how imaginery a monetary system is, but rather whether it maintains "scarcity integrity". So far, gold has maintained this essential requirement of good money better than anything else. Theoretically, we have the technology to do this with a highly auditable fiat system once a sufficient number of people realize that scarcity integrity is the crucial requirement. The current fiat system has zero scarcity integrity:

The Fed and banks create fiat at will while the rest of us are forced, through legal tender laws, to honor it. They continually abuse this special privilege (wouldn't you, if you had it?) and must be bailed out and otherwise granted still further special privileges to cover up the illogic, unfairness, and totalitarian aspects of the situation. Most people simply haven't thought about the issue deeply enough. It is really discouraging, however, when some people who have apparently thought about the issue, have no hidden agenda, and believe in democracy and free-enterprise still conclude that the current fiat system is, somehow, preferable to a system with scarcity integrity.