Posted on 03/28/2008 3:19:49 PM PDT by DivaDelMar
Earth’s first real civilization evaluated everything in terms of cattle. Gold was a commodity like any other commodity, and was counted out in cattle.
I beg to differ.
With gold, there is a finite quantity....we may not know quite how much we will harvest but its supply is ruled by reality. With gold, you have a limited supply...so when the demand goes up, you can't create more, but paper money can be printed forever in endless quantities. Throughout history, governments have printed the stuff and until they run out of ink, and they will continue. (Printing too much = inflation)
If you look any one of the paper bills in your wallet and read what it says on there, you will realize that your paper dollar is an IOU from the government.
Bottom line: paper money can be created....like mad, whereas gold cannot.
There are way too many people that think gold has value to class it with paper "money". Gold and is true money because when you hold it, you're not holding someone else's debt.
If things go bust you can eat cows. Ever try eating gold?
Knew an old guy who'd had a really good harvest of tulip bulbs in 1942 or so in Nederland ~ in Walcheren Island (Middelburg).
Next thing you know there was a European famine, and then the military broke the dykes to drown the German army in that area, and he was living up in the roof.
He'd sell you a tulip bulb for a 1 caret diamond.
BTW, tulip bulbs are edible and he was selling them to the hungry.
If things go bust you can eat cows. Ever try eating gold?
Knew an old guy who'd had a really good harvest of tulip bulbs in 1942 or so in Nederland ~ in Walcheren Island (Middelburg).
Next thing you know there was a European famine, and then the military broke the dykes to drown the German army in that area, and he was living up in the roof.
He'd sell you a tulip bulb for a 1 caret diamond.
BTW, tulip bulbs are edible and he was selling them to the hungry.
Got cash?
We had the same sort of experience with real silver coins that we bought about nine years ago. We sold some recently at an amazing profit over what we paid for them.
Hah . . we also bought some more silver coins that we kept in a leather bag and my husband used to like to inspect them. Then one night, he placed the bag on a table beside the trash can in our bedroom. Evidently, the bag was inadvertently pushed into the trash off the crowded table top. We paid $1,500 at the time for that bag of silver, and there’s no telling what it would bring today. Maybe someone at the landfill who needs it will find it someday. He still hasn’t learned his lesson about clutter, which drives me nuts - but, oh well.
Anything that can die (perish) is just about the worst store of value imaginable. There are a lot of things that can thin out the herd or totally destroy it, that have no effect on real money (gold, for example).
"Oh "Honey we're broke....all of our gold just died!"
Livestock are subject to nature's whims and are a constant gamble.
* I grew up on a farm and realize the advantages but it's nowhere near as secure as you might think. I have leaned from experience.
This is why it is best to have many cattle in many villages.
The Wizard of Oz was a parable of populism. The Tin Woodsman was the industrial worker (in the book, the worker had been a man who continually cut off parts of himself while working, and the parts were replaced until nothing human was left.)
The scarecrow was the midwestern farmer who was wise but naive.
The cowardly lion was William Jennings Bryan, the populist candidate who wanted to go to a bimetallic (silver and gold rather than just a gold) standard.
The yellow brick road was the gold standard, and the Emerald City was Washington DC.
Dorothy's silver slippers (they were silver in the book, not ruby) represented the inclusion of silver, creating a bimetallic standard.
Others expanded the allegories, claiming the wicked witches were the east coast and west coast corporate trusts, the munchkins were the ordinary citizens, Oz stood for the abbreviation for ounce, and Toto stood for teatotalers (prohibitionists were a significant part of the silver adoption coalition.)
The premise that Baum was a populist and that Oz was written as an allegory ignores the fact that Baum was a Republican. Direct quote from him when he ran the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer: "We are all members of one great family, the family which saved the Union, the family which stands together as the emblem of prosperity among the nations--Republicanism!"
You must not be up to date on Murphy's Law.
Ask someone who knows what their doing about your "villages" plan.
Well, it would seem that if you had enough lead, you could take as many of the cattle as you wanted in the villages as you travel, and even ‘invite’ the folks who own gold to give you some!
After the danger had passed I'd then have one of my tinsmiths melt that gold down and pour it into little molds, each shaped in the form of a cow.
Bet I could keep the gold itself in a strongbox under guard and pass off little bronze statues of that gold. That way I could buy what I want and keep all the gold anyway. And that thanks to the cows I so smartly pastured in so many villages all across the country.
Diversification of a portfolio frequently pays the highest dividends.
Chuckle. I think it’s getting late!
Wow - that was one expensive lesson in reducing clutter! Good luck with the rest of your investments!
Interesting thread.
I don’t care whether it’s gold, cattle, houses, or companies — they all equate to the same thing, some one’s time and labour in its aggregation/creation. You don’t find gold lying around on the street, someone had to find and collect it, assay it for purity, and get it to a marketplace. That is what gives it value.
You mentioned eating that gold, muawiyah? Let’s see you eat one of your cows. You don’t just walk up and pull off a steak; you have to kill it, clean it, skin it, and carve it. Time and labour — no different. But at least with gold there’s not as much mess to clean up, or worry about where to put the balance of the meat to stop it spoiling.
Oh, another similarity — they both have to be cooked. The gold gets smelted, the cow gets roasted. Bon appetite! :^)
bttt
read later
There’s nothing wrong with cattle as money, or bricks, or anything else that is durable, has value as a commodity—something that satisfies a real human want. Gold fits that description—it is chemically incorruptible, has utility in industry, art, etc., costs something to find and refine, etc.
Gold happens to be particularly suitable for use as money, in addition to its other uses as a commodity.
The fundamental point is—whenever a government slaps marks or ink on something, and forces people to accept it as money with a value in trade that is way out of proportion to its value as a commodity, it is only a matter of time until its value as money sinks to the level of its value as a commodity—precisely because the motives for government to allow this to happen are irresistible. They are counterfeiters who know they can keep out of jail.
The ONLY reason we are off the Gold Standard is that only a tiny minority of the people have ever given fifteen consecutive seconds of thought to the whole issue of money—what money really is, how fiat money is an instrument of larceny, etc. They have no deeper thought about “money” than that it’s that paper with the fancy designs on it.
Like Roe v. Wade, “soaking the rich,” Social Security, etc., our fiat money is a crime committed in broad daylight.
thank you very much, I’d never read the whole version ; what a great quote from Baum.
You are DEAD ON.....
If you think about it further, you realize that the IRS and our tax system really serves one purpose and one purpose only: To contract the money supply.
Stated differently, IF the FED can and does print all the money the government “needs”-—and I use that term loosely-—to pay the bills, why do we tax the citizens? Simply to contract the money supply.....and secondarily, to manipulate the electorate. The dual idiocies of 1913, the sixteenth amendment and the Federal Reserve Act, must be repealed and their progeny dismantled.
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