innocentbystander wrote:
The whole point of trading gold is that with gold there is no need for any central ANYTHING to back its value. It is valuable simply because it IS gold, no other reason. You keep gold because you have NO FAITH in ANY central authority or you don't feel that any central authroity has any authority over you.
Not really. Unless you are a goldsmith or metallurgist, gold's value (much like paper currency) comes from people's willingness to accept it. With an ear of corn, you can eat it, you can distill it to make whiskey, you can process it into oil to power a diesel engine (or fry chicken) - it has actual uses. With gold, the value is ephemeral.
Test: if you're starving and have a 22 ounce bar of gold and I have the only four ears of corn on earth, you will eventually give me that bar of gold for the corn. Meanwhile, if you're starving and have the only four ears of on earth, you will never give them to me for that bar of gold.
This is a different conversation from the central authority one, but one that could be instantly fixed with having jewelers and metalurgists around and being plentiful. Once the jig is up and everyone realizes that everyone is out to SCAM everyone with fake gold, then EVERYONE will get the resources, equipment, and training on how to discriminate fake gold from fool's gold. That wont be hard.
Disagree. Charlatans and scam artists have been round for years and many will collude with assayists, jewelers, etc., to "certify" fake gold. The only way to combat this (and the way humanity has traditionally combatted this problem) is to have a central authority appoint independent assayists to certify the product (government regulation has been around since, well, government). Remember Adam Smith:
All money is a matter of belief.
innocentbystander wrote:Johnette's Daddy wrote:c) gold is heavy - it has to be transported and defended - both of which are difficult without some sort of collective authority to arrange for common defense and d) if there IS a central authority they would probably prefer to issue paper or something much easier to control.
Rubbish. This is just a nonsense argument for a federalized government. You can PAY someone a tiny amount of wealth to protect (with their lives) your VAST amount of wealth. You don't need government to come along for common defense. You just need to hire very carefully.
The use of paper really only works with a central authority backing its value. The entire reason why people turn to gold is because they have NO FAITH in any central authority. So the paper would be worth nothing to them other than the value of paper on which it is printed. This is the biggest reason why the eceonomy of the Confederate States of America had a ZERO EFFECTIVENESS since there was nothing backing the paper that they printed (and far too few people in the South had any actualy faith that the government would last.)
You cannot pay me to guard your vast wealth with my life if I have the ability to just take it from you. If there is no system of justice to pursue and prosecute me, I (or my gang) will just take everything you have. Even if you already have a security team in place, what's to stop them from colluding to kill you and split your wealth amongst themselves? It's happened countless times - Emperors & Kings with standing armies have been usurped by their palace guards, merchants in the "Wild West" had stores, saloons, mines and farms taken from them by their employees, etc., - without Sheriffs and Marshalls in place, I wouldn't count on my winning personality to keep my employees faithful.
innocentbystander wrote:Johnette's Daddy wrote:2. In the Great Depression, the crisis was almost exclusively a lack of money. America still produced a ton of barter-able items. We had plenty of things like wood, steel, textiles, shoes, manufactured metal items (flat irons, door hinges, knives, etc.). The amount of that stuff that we no longer have the capacity to produce (at least at the cottage industry level) is staggering. Even during the Great Depression, you still had Uncle Sam making sure that people had things like electricity, fresh water, food fit for consumption, etc.
(shrugs)
We don't produce it not because we can't,
but because we won't. We don't have to produce it. Our factories and plants sit empty and abandoned (have been that way for 50_ years.) We have 13 year old Malaysian girls in Southeast Asia make all that crap for us. We know how to do it and we have all the infrastructure sitting around to do it again (if we had to) but we don't because the labor cost associated with the unionization of such well-formed manufacturing jobs, means there is no market for the raw goods produced. Basically, our dumb labor is paid too well in the United States to justify having them produce anything of value.
Whatever the reason, we DON'T produce stuff anymore and the ability to ramp up and produce stuff from scratch could be nigh unto impossible. Take steel - a lot of "domestic" US Steel is made from slabs that we import from China and Korea. If you're making knives and axes and don't have a supply of steel, - you'r not going to make any knives or axes.
innocentbystander wrote:Johnette's Daddy wrote:A post-apocalyptic world will most likely resemble the Stone Age (or modern day Afghanistan) - strong men/warlords will arise and reimpose a basic form of feudalism.
It would look nothing like Afghanistan. Afghanistan is tribal and Islamic. In Afghanistan, the strong men/warlords incest their own daughters and rape the little boys. There are no factories or education or literacy or belief in Christ (things we have had in this Hemisphere since the Spanish began to conquer it and the Brisith started to settle it.) There has never been Feudalism anywhere in the Western Hemisphere because the people were armed with lethal power from day one (the the moment they stepped off the boat.) At age 12, they knew enough how to manage their own 10 acre farm, hold a gun, and read the King James Bible. No need for Feudalism. No need for central authority.
Uh, dude - they were SENT HERE BY CENTRAL AUTHORITIES! Both the Jamestown and Massachusetts Bay colonists came UNDER CHARTER FROM THE KING:
"In June of 1606, King James I granted a charter to a group of London entrepreneurs, the Virginia Company, to establish a satellite English settlement in the Chesapeake region of North America. By December, 104 settlers sailed from London instructed to settle Virginia, find gold, and seek a water route to the Orient."
http://www.apva.org/history/
"In this case, the Massachusetts Bay Company, a joint-stock company resident in England, whose membership included merchants and landed gentry, received a charter from the Crown."
In the Southwestern US (Texas, New Mexico, California) there are people who are STILL RECEIVING MINERAL RIGHTS GRANTED BY THE KING OF SPAIN!
America is exceptional not because of the myth of the "Marlboro Man" rugged individualist, but because from the beginning, America was planted by corporate raiders on both the Spanish and English sides.
During a press conference later, O'Mara was asked if he had any advice for Zimmerman, and he answered, "Pay me."