I hadn't noticed your e-mail address was fourpillars.net before. I wonder which four pillars are at stake here? I've read TE Lawrence's _Seven Pillars_ and I'm aware of "Five Pillars of Islam." Are you referring to the pillars of the Common Economic Protocol?
The modern communication systems change the whole game.
It changes many games. And it is well beyond modern.
I don't see any chance for a move back towards a kind of gold standard.
I think free market money will overcome any obstacles set in its path by governments. Having governments issue money has proven to be disaster. EC Riegel was pointed this fact out in the 1940s. F. Hayek pointed it out in 1976 in his _The Denationalization of Money_ and Andrew Dickson White pointed it out centuries ago in his essay on _Fiat Inflation in France_. A gold standard, fixing the dollar to gold (and therefore price fixing gold) would certainly be a great leap backwards.
For example, why not an e-currency backed by real estate? It could be better than gold.
No, it could not. Gold has some properties that real estate would always lack. First, gold is fungible. Which means it is the same if you take an ounce or a gram. Real estate is very different.
The analogous situation has been stated by James Turk in pointing out that e-gold and GoldMoney (and now Pecunix) only have 400 ounce bars on hand, while e-Bullion has coins on hand as well as bars. The smaller sizes of coins and their convenient shape make them more desirable. Yet, once they are exhausted, only bars are left. Which means that in a full-redemption scenario where everyone redeems for physical gold, some get better, more desirable coins while others bulky and less desirable bars.
With land, you have the "location-location-location" problem. In other words, the three most important things in selling real estate are location, location, and location. Where the land is makes all the difference. Buying land where nobody is (at a low price) and developing it so that it is very desirable makes it possible to attract people to it so it has a high price. Likewise, having land where Grey Davis can avoid sending fleets of firefighting equipment in a fit of pique over losing the recall election might turn it into a pile of burning rubble on scorched earth.
Land therefore lacks fungibility. It also lacks one of the sub-features of fungibility - divisibility. There are such things as quantum units of gold. Atoms of gold are elemental and if you subdivide what is left is not gold. Of course, ownership of less than an atom of gold could be obtained by dividing the ownership, but I don't see how redemption would work out very well in that case.
Land on the other hand, stops being nearly as useful as you subdivide into square feet and then square inches. In fact, author Spencer MacCallum has written extensively on the problems of subdivision. It tends to work out poorly. A larger piece of land has many advantages.
Gold also has density to favor it. That means that storing gold in a bullion bank is less difficult than storing land. When you disregard the possibility of redemption, you don't need storage. But, I think redemption will prove to be a key feature of reputation. Gold also has much higher reputation.
By the way, Lysander Spooner wrote extensively on a private land bank issuing money backed by land. You might look for these pages on the web. Some of the awdal.com enthusiasts scanned and posted them, and there was a discussion of their location on the [EMAIL PROTECTED] group.
Gold does not decay, but it does also not grow.
Your statement here made me think about land growing. Of course, it is possible to create new land. Mike Oliver lifted a bunch of silt onto two sub-sea mounts to bring them above mean high tide. He called the new land Minerva. That was 1972. Minerva was conquered that year by Tonga. The Dutch have created polders and other engineering works to recover land from the sea. So, your currency may be inflated. The Moon and Mars and various asteroids offer medium-term opportunities for expanding the supply. Sea Structures Inc. designed a concrete flotation system which was touted at Oceania.org about a decade ago.
A piece of land is in the same category. An acre of land today will still be the same acre of land in ??? years, ...
But the value of the land will change a great deal depending on what people are doing with it and what they are doing with land nearby. Let's say that Doug Casey is right, and Islamic terrorists set of a nuclear weapon in a major USA city in the next few years. Is that acre of land at the heart of the city of Hiroshima the same acre it was in 1944? Given the conversion of Japanese industry to the war, is it the same acre that it was in 1904?
Every 20 years I can cut big trees on the land and harvest wood, or perhaps every year I can pick apples...
Which points up the disparity between different acres of land. One acre is wooded. Another is desert. Another is swamp. Yet another has washed out to sea. One acre is in Namibia and has diamonds on it. (Some of the interesting diamond fields are partly underwater on the coast.) Find gold on a piece of land and it is much more valuable.
The land remains there, but every so often something has grown out of it, that's not the case with gold.
True. But, nuke a city and the gold will likely still be there. It might not even be radioactive. The growing stuff will be gone, though, and for years to come it will be difficult to grow much there.
The conclusion must be that land is better than gold.
I think this conclusion is comparing apples to oranges. Apples are crisper and have more tartness. Oranges have lots more Vitamin C and make a different juice. Each has attractions. Saying that apples are better than oranges or land is better than gold reveals your preferences, but these are not likely shared universally.
Fortunately, the high reputation of gold suggests that it is valued very widely. So, while not quite universal, a currency which is redeemable for gold may be successful where currencies which are just paper or redeemable for land would be less successful.
Even so, free market money is free market - you don't need anyone's permission to form a land bank and issue money. Go for it.
will be able to pay a yearly 'interest' based on the produce that comes from the land,
Obviously, each piece of land will produce differently. City land will collect rents. Country land will collect produce. Ranch land will show an increase in cattle. Of course, the farmers and ranchers will have something to say about the production. Desert land will produce very little, unless people start going for cacti in a big way.
instead of charging a storage fee for protecting the gold.
Gold can be rented out, same as land. Of course, lease rates for gold have been pretty abysmal lately.
One of the issues you will wish to control for is the difficulty of bailment. What if everyone bails in their least productive land? The cost of paying property taxes on that land then goes to you the new owner. You may find yourself with land that owes more in taxes every year than it provides in productivity.
Similarly I expect to see 'e-stocks', an e-currency backed by stock ownership in a basket of companies....
I think there is room for something of the sort. Another approach would be to use existing gold currencies and sell a sort of mutual fund.
The electronic age is making everything 'liquid' and useable as 'money' That trend seems unstoppable to me.
I think the trend is excellent. The lack of fungibility of stocks and bonds and many other things is going to make them less operable as currencies. The high reputation of gold, together with its amazing set of properties in fungibility, divisibility, malleability, ductility, portability, density, durability, and desirability make it one of the all time best monetary items.
Your enthusiasm is excellent. I look forward to seeing your offerings on the market. More competing currencies based on different metals, different types of land, different types of value-instruments would be good. They will all compete and the winner will be much better than whatever is on offer from governments today.
Regards,
Jim http://www.ezez.com/free/freejim.html
--- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
