Harry Pollard wrote: [snip]
It's a common measure allowing disparate things to trade in the market.
I just had a thought (probably one of those thoughts that get addressed in the first couple sessions of Econ 10): Isn't the issue with money not one of allowing disparate things to trade, but facilitating various attenuations of trade from the immediate situation? Something like Lockheed-Martin or Illushyn(sp?) wouldn't be possible without money, would it?
Surely money facilitates trade, just like doctors facilitate diseases, etc. Crescit eundo (growth by feedback loop).... Money thus ends up [to borrow Nietzsche's phrase, and alluding to Marx:] transvaluing all values.
Without money it would be hard to have stock and
commodities exchanges, investment banks,
derivitive trading(!), etc. Without money you couldn't
have booms or busts (you stil could have
famines and bumper crops, though...). Is that
good or bad? It's probably both, but, for either good or
evil or both, it sure makes life *different*! {McLuhan,
with modification:The medium is the [co-]message
Probably money has been one of the engines driving advances in pure mathematics for the past 2,500 years....
\brad mccormick
The dollar does the same thing except that it oozes value over the years. The idiots think that a mild inflation is good for the economy. Gold has remained remarkably stable over millennia, but if there is something better, the market will find it.
Harry
-------------------------------------------------------
Brad wrote:
Ed Weick wrote:
Interesting line of thought, Brad, but the officials in charge of the gold
standard would look at the Cellini and say "Hey, that stuffs worth $27 (or
whatever the official price was) an ounce. If Cellini had used lead, they
would have said it was worthless.
Well, I don't know no economics (that was another subject I avoided in college since I did not need any further evidence to convine me I had the a priori capacity to be a recipient of bad grades...).... Dubya probably took Econ 10 @ Yale....
But I doubt pegging currency to gold in a more esthetically appealing form (or a form with more Marxian "value" in it...) would be any better than bullion for purposes of a government being able to have a monetary policy.
Debtors always want inflation, and creditors always want something "better" than whatever they're already got. Everybody who's giot enough to expect to get more wants something for nothing ("making a killing" -- but not being held-up by "outlaws"!) --, and those who preach delaying gratification generally have already got theirs and want to prevent others from ever getting any (ever hear a gratification-delayer say: "You've waited long enough! Your orgy day has finally arrived! Go to it! God bless you!"?) -->
and I know I don't know how to make money so I try not to lose any, and one thing I am sure of is that fine things gain in value as they age whereas cheap stuff loses what little value it once had (to those who have much, more shall be given; from those who have little, what little they have shall be taken away... vintage vs used...), and in our society, people above the poverty line but below the golden parachute line become poorer by having children.... And one thing worse than a toadying manager with a deadline is a toadying manager without a deadline (idle hands are the devil's workshop)....
At least as impotant as any gold standard is audit transparency in depth (I think).
....
Spelling mistakes (see above) are often illuminating (if one knows how to spell), and there are lots of words I choose not to include in my vocabulary because I can't imagine a context where they would sound right for me to use them....
Good night to all (except to those for whom it is already good morning...)....
\brad mccormick
Ed
----- Original Message ----- From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Ray Evans Harrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "futurework" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Harry Pollard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 6:09 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gold Standard -- an idea
I think I have an idea how a gold standard could be instituted pretty much without it constraining the supply of money.
All that is required is for the swine to learn to apreciate pearls. By that I mean that Europeans (that includes, of course, Americans et al.) need to rise above the value scheme of the Conquistadores who melted down all the Precolumbian gold objects for bullion.
Gold bullion is currently worth about US$350 per ounce.
Gold work by Cellini (et al.) might be worth upwards of US$100,000 per ounce.
It's simply a matter of hominids who pride themselves in not having Neanderthal genes raising themselves above the servile-banausic line, to humanity simpliciter, which, as the classical Greeks, according to Hannah Arendt, believed, runs *through* a biological species, not along a boundary between species.
Heck, "they" don't even need to acquire fully human culture. All that's required is enlightened self-interest to realize that, even if they don't "get it", fine art is worth more than mineral raw material stuff, even when the latter is "refined".
Please excuse if this contribution is irrelevant to the conversation in progress....
"Yours in discourse [and valuing Pre-columbian gold for more than its bullion content]...."
\brad mccormick
**************************************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 -- Fax: (818) 353-2242 http://home.comcast.net/~haledward ****************************************************
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