Von Fugal wrote: >> All this reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide where the Golgafrinchams land >> on prehistoric earth and try to start a civilization. After debating >> the color of the wheel, whether fire should be fitted nasally, and so >> forth, they turn to financial policy. Since adopting the leaf as legal >> tender, they had, of course, all become fabulously rich. This led to >> some major inflationary problems, owing to the ready availability of >> leaves. Hence they embarked on a massive program of deforestation to >> prop up their currency. Cue the closing scene of forests burning and >> Louis Armstrong singing "what a wonderful world." > > I'm really confused. How is this an argument _for_ green paper money > (leaves)??
This is fascinating in light of what you have said about how gold would work as an economy grows. Since the answer to the keynsian argument that there's only so much gold to go around lies in the idea of arbitrarily dividing the gold, then in reality, having gold-backed currency is no different than using leaves for currency. While there are not an infinite number of atoms of gold, there probably are at least as many as leaves in a forest... And it solves none of the problems of fiat currency since the division of gold is arbitrary and artificial. No wonder they threw it out back in the day. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
