Re: in praise of gold

[Morlock Elloi]

> Compare the sum total of misery in this world to the sum total of happiness
and
> get back to me. Read some Schopenhauer and early Nietzsche, you'd probably
find 
> a lot to agree with too.

What happiness ? Have you ever seen anyone happy (on this list) ?

Nietzsche admitted that he wrote the stuff just to attract chics. It didn't
work.

> No, not at all. If you prefer spending time with psychotics and alcoholics,
go

I don't prefer, but they won't go away. And they call me psychotic.

> >You are a bigot.
> 
> Care to broaden that out to "misanthrope"? 
> You bet. ;)

No, I meant a logical bigot.


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Re: in praise of gold

[Morlock Elloi]

> Bah. If you've always found that the women who are willing to sleep with you
> are

Look, I was discussing the meaning of "need" and pointlessness of attaching
moral qualifications to that.

But I'll have to oink to be understood. Prayers to the Godess of Semantics
didn't help.

> not spare yourself all the headaches and schedule appointments with an
escort,

Do you have any idea how much it costs to get a decent escort ? Between $750
and $2500 for the night. At $1500 average, once per week comes to $78K per
year, and that is not tax-deductible. State-sponsored whores are cheaper.

No, I am NOT taking offers on competitive services.

> might save you some real misery in the long run. That so many people are
driven
> to go through the motions of the very things that bring them the most
> unhappiness is a real shame.

Most people are perfectly happy to go through the motions. And they are not
asking to be saved.

> > "Fit" and "unfit" for "human companionship" are far to into
nacionalsocialist
> > ideology, I'd rather not go there.
> 
> It doesn't take a judgment by society at large to realize that some
> people really are better off alone instead of inflicting their destructive

You are again disbursing qualifications on the false assumption that anyone
shares common grounds with you. And you are even not consistent, since here you
seem to favour conformity. 'Some people' are 'better off', no shit ? Who gets
to decide what is destructive ? The majority, you imply.

You are a bigot.


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Re: in praise of gold,

[mattd]

"It doesn't take a judgment by society at large to realize that some
people really are better off alone instead of inflicting their destructive
fucked-up personality on others (psychotics, alcoholics, etc)."

What about silly little girls inflicting their e-gold (!) opinions.

"if more people refused to cave in to societal pressures and thought about
what they really wanted to do with their lives (instead of blindly falling into
the "spouse, family, 9 to 5 job" trap out of conformism and a fear of the
unknown) it would be a great thing."

Whoopdy doo! Fergedabout ask abbie! Ask Faustine!...only dont ask if 
she/he/its an agent.

Previously posted,she may be what she claims,after aimee,though...

"...Someone once remarked that the most unimaginitive, laziest Harvard
graduate students at the bottom of their class tend to end up at the IMF
and UN. Sort of sinkholes of mediocrity. Oh well! ~Faustine."

Luckily we now have 'open source' AP to take out the ones that get to be
president.Did you see my 2 previous post F?

1) Faustine wrote...
."..good old boring long-faced church-every-Sunday solid-citizen Robert P.
Hanssen. If his FBI colleagues had been asked to rate him by your above
criteria, he probably would have been in the high 200s all across the
board. And maybe deservedly so. But since those factors weren't in any way,
shape, or form relevant to the fact that he was also the kind of person who
could sell out his country for the sheer pleasure of the game of it, he got
away with murder for years until he got careless and his shitty tradecraft
finally caught up with him."

His tradecraft was rather good I thought,especially in not trusting his
handlers with direct contact.Possibly he was done in by sex addiction
common to many repressed septic tanks(yanks) W.Reichs,mass psychology of
facism describes syndrome.Also wanted on some level to get caught,much like
Ted special K.(and USAma bin laden?)
Did he really get away with murder? Feh.Aldrich ames did and his rep
survived polygraphs so reputations are bollocks unless panocoptincons and
regular stings/tests are done.Hanssen didnt tell the russkies anything they
couldnt have worked out them selves.

No response? Trawling for bigger game? pot bellied,aging brilliant thorns
in the side of your country? Then...'In praise of gold:

"...nothing more than a cop-out. So it seems to me, at any rate. ~Faustine. "

Like you last week (agent ?) faustine (cop-in?) Silence speaks volumes in
this house.

Im calling you out as a patriotic,extremely dim little bitch at the very
least,Well?

END reprints 'smart as whip 'F missed in the wash.

(changed slightly dim to the above)Do you take messages for agent 
farr,agent faustine,Ive got a tip for her.

Re: in praise of gold

[Faustine]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Morlock wrote:
Faustine wrote:

> > Too bad you seemed to have missed the entire point of the passage: if your
> > relationships are making you bitter and miserable, there's no sense in
> > blaming the other half of the human race for whatever weaknesses of your own
> > cause you to keep seeking out the same old archetypically shitty situations.

> Still, the difference is immaterial.
> Testosterone & stuff on that Y chromosome drive men to seek women and get into
> shitty situations. There is nothing voluntary there, most men have 'clingy'
> need for women. 

Bah. If you've always found that the women who are willing to sleep with you are
irritating, at odds with your emotional temperament and after your money, why
not spare yourself all the headaches and schedule appointments with an escort,
maid service and sperm bank? Seriously, doing a cold-eyed cost/benefit analysis
might save you some real misery in the long run. That so many people are driven
to go through the motions of the very things that bring them the most
unhappiness is a real shame.

Or else, you could keep always looking for a woman who has a view of things
more to your liking. If you're the kind of man who posts here, I can't imagine
you'd have much in common with "average people" anyway. So why fall back on
citing the flaws of the average woman (which, incidentally, I'm not denying) in
this case.


> Characterising not-mine relationships as pathologically-dependent and clingy
> and others as 'drawn to independent' and noble is nonsense.

Who said anything about noble? There are more than enough flavors of
psychological pathology to go around--but of the infinite number of problems
that can come from dating a woman as strong-willed and unsentimental as you
are, being whinily pressured to measure up to an imaginary ideal just isn't one
of them.


> Evolution is not beyond reproach nor Holy Dogma, and I see no reason why
> wouldn't a sensible male* bitch about this parasitic setup.

But nobody's forcing you to shell out cash to goldiggers and breeders: find a
woman who doesn't buy into either scenario and you're in business. They're
certainly out there, just a lot harder to find.


> "Fit" and "unfit" for "human companionship" are far to into nacionalsocialist
> ideology, I'd rather not go there.

It doesn't take a judgment by society at large to realize that some
people really are better off alone instead of inflicting their destructive
fucked-up personality on others (psychotics, alcoholics, etc). On the other
hand, if more people refused to cave in to societal pressures and thought about
what they really wanted to do with their lives (instead of blindly falling into
the "spouse, family, 9 to 5 job" trap out of conformism and a fear of the
unknown) it would be a great thing. 


~Faustine.



***

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.
- --William O. Douglas, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court

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Re: in praise of gold,

[mattd]

"...nothing more than a cop-out. So it seems to me, at any rate. ~Faustine. "

Like you last week (agent ?) faustine (cop-in?) Silence speaks volumes in 
this house.

Re: in praise of gold

[Faustine]

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Morlock Elloi wrote:
Faustine wrote:

> Any relationship based on desperation or one partner's dysfunctional clingy
> need is a complete waste of time. So if you seem to be spending a lot of time
> around women who want to mash you down into a mold of some cartoonish happy-
> ever-after "ideal", perhaps it's time to look at why you keep choosing and
> ending up with them. If you were drawn to strong-willed independent women
> instead, I can assure you that you'd be facing an entirely different spectrum
> of dysfunctionality. ;) 

>>The cpunk relevance evades me, but ...

Slim to none, actually. Just my two cents in response to various bitter
observations to the effect that all women are money-mad golddiggers hell bent on
luring hapless men to their doom in the name of providing for large litters of
genetically superior offspring, who eventually nag them to death in the name of
changing for "a relationship". Or something.  


>>The 'relationship' is a product of some need, and classifying that need as
>>clingy or something else is arbitrary and subjective. 

Of course. Since when was a value judgment ever anything else?

>>You invent 'drawn' as something that is not-clingy-need. Semantic nonsense.

Too bad you seemed to have missed the entire point of the passage: if your
relationships are making you bitter and miserable, there's no sense in blaming
the other half of the human race for whatever weaknesses of your own cause you
to keep seeking out the same old archetypically shitty situations. Proclaiming
all "men are x" or "all women are y" as some sort of excuse for why you've
proven yourself unfit for human companionship is nothing more than a cop-out.
So it seems to me, at any rate. 
 

~Faustine.



***

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.
- --William O. Douglas, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court

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Re: in praise of gold

[Morlock Elloi]

> Any relationship based on desperation or one partner's dysfunctional clingy
> need is a complete waste of time. So if you seem to be spending a lot of time
> around women who want to mash you down into a mold of some cartoonish happy-
> ever-after "ideal", perhaps it's time to look at why you keep choosing and
> ending up with them. If you were drawn to strong-willed independent women
> instead, I can assure you that you'd be facing an entirely different spectrum
> of dysfunctionality. ;) 

The cpunk relevance evades me, but ...

The 'relationship' is a product of some need, and classifying that need as
clingy or something else is arbitrary and subjective. You invent 'drawn' as
something that is not-clingy-need. Semantic nonsense.



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Re: Cattle Herding... (was Re: in praise of gold)

[Karsten M. Self]

on Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 05:21:07PM -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> On 23 Nov 2001, at 19:13, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>
> > Pecunia, the latin word for money, comes from the Etruscian pecu, meaning,
cow.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > RAH
> >
>
> And of course the German word for money is Gelt, which means
> Gold.
>
> Cows might have served well as currency for primitives like the
> Etruscans, but can you imagine using them today?  I took
> a bus this morning, the fair was 1.10 and I only had paper money
> so they ripped me off 90 cents.  But if I was an Etruscan, they
> would've taken my whole cow!

No, actually, you probably came out about $1.60 ahead.

"Farebox recovery" -- the amount of a transit system's expenses that are
covered by direct rider payments -- tends about 30% - 40% of expenses.
This varies widely, a sparsely-attended rural service might rate 10%
returns, typical suburban service 15-20%, a well-served metro transit
system might come as high as 50-55%.

You're also neglecting the possibility that the fare might not have been
a whole cow, but just cost you an arm and a leg.

Peace.

--
Karsten M. Self <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave
  http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/   Land of the free
   Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org
Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html

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Re: in praise of gold

[Faustine]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Monday, November 26, 2001, at 07:58 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
>> On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Faustine wrote:
>>> Not all women are golddiggers.
>> They're called 'old maids'. ALL women who are interested in a
>> 'relationship' are 'golddiggers' in the sense they want to 'change' the
>> other party.
>
> Nothing like a good across the board generalization, huh Jim?

>   Well, I hate to be in the position of defending Jimbo, but he's 
>right--in a sense, but not just about women.

>   I'd be willing to bet (should there be a way of proving it to my 
>satisfaction) that in every relationship, one party would like to change 
>AT LEAST 2 things about the other party.


Bah! Anyone who goes around trying to force the other person into becoming
what they're not probably deserves whatever grief they give themselves over it. 

I don't change for anyone, nor do I expect anyone to change for me. 
Integrity and self-respect count for a lot in my book. And if we can
enjoy each other for what we are, excellent. If not, time to move on to
something more rewarding. Not all women go around with silly notions about
"perfect soulmates" and all that nauseating weakminded crap. I find nothing in
least bit attractive about a spineless simp telling me what he thinks I want to
hear. What's so interesting about being around a personality-deficient
jellyfish, man or woman. Pride isn't a sin, it's a virtue!

Any relationship based on desperation or one partner's dysfunctional clingy
need is a complete waste of time. So if you seem to be spending a lot of time
around women who want to mash you down into a mold of some cartoonish happy-
ever-after "ideal", perhaps it's time to look at why you keep choosing and
ending up with them. If you were drawn to strong-willed independent women
instead, I can assure you that you'd be facing an entirely different spectrum
of dysfunctionality. ;) 


~Faustine.


I was going to look for an especially relevant sig quote, but on second
thought, think the one I have now will do just fine...


***

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.
- --William O. Douglas, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court

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Re: CDR: Re: in praise of gold

[measl]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Petro wrote:

> On Monday, November 26, 2001, at 07:58 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
> >> On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Faustine wrote:
> >>> Not all women are golddiggers.
> >> They're called 'old maids'. ALL women who are interested in a
> >> 'relationship' are 'golddiggers' in the sense they want to 'change' the
> >> other party.
> >
> > Nothing like a good across the board generalization, huh Jim?
> 
>   Well, I hate to be in the position of defending Jimbo, but he's 
> right--in a sense, but not just about women.

Where does the desire for "a relationship" translate into the desire to
"change the other party"?  

>   I'd be willing to bet (should there be a way of proving it to my 
> satisfaction) that in every relationship, one party would like to change 
> AT LEAST 2 things about the other party.

Then I guess we're down the minutae of "what is "a relationship", and what is
"change"... 

>   Of course, this then makes every person who gets into any kind of 
> relationship a "gold digger".

The American colloquialism "Golddigger" != "Relationship participant who
would like to effect changes in the other engaging party(s)".  The Goldigger
term commonly refers to a woman who marries or engages in highly personal
(not _necessarily_ sexual, but the inference is a common one) long term
"relationships" for the accrual of cash and property, rather than any actual
interest in the partner(s).  Think long-term hookers.  Think Mary Elizabeth
Terranson :-)

> > Who was she?  It's nice to see you're not bitter ;-/
> 
>   Why do you assume it was a she?



Because Jim's comment specifically referred to women.

-- 
Yours, 
J.A. Terranson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they
should give serious consideration towards setting a better example:
Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of
unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in
the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and 
elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire
populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate...
This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States
as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers,
associates, or others.  Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of
those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the
first place...

Re: CDR: Re: in praise of gold

[Jim Choate]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Petro wrote:

> > Who was she?  It's nice to see you're not bitter ;-/
> 
>   Why do you assume it was a she?

:)


 --


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Re: CDR: Re: in praise of gold

[Petro]

On Monday, November 26, 2001, at 07:58 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
>> On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Faustine wrote:
>>> Not all women are golddiggers.
>> They're called 'old maids'. ALL women who are interested in a
>> 'relationship' are 'golddiggers' in the sense they want to 'change' the
>> other party.
>
> Nothing like a good across the board generalization, huh Jim?

Well, I hate to be in the position of defending Jimbo, but he's 
right--in a sense, but not just about women.

I'd be willing to bet (should there be a way of proving it to my 
satisfaction) that in every relationship, one party would like to change 
AT LEAST 2 things about the other party.

Of course, this then makes every person who gets into any kind of 
relationship a "gold digger".

>
> Who was she?  It's nice to see you're not bitter ;-/

Why do you assume it was a she?

--
"Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are
half-wits."--Chris Klein

Re: Cattle Herding... (was Re: in praise of gold)

[David Honig]

At 05:21 PM 11/26/01 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>Cows might have served well as currency for primitives like the 
>Etruscans, but can you imagine using them today?  I took
>a bus this morning, the fair was 1.10 and I only had paper money
>so they ripped me off 90 cents.  But if I was an Etruscan, they
>would've taken my whole cow! 

You would have gotten a goat and two chickens in change.

Re: Cattle Herding... (was Re: in praise of gold)

[Ken Brown]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Cows might have served well as currency for primitives like the
> Etruscans, but can you imagine using them today?  I took
> a bus this morning, the fair was 1.10 and I only had paper money
> so they ripped me off 90 cents.  But if I was an Etruscan, they
> would've taken my whole cow!

As far as I know people who use cows (or whatever) like this make it
work by running up all sorts of debts with each other. So it looks to
strangers as if they are being all nice and friendly and doing favours,
but of course A knows that B owes so many cows or goats or pots of beer
next time someone from village X marries someone from village Y,  while
B can call in at C's village any time they want and eat prawns, as long
as D has by then given some of those special beads made out of abalone
shell to F...  and so on. Great fun & entirely rendered obsolete by the
invention of double-entry book-keeping.

If our ancestors lived like that for a long while then maybe we are
evolved to remember those reputation tensors Tim mentioned. We all,
quite naturally, keep track of who owes what to who & whether they are
likely to pay up. So the tribe benefits from old folks who remember
exactly who brought what to which party years ago. Human beings as
natural book-keepers. It is a good a sociobiological Just So Story and
any other.

Of course we do stuff like that informally. My sister & her husband owe
me some money from when I helped them buy a car. But I,  quite
separately, owe him about twenty quid I borrowed to buy some beers - but
then he owes me a round or two next time we are in a pub - the debts
aren't commensurable (even though two of them are denominated in pounds
sterling). The "round" is a powerfully symbolic system of exchange and
reputation amongst British men (women sometimes join in, as do Irish &
Australians, though they don't *quite* get it).

As the Gikuyu proverb says "goats are not bananas".

Try searching the web for "Onka's big Moka" (you have to avoid
references to a band called Toploader that made an album with that
title) It was an all-time classic TV program about some guys in Papua
who had to successfully bring off a big party before the rainy season,
so that they could hand over loads of pigs to their rivals. Like a
potlach, with the added complication that, while you have the pigs, they
have to eat - pig-capital has negative interest rates.   But it wasn't
just pigs...

Ken

Re: Cat Herding... (was Re: in praise of gold)

[Bill Stewart]

>Cows might have served well as currency for primitives like the
>Etruscans, but can you imagine using them today?  I took
>a bus this morning, the fair was 1.10 and I only had paper money
>so they ripped me off 90 cents.  But if I was an Etruscan, they
>would've taken my whole cow!

More likely the "fare" was 1.10, but whatever :-)

There's a nice changemaking application for the Palm Pilot
that lets you input the amount of money you want to pay somebody
and the size of payment you can make, e.g. $1.10 and $5.
It splits a circle into appropriately sized pie slices,
you spin the dial, and either pay or don't pay.

Of course, getting a bus company to trust your Palm Pilot
not to be running a rigged version may be tougher
than getting your mathematically inclined friends to accept it :-)

Re: in praise of gold

[Jim Choate]

You should spend some time reading recent work on Chimp and Bonobo packs
and the inter-pack shenanigans the females go through (as well as the
mapping to human behaviour).

On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, Harmon Seaver wrote:

>   On a long road trip one night, I heard an extremely interesting long
> discussion amongst a group of psychiatrists, sociologists, and other
> scientists,  regarding a study which showed, firstly, that large numbers of
> attractive young women married unattractive, frequently older, boring, but
> financially well-off men.
>   No surprise, that, eh? But then, the study showed, that a large
> percentage of these same women also tended to have adulterous relationships
> with what was termed "dangerous" men -- losers, outlaws, reckless adventurers,
> etc.
>  Another surprise was that this was a cross-cultural phenomenon, and the
> gist of the discussion was that this wasn't merely thrill seeking or whatever
> on the part of the women, but was actually subconscious darwinism in action,
> i.e., the woman formed the permanent alliance with the man who could best
> support her offspring, then got herself impregnated by the males with the
> strongest, sexiest, genetic makeup -- thereby insuring that not only would her
> children survive, but they, like their true father (and also like the mother)
> would be very attractive and likely to mate.
>   An extremely interesting idea. Some might find the articles in the most
> recent Wired about the high percentages of autism among Silicon Valley
> children to be interesting --


 --


 Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind.

 Bumper Sticker

   The Armadillo Group   ,::;::-.  James Choate
   Austin, Tx   /:'/ ``::>/|/  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   www.ssz.com.',  `/( e\  512-451-7087
   -~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-

Re: in praise of gold

[Jim Choate]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Faustine wrote:

> Not all women are golddiggers. 

They're called 'old maids'. ALL women who are interested in a
'relationship' are 'golddiggers' in the sense they want to 'change' the
other party.


 --


 Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind.

 Bumper Sticker

   The Armadillo Group   ,::;::-.  James Choate
   Austin, Tx   /:'/ ``::>/|/  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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   -~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-

Re: Cattle Herding... (was Re: in praise of gold)

[georgemw]

On 23 Nov 2001, at 19:13, R. A. Hettinga wrote:

> Pecunia, the latin word for money, comes from the Etruscian pecu, meaning, cow.
> 
> Cheers,
> RAH
> 

And of course the German word for money is Gelt, which means 
Gold. 

Cows might have served well as currency for primitives like the 
Etruscans, but can you imagine using them today?  I took
a bus this morning, the fair was 1.10 and I only had paper money
so they ripped me off 90 cents.  But if I was an Etruscan, they
would've taken my whole cow! 

George
> -- 
> -
> R. A. Hettinga 
> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: in praise of gold

[georgemw]

On 21 Nov 2001, at 7:55, David Honig wrote:

> At 08:12 PM 11/20/01 -0500, Faustine wrote:
> >David wrote:
> >George wrote:
> >
> >>>5) Gold makes women sleep with you.  I don't know why they
> >>>like it, but they do.
> >>They sleep with you because of your large cattle herd only they
> >>have accepted abstracted value and settle for gold or stocks...
> >
> >
> >Not all women are golddiggers. I happen to think any woman who marries
> ..
> >The only "abstracted value" I find really intriguing is the quality of...
> 
> You should interpret my statement in the context of George's statement
> not your personal life.
> 
> Also regardless of your personal tastes, you should be familiar with
> sociobiology, Desmond Morris, etc.  Peacock feathers, mammaries on humans,
> antlers, etc. 
> 
> 
Actually, in that context I was specifically NOT referring to
gold as a generic proxy for value,  if you'll recall I was listing
reasons was gold is particularly well suited to be a proxy for
value.  The point is that gold is something that falls into the
category of sparkly things that women like.  Women will sleep with 
you if you give them jewelry, even if they're not going to
sell it.  Umm, or so I've been told.

Of course, men like the sparkly stuff also, but if wear lots of
jewelry people are likely to think you're either gay or a pimp.
Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but giving off
misleading signals can lead to embarassment.

George

Re: in praise of gold

[Morlock Elloi]

> Not all women are golddiggers. I happen to think any woman who marries
> for money or sleeps around for gifts and dinners is worse than a whore.
> As the old saw goes, at least real prostitutes are honest about what they're
> doing. 
> 
> The only "abstracted value" I find really intriguing is the quality of
> a man's mind. Everything else is entirely beside the point. You have no idea
> how often I get hit on by so-called "attractive" men--and I'm quite proud to
> say

Same thing. Capable mind means ability to extract valuable stuff from society.

Just another currency, more volatile than gold but also with more potential.

I won't extrapolate the working girl analogy ... :-)))


=
end
(of original message)

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Re: in praise of gold

[Faustine]

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Hash: SHA1

David wrote:
George wrote:

>>5) Gold makes women sleep with you.  I don't know why they
>>like it, but they do.
>They sleep with you because of your large cattle herd only they
>have accepted abstracted value and settle for gold or stocks...


Not all women are golddiggers. I happen to think any woman who marries
for money or sleeps around for gifts and dinners is worse than a whore.
As the old saw goes, at least real prostitutes are honest about what they're
doing. 

The only "abstracted value" I find really intriguing is the quality of
a man's mind. Everything else is entirely beside the point. You have no idea
how often I get hit on by so-called "attractive" men--and I'm quite proud to say
I've never dated even one of them. I'd prefer a fat cranky old genius over a
rich businessman or male model anyday! 

But if sleeping with golddiggers is good enough for you, to each his own.
Though it must totally unsatisfying to know that your golddigger-du-jour will
stop valuing you when your cash flow dries up. A shame you couldn't have found
someone better instead. 


~Faustine.


***

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.
- --William O. Douglas, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court

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Re: In praise of gold

[David Honig]

At 07:03 PM 11/19/01 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>On 19 Nov 2001, at 17:40, Tim May wrote:
>
>> On Monday, November 19, 2001, at 05:03 PM, David Honig wrote:
>> >
>> > Yes, but what this thread has ignored is that gold (and other
>> > densely precious things) were valued *in and of themselves* and so
>> > using them as money was not symbolic.  You traded your goat
>> > for a goat's worth of gold; if trust evaporated overnight
>> > the gold is still worth something.
>> 
>> Not really. It was still a matter of belief that that gold coin, or gold 
>> nugget, would be worth something.
>> 
>> "In and of itself" is a very vague and intangible concept.
>> 
>> --Tim May
>
>I understand your point, you can't eat gold, it won't keep you
>warm and dry in a storm, it really is mostly only good for
>you in that other people will also give you stuff for it BUT
>I think the other side is pretty clear also.  Gold isn't like,
>say, the good will of the king, which becomes wortheless as soon
>as there's a new king. I suspect that it never ocurred to most people
>during gold standard days that gold could in principle become
>wothless (although alchemists understood perfectly well that
>being able to turn lead into gold is only the key to riches if
>you alone posess the secret).
>
>Anyway, there are very good reasons why gold is better than
>anything else as a basis of currency.

BTW, I wasn't arguing it is "better" nowadays; I'd think the kilowatt-hour
(aka joules) would be more useful today.  I was thinking about
how the use of inert metals (etc) arose historically.  At first
the 'trust' was minimal and it was a 1:1 trade for the more portable
gold.

>2) Gold does not rust or decay.  Again, very important if you
>have to keep reserves.

Also why it was available to cavemen, and why it was shiny,
which was attractive.

>3) Gold is uniform.  Diamonds are all different, oil comes in
>a plethora of types and grades.  Tobacco was used as money
>in the early days of the american colonies, with the (easily 
>predictable) result that people smokes the good stuff and used the
>crappiest stuff they could find to pay their debts. Nothing
>could be purer than pure gold.

Isotopically pure gold :-) 

Watts are 'uniform'; so is an N% solution of ethanol (if you
want to put your joules in your car, etc.)

>4) Gold is elemental.  It's much more plausible that somebody will
>come up with an economic way to synthesize, say, diamonds than 
>gold. 
>
>5) Gold makes women sleep with you.  I don't know why they
>like it, but they do.

They sleep with you because of your large cattle herd only they
have accepted abstracted value and settle for gold or stocks...