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alpha0  ·  4708 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dana Bash of CNN is worried about Ron Paul
The ancients :)) valued Gold and Silver because the 'cost' of faking such matter was deemed far greater (if even possible, minus the lore of alchemists) than the actual material. Today we have strong cryptography. (Some one should break this to the Vienna school.) Actually, the ancient kings' strong preference was for Silver, since that allowed for greater liquidity and promoted greater commerce.

> The other argument they make is that there is a finite amount of gold in the world, whereas currency could be essentially infinite. This is equally stupid, because it make economics a zero sum game.

I agree, it is completely stupid to cap a nation's economy. Fiat within (sovereign) domain coupled with commodity based (e.g. Oil reserves) for trans-national trade, would be the sensible way to go, imo. The transnational commodity 'trade currency' would keep internal national funny money at bay.

Thinking in the economic space has been stuck in usuary and flat (not fiat) currency since Sumer. The consequences have been known since then. (It is in the bible too.) I still haven't figured out how one would disentangle 'storable value' from 'unit of exchange'. That is what is required and regrettably no one apparently is working on finding a solution to that problem.