The Gold Standard

[forsyth]

There's still people who claim we need "real money" based on gold, not just "fiat money", because gold's really worth something, regular money's only worth something because the government says so.

But gold's only worth anything because people say so also. (Yes, gold has applications in electronics and a lot of other things, but when people talk about the "value" of gold, that's usally not what they're talking about.

Comments

[kail-panille.livejournal.com]

...and?

Seriously, I could see an argument in favor of some kind of hard standard based on the extra stability of the money supply, but I suspect that a government intent on making seriously bad financial decisions could still find a way to do so.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

And nothing in particular. Somebody was saying how great Ron Paul was, and linked to an article about how he'd become one of the "mainstream" Republican candidates, and the main quotes it had from him were with him talking about "fiat money" and urging a return to the gold standard. That and he's polling no higher than 5% in any polls I've seen. Sadly, Ron Paul's the least crazy Republican candidate in the current field, too.

That and I just read Making Money by Terry Pratchett last week, which talked about the same thing.