Serowbot wrote on 03/02/14 at 08:32:24:Naa,... predictions of doom never come to fruition, except in bible tales...
Economies today are global... businesses are international... it's all interdependent.. even China relies on us just as much as we rely on their cheap goods...
...all boats rise with the tide...
Any material standard for currency, limits growth to the availability of that commodity... and gives an unfair advantage to countries that that have that resource domestically... It creates an imbalance of prosperity based on the resource... the way Arab oil countries are advantaged right now...
Gold or silver would shift it, but not fundamentally change it...
Oil is precious... so Arab countries have power, but they have no real economy other than oil...
When it runs out, they will be back in tents riding camels...
Salt was once a sort of standard...
Oil may be, in a way, now...
...but, the real standard today is knowledge and information... which is not a tangible commodity...
You can only abstractly attach a currency value to it...
So, the value of a currency is based on what the rest of the world believes your knowledge and information is worth...
A dollar is worth what a person is willing to trade for it...
I wont say your altogether wrong, but I dont think your altogether right either. Being on a "gold standard" does not limit one to only settling in physical gold. It simply prevents governments from doing what they are doing right now... printing trillions cash with no production to back it up. however, it would not stop them from devaluing the currency of a gold back dollar.. but it would make it more visiable.
Funny thing is that Bitcoin.. adresses the issue and seems to fit perfectly with your ideal of "money". I suspect that while Bitcoin itself will die ( probably horribly), governments will someday pick up that idea and create a new global currency.
There is no way that inflation is GOOD for me. Not 1%, not 6%, and certainly not 20%. It IS good for the government. The system as it stands now was designed to give the government to abilty to inflate at will. This no worse than when kings of old sent armed men in to take all the goods, money from the masses. It is 100% the same thing.
Pushing the intrest rate to zero is also stealing wealth, mostly from the elderly.