/liberty/ - Liberty

>>70478

Land and ammo are the only standards that will save you when shit hits the fan.

>>70478

Gold is more easily divisible and identical from unit to unit. An ounce of gold is an ounce of gold is an ounce of gold, but diamonds can come in all sorts of qualities and splitting one in half drastically reduces the value.

>>70481

>>70480

Thanks. So it basically just the fact that gold is comfortable and more scarce. Say gold and silver (and other precious metals) would become abundant, what would be your go-to currency? Bitcoin or something else?

>>70480

I forgot: There's also cryptocurrencies, and commodity bundles. Can't say much about the former, but I guess they're pretty good. I'd rather have gold, however. Too few people care to set up a bitcoin wallet. This might change some time in the future, and it might be the way to go forward once we develop universal constructors

Commodity bundles are bundles of goods that you can exchange for a specific amount of currency. Say you can exchange a dollar for a hundred gram of salt, a hundred gram of firewood, and a hundred gram of various other commodities, all in a bundle. The idea is that people have something useful they can exchange their currency for when SHTF. The problem is that the individual commodities in the bundle sold separately will always be worth more than the whole bundle. Who has a use for firewood, salt, raw iron, cat food, and wheat, all together, as one bundle? He will just want one or two of these commodities. Someone else will want two other commodities. The fifth commodity may be completely valueless in the eyes of everyone. So people will trade in ten dollars and then make more than these ten dollars by selling the commodities individually and not as a bundle.

This just if you want to go full completionist on currency.

>>70482

You're welcome!

>Say gold and silver (and other precious metals) would become abundant, what would be your go-to currency? Bitcoin or something else?

That might be the best, then. Maybe also diamond. After all, even seashells or spices could be used as currency, but they're very inferior. But without gold or silver, my choice would be cryptocurrencies.

>>70482

Something else that's long lasting, easily fungible, and sort of scarce.

>>70480

http://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml

It's not useless. Even during Friedman's time it had a wide enough range of uses and they grow as science finds more. He has a hate-love relationship with it that makes him not like it as much because it gets in the way of his Keynesian monetary policy.

>>70483

>my choice would be cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrencies are virtual fiat money. Bullets would probably be a better investment.

>>70509

>Cryptocurrencies are virtual fiat money.

Not when they're done right. They may be digital and intangible, but Bitcoin, for example, is still checked against inflation. Mining it is becoming prohibitively expensive. Although I don't get why they allowed mining at all, instead of creating a fixed number of bitcoins. Probably haven't read Mises.

>Bullets would probably be a better investment.

Metro 2033 was a cool game, but just because something's stylish doesn't make it practical.

>>70510

>Although I don't get why they allowed mining at all, instead of creating a fixed number of bitcoins

Because it creates a mining industry dependent on the whim of the one with the power to fuck with the rates. Maybe people act purposefully. That's just the thing that those who think crypto can ever emulate gold properly keep missing. Gold isn't someone else's creation. Nobody has access to the blockchain for gold. Nobody is taking it on faith that the supply of gold won't (instead of can't) be artificially altered. Bitcoin in particular out of all of them never had to display that. But other blockchain currencies have already been fucked with in that manner and that's good enough of a warning example.

Even without gold there are other metals that can take its place. It's not even the second best option.

>>70510

>>Cryptocurrencies are virtual fiat money.

>Not when they're done right.

Can you elaborate? There's nothing backing the value of any cryptocurrency. They're literally fiat. Their only positive feature is that governments can't touch them (yet).

>>70515

Remember the currencies that failed in this way? Curious to look them up.

>>70517

Okay, that's on me. Here's the proper definition of fiat money:

>Often called paper money, fiat money is in a wider sense any money declared to be legal tender by government fiat (ie law). In a narrower sense, fiat money is an intrinsically useless good declared to be legal tender by government fiat.

Cryptocurrencies aren't fiat because they're not declared to be legal tender. You don't need to back their value, because - like gold - they already have value as a medium of exchange. According to the anon above, they're shit, but not because they're fiat, but because they can be easily manipulated.

>>70478

Gold currency is stable, fiat currencies are not.

>>70480

>One weakness of gold, according to Milton Friedman, is that it's useless in itself.

Doesn't it have a usefully high melting point? I thought that was the value of gold before we discovered what conductivity was.

>>70527

The value of a currency is not intrinsic to it, just as no value is ever intrinsic. Gold served as a currency because there was an expectation that it had purchasing power. If it had no use besides that, it would still be a currency. Same with cryptocurrencies. If everyone had the expectation that they would have purchasing power in the future, they would be currency.

>>70532

It has tons of uses. No idea why Friedman forgot that. Sure, it's not necessarily something you think about when you consider gold as a currency, but he was a professional economist for decades and it apparently never occurred to him.

>>70534

>Gold served as a currency because there was an expectation that it had purchasing power.

It's purchasing power exited long before it was used as currency, for the simple fact that it was shinny and used as jewelery and for decorations. Crypto currencies have no intrinsic values, and thus will fail as money. Even houses and dotcoms are better alternatives.

>>70510

>Metro 2033

I only played a small amount of this game, and found it difficult to maintain a good quantity of ammo. Does the ammo acquisition get better if I continue playing?

>>70520

>fiat money is in a wider sense any money declared to be legal tender by government fiat

>Cryptocurrencies aren't fiat because they're not declared to be legal tender

You're being a bit disingenuous there, buddy. And it's strange to see someone make the argument of "this X isn't really X because only the government can do X", while simultaneously flying the ancap flag. The definition for fiat money requires government fiat for the simple reason that no-one in their right mind would be using fiat money if they weren't being forced to do so by the government. The government is not necessary for fiat money - all that is required is for it to be fiat money is for it to be money by fiat (i.e., "It's money because I/we say it's money").

Take company scrip, for example. Paper, or tokens, assigned a "value" by its issuer, but not backed by anything of value. Would you say that it's not fiat money? It clearly is; it only has value because it has been declared to be money by fiat.

>You don't need to back their value, because - like gold - they already have value as a medium of exchange.

Gold has value as a medium of exchange because gold has value as gold. People want gold because of what gold is, because it's useful and shiny. You can trade an ounce of gold to someone because there's people who actually need an ounce of gold.

The same is not true for cryptocurrencies. You can't eat a bitcoin, or use it fuel your car. You can't weave it into cloth, or cure malaria with it, or turn it into a microchip. No-one wants a bitcoin just because it's a bitcoin, because it doesn't do anything. People see bitcoin as valuable solely because they believe that there will be somebody else who will see it as even more valuable.

>In a narrower sense, fiat money is an intrinsically useless good declared to be legal tender by government fiat.

Cryptocurrencies are an intrinsically useless good declared to be legal tender by the common consensus of a bunch of people buying drugs on the internet. They're the only ones actually using it as money, really. Even then, they're not really treating it like money. They turn their "real" money into cryptocurrency, and use that to buy what they wanted. It's not a currency - it's an alternative to paypal. Everything else surrounding cryptocurrencies is just a speculative bubble, because none of it is built on any actual value, or even purchasing power - just the illusion of purchasing power because there's currently nothing better. If cryptocurrencies aren't fiat money, it's because they're less than fiat money.

>>70538

Don't ever shoot your military rounds. Use the shitty metro reloads instead. Military ammo is more powerful, but when you compare it to how many reloads it could've bought you, it's just a waste. Search everywhere, fire in controlled bursts, and sneak when possible, and you shouldn't ever have to buy ammo at all, even on harder difficulties. Sell about half your ammo for everything except your main weapon every time you reach a shop. You'll pick up more as you go, but if you're already at the ammo cap, you'll have to leave it there.

>>70551

Scarcity isn't the same thing as value. Just because there's a finite amount of a certain cryptocurrency doesn't mean that each coin is actually worth anything. Sure, a lot of gold's value comes from tradition (as in, it's valuable because it's always been seen as valuable), but at the end of the day, gold can actually be used for things, and draws value from that. Even at its most basic, gold is shiny and exclusive, and appeals to rich cunts who like ostentatious displays of wealth. Cryptos stop existing if the power goes out.

>>70556

The only reason cryptos have scarcity is because the creator of the cryptocurrency totally promises to never make any more coins, like, I'm serious you guys, trust me. Government fiat was the same, back when it was new. The only thing standing between a cryptocurrency and rampant hyperinflation is the word of some random guy on the internet. Admittedly, that does make it far more trustworthy than any government fiat, but you're still building an economy on top of a hope and a prayer.

>improbable doomsday scenario

A power outage isn't exactly an improbable doomsday scenario. Hell, my power's gone out several times this year already but I guess maybe I'm expecting a bit too much from THE MOST EXPENSIVE ELECTRICITY IN THE WORLD - THANK YOU GOVERNMENT. Wasn't there another hurricane over in burgerland just recently? Do you think that if someone was running low on essentials, they'd be using crypto to buy what they need?

I'm getting side-tracked, though. When I said "Cryptos stop existing if the power goes out", I wasn't referring to crisis situations; I was referring to the fact that cryptos are not a physical thing, and are not backed by a physical thing. Their value is a shared delusion, which, while convenient, is unstable, unreliable, and built on nothing.

You seem very attached to the incorrect idea that cryptocurrencies aren't fiat money. Where do you think their value comes from? What are they backed by? If you wanted to buy something from a person who had never heard of cryptocurrencies before, what reason could you give them to start accepting crypto as payment? Why would they believe that it's worth anything?

>>70557

>I'm pretty sure we're entering the realm of pure semantics.

Then let us enter this mystical realm. Or are you shying away because you know that as soon as we actually get down to the facts, it becomes clear that I'm right?

>if gold literally stopped switching hands except when warehouse receipts where exchanged, it would retain its purchasing power.

You're assuming that people will continue to display the same behaviour, even when the environment that dictates that behaviour changes. People only use money if they believe it's worth something. Even government fiat is subject to this. Are you familiar with the concept of a bank run? People desperately trying to withdraw their precious, precious fiat from the bank, because they're worried that there might not be enough pieces of paper to go around, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. What are they worried about? Their money's still in their account - it still exists on paper. Isn't that good enough? As soon as someone thinks about their money, and asks "what is this actually worth?", it all falls apart. Compare that to if someone thinks about an ounce of gold, and asks "what is this actually worth?". It's worth an ounce of gold. It's backed by a scarce commodity.

>My problem is with you fighting the basics of monetary theory.

Me? That's you. Cyptos definitely aren't commodity money, so if they aren't fiat money then what are they?

>>70558

He was talking about a long term, widespread loss of power, such as what might happen in a total societal collapse. And gold would certainly lose value relative to stuff like clean water or non perishable food in that scenario, so that's the stuff you really want to hoard in a crisis.

What happens when a government is facing invasion and has to raise lots of revenue very quickly to pay for troops, the chairforce, etc.?

>>70584

>There is simply not enough gold in the world to cover the quantity of currency presently in existence.

That's the whole point of having a real currency as money. You measure wealth based on the merit of its real value, backed by tangible resources such as gold. Its about being realistic rather than having (((the top elite))) destroying the currency through money printing or whatever imaginary money that have been shit out from botnet GPU.

>>70576

Fuck it. Are you not going address even a single point I brought up? And bank runs are a completely different thing to inflation. No need to start throwing insults around, just because you don't know what words mean.

>>70587

>it is a fiat because it's worth is arbitrarily determined by an authority.

So a government can just decide that each unit of their currency is now worth a million US dollars, and be rich and prosperous forever? The value of a fiat currency is arbitrarily determined by an authority, right? Wait, no, that's absurd. The value of a fiat currency is generated naturally though people's willingness to accept it as payment for things. The only thing that government "adds" to this process is punishing anyone who doesn't want to accept their fiat as payment. This authority is not essential, but I can see why you'd think it is, since those threats are pretty much the only reason why fiat currencies gain widespread adoption. brb, just got to head to the supermarket and buy my groceries, which I will pay for with bitcoin ​oh, wait.

>adoption is irrelevant in classifying currency as fiat.

That's not what I was getting at. What I was asking was, if currencies don't need to have any value except for their value as a medium of exchange, how to you get people to start treating it as a medium of exchange before is has gained that value by being used as money in the first place? How does it get to "this is real money" from "I can reach more customers by accepting this as payment, but I'll need to exchange it for some real money ASAP"?

Adoption is irrelevant in classifying currency as fiat, but adoption is absolutely essential in classifying something as currency in the first place. Cryptocurrencies are hardly currencies at all in that sense, since actually buying and selling with them seems like a minor feature these days. Use as a medium of exchange contributes comparatively little to a crypto's value, since most people are more interested in treating them like stocks; cryptocurrencies aren't currencies - they're speculative assets.

I have to ask: if cryptocurrencies are money, but aren't fiat money, what are they? They're not commodity money, or representative money. What are they?

>>70597

>So a government can just decide that each unit of their currency is now worth a million US dollars, and be rich and prosperous forever? The value of a fiat currency is arbitrarily determined by an authority, right? Wait, no, that's absurd

You don't even know how basic supply and demand economics works.That's exactly what governments have been doing for decades, arbitrarily lowering the value of their currency by printing up supply. The reason dollars today buy less than 10 years ago is completely their doing. They can decide if their fiat will be worth more or less by burning notes or printing new ones. And they are the only ones that can do so because they have authority over the system of currency, actively regulating against supply tampering or trade in other currencies. It's exactly the same with supermarket coupons. They have value only because an authority(the supermarket) decides to recognise them, even if a third party takes interest and gives value to the coupon, the final say on the validity and supply of the coupon remains in the authorities hands, not the market.

Your second ramble still has nothing to do with fiat definitions, it's just a giant insecure tirade against cryptos for whatever reason. You don't need to go into chicken and egg logic to see that cryptos are already being traded as both currency and commodity right now. If people want to trade it, it will be traded. Just as precious materials, salt and cowries were in the past.

>if cryptocurrencies are money, but aren't fiat money, what are they? They're not commodity money, or representative money. What are they?

There is no strict definition between a currency and a commodity other than fungibility and adoption. As adoption increases, price stabilises and fungibility increases. At the point in which any item of value, be they fiat or otherwise, is widely traded enough, it can be called a currency. This point is arbitrary, like how cigarettes are considered prison currency despite the market being comprised of just a few dozen individuals.

>>70601

>arbitrarily lowering the value of their currency by printing up supply

I'm not talking about lowering the value - any idiot can destroy their own currency's worth; I'm talking about raising the value (or more specifically, giving it a value to begin with). There's no authority with the power to just set a value for something, and make it objectively true just because they said so. If the government decided that, starting today, it was going to treat $10 notes as being worth $1, I'm sure there would be no end of people trying to trade in their dollars for $10 notes, because the value amongst the people who use the money is still $10 at least, until the government starts locking people up for having badwrongfun*. If the government decided that it was going to treat $1 coins as being worth $10, the same thing would occur (but in the opposite direction). The government doesn't dictate what the currency is worth. They can't just knock on the front door of the foreign exchange, and say, "Um, excuse me, but you've valued my currency wrong. It's supposed to be this, not that.". All they can do is nudge it in the direction they want by either shooting themselves in the foot, or by actually producing something of worth, and the only reason they're able to do even that much is because they have society in a stranglehold.

The value of a fiat currency is entirely based on how desirable it is seen as by the people who buy and sell it. The value is not arbitrarily set by an authority. That would imply that the issuing authority has the power to just magic up more value based entirely on their say-so, and that sort of thinking is a recipe for Zim dollars.

>It's exactly the same with supermarket coupons. They have value only because an authority(the supermarket) decides to recognise them

Not entirely true. Yes, the supermarket is the one that gives value to the coupons, but they do so in the role of the one accepting it as payment, not as the issuer of the coupon. What if a rival store decides to start accepting those coupons as well? What if they try to steal some customers by valuing the coupons as being worth slightly more? They're using the wrong value. Should the issuing supermarket force them to stop somehow?

>>70604

Admitting that any idiot can lower the value of his fiat is the same as admitting that any fiat authority can manipulate it's value. Your analogy is literally backing what I said. You're trying to say the market will react to arbitrary changes to a currency, but the key here is that the government neither loses nor gains in commodital worth when flipping the denominations, they can make 10 units of fiat worth 1 and vice versa as they please.They set which note is popular or worth more because they can. This is exactly what I mean by arbitrarily determining value. And even you realise that when the market get's pesky they can regulate and restrict trade. Supply dictates value, fiat has an unlimited supply mandated by an authority.

Zimbabwean dollars are fiat currency. You may not be able to relate it to more stable fiats because those fiats obfuscate inflation and supply manipulation through bureaucratic policies, but their supply is completely within the control of a state.

You're thinking too much into the coupon semantics, I was referring to coupons issued by a supermarket, not product issued coupons that cross stores. The supermarket issues coupons because a purchase made with that coupon would still be a net profit for them. A rival store can accept the coupon but would more likely lose money as the coupon was not issued in regards to their stock. The issuing supermarket has no reason to stop them as they rival store would become less competitive by accepting these coupons.

>>70596

there is finite amount of btc to dig out

>>70479

I'd rather have water than ammo. You need to drink water almost every day. If shtf so bad that you need ammo every day, you aren't going to live very long anyway.

>need ammo for hunting

Water is more important than meat.

>gold has inherent value

Inherent value is a contradiction if it's being used the way goldbugs want to use it. Gold is shit. Fiat is shit and evil but acting like those are the only options is a false dichotomy.

What shocks me is that people don't know what 'fiat' means. You're guranteed to have a pretty damn naive view of the state if you don't understand its relationship to money, wealth, and fiat.

>>70625

I agree, and most people don't realize that a national-scale shtf scenario would also be an extinction level event for most game animals anyway, especially in America.

>>70584

>The largest and most glaring problem in returning to the gold standard is that there is simply not enough gold in the world to cover the quantity of currency presently in existence

That's the whole point. So there can never be more virtual wealth than there is real wealth.

>>70478

>What if we had a diamond standard?

Outside of cutting tools, diamonds are worthless. Well, they aren't worthless, but their value is heavily inflated by De Beers.

>What if we had a diamond standard?

You can (relatively) easily cut gold into pieces for precise payments in weight. Gold is much softer than iron, for example, but is hard enough not to suddenly break into pieces the moment you don't want it to.

Also, it's way easier to melt gold than most other industrial metals. So if you have more gold pieces than you like to, you can melt them into a bullion yourself using very basic tools.

Good luck splitting diamonds into pieces of precise size/weight for a task at hand using common tools.

Seriously, if somebody wanted to pay for a ware/good with a piece of gold coin, the trader/you yourself might cut it away with a reasonably large knife and some brute force applied. So you really could pay in, like, 1/3 of a Spanish doubloon just the time you knew the price and agreed for an exchange. The leftover Pacman of a coin would be just as worthwhile as an equivalent weight of gold. Because the gold itself is a medium, the coin is just a convenient way to carry it around with some prestige/aesthetic bonus for mint owner.

As far as I know, silver is notably harder than gold, so you can't split it to pieces the time you just happened to want so. But it's also way more usual hence "cheaper", so it'd be easier to round down to a coin than to split the precise amount of money-material to make the deal.

Same goes for platinum and palladium. Both are inert just as gold, but are way rarer, heavier and durable to splitting than gold, hence not as useful for most exchanges.

Just realize that silver-gold pair was a world standard for millennia for a very good reason.

>>70668

> their value is heavily inflated by De Beers.

how?

>>70534

Well gold's value in industrial applications is indisputable but that is a much more recent phenomenon and its clear that gold was valued way before it had serious practical use. Even today its industrial uses is limited and the supply of gold far outweighs the demand by industrial applications, most people's desire for gold is entirely useless. This is what I think he refereed to.

If we're gonna have some kind of standard-enforcement system I would just like to have any kind of standard like gold and silver standards, and the 5-gallon bucket of paint standard and the 2006 Ford Focus standard and each bill is worth a fraction of the object redeemable for said object if you collect enough

>>70709

Nigga you aint seen Blood Diamond?

>>70744

So, violent nigger tribes enslave each other to mine diamonds, to sell diamonds for weapons to enslave each other with, to mine diamonds.

Yet somehow the buyer is responsible for seller's being a slaver and a pillager?

If niggers spent less time warring and more time digging at their homesteads, diamonds would be easier to acquire hence cheaper, no shit. Obviously some guys with AKs can't fight the urge of rent-seeking hence diamonds are more scarce if they were properly mined by nigga cooperatives and/or private diggers.

>>70744

no

i dont watch movies

>>70746

No the thing about Blood Diamond is that the diamond companies bought them up locked in a box to create artificial scarcity

>>70778

it does not break NAP tho

>>70835

Then the NAP must be wrong.

>>70778

Even that wouldn't be a problem at all if the diamond trade wasn't inherently violent. You could pull that stunt anywhere, in theory, yet only in the diamond trade does it facilitate war? Yeah, not buying it. As other anon said, the companies would be better off without a war, if they could create proper mining camps, with proper equipment, at no risk of being razed, with trained workers. But why commit so much capital if it will get destroyed by militias or confiscated by the government anyway? African countries do all that they can do to make themselves unattractive for capital investment.

>>71024

Because it doesn't lead to the conclusions you like? Ever considered that your conclusions are wrong, then? Look, your method here is all messed up.

>>71025

Conclusions are all that matter. Methods are literally just a means to an end.

You are the one with the messed morals if you think ethics come before the people they were conceived to defend, let alone believing that a single ethic is the end-all decider of morality whatever the results.

>>71027

>Conclusions are all that matter. Methods are literally just a means to an end.

And what if our moral intuitions are differing? How, then, do we discern whose are correct, except by either shouting really loud, or applying some objective method to resolve our fispute?

>You are the one with the messed morals if you think ethics come before the people they were conceived to defend, let alone believing that a single ethic is the end-all decider of morality whatever the results.

I do look at conclusions. Matthew 7:15-20, and all. But when they seem off, I first try to figure out if I'm wrong, then if my principles are wrong. I do not accept the conclusions solely because they appeal to me on an emotional level.

>>70509

>scarcity

>controlled, limited inflation

>fiat

also theres no state involvement in the creation. rather creation is inherent in the source code and its up to currency owners wich one they use

>>70517

ease of transaction, confidence in property, confidence in value - higher than fiat most countries, not engineered to lose value

also theres other currencies than bitcoin

ether, wich includes smartcontracts, a trustless, incorruptible resolution system

dash, wich is the ultra currency, at transaction speed, ergonomics, other things you want from everyday currency

>>71030

>And what if our moral intuitions are differing?

We observe the results of our respective moral intuitions when practiced in the meatspace. If one of ours results in, or at least cannot prevent something like diamond miners creating artificial scarcity for the sole purpose of raising prices and causing niggers to senselessly murder one another and keep their countries economically, technologically and morally in the dirt as a result, then perhaps that "moral intuition" is flawed.

>But when they seem off, I first try to figure out if I'm wrong, then if my principles are wrong

Are you claiming that >>70778 is incorrect in his claim that mining companies are creating artificial scarcity? Or that the result of this is senseless bloodshed and destruction? Or are you simply claiming that niggers are worthless so killing them is always morally justified?

>I do not accept the conclusions solely because they appeal to me on an emotional level.

You have produced no argument based on facts, only vague rhetoric and snide remarks. Either prove that I'm mistaken or accept that you are the one emotionally clinging to a singular ethic and that ethic is flawed in that aggression is sometimes needed to prevent great evil.

The diamond trade is not inherently violent. Quit infantilizing Africans. They're afflicted with bad ideas, not magic mind-control stones.

>>70478

Why do you all insist it has to be gold? Why do you all claim gold is like everything else but can't even explain why/give examples? Why do you all go on to ask why we can't use something else as an equivalent based on scarcity but fail to ever bring up a good replacement (since AnCaps would accept a replacement) or list obvious things that don't translate well like bees or gems?

Why did I come back to this place after disappearing for months?

>>70709

De Beers pretty much collects them en masse and stores them in vaults to keep their value from dropping. Diamonds are a worthless rock, but marketing can make even a cow shit biscuit look amazing, plus De Beers has a lot of legal monopolies on their trade as well as direct ties/relationships with the few diamond crafting families in the world where most of your expensive jewelry comes from.

>>71025

The issue is that there are very few people in the world who can cut/polish a diamond without using machinery or artificial gem creation without its value dropping.

>>71059

>We observe the results of our respective moral intuitions when practiced in the meatspace. If one of ours results in, or at least cannot prevent something like diamond miners creating artificial scarcity for the sole purpose of raising prices and causing niggers to senselessly murder one another and keep their countries economically, technologically and morally in the dirt as a result, then perhaps that "moral intuition" is flawed.

First of all, I attacked your economic thoughts here: >>71025 You ignored them in your response. It is disingenuous to bring them up now, in response to a post where I didn't say one word about economics. Even more disingenuous because you're talking on an emotional level here.

Now as to what we actually talked about, moral intuition. You completely missed my argument, it seems. Moral intuitions differ. You're horrified by pictures of children with their arms cut off and heads blown apart. What if I'm glad this happened, because I'm a horrible racist, or because I think the benefits to us are worth mroe than their few deaths? How do we resolve this conflict without starting a shouting match or clubbing each other to death, except by applying some ethical method? Our moral intuitions are diametrically opposed and cannot be used to resolve it.

>Are you claiming that >>70778 is incorrect in his claim that mining companies are creating artificial scarcity?

I don't know about that because I never researched the issue. Sounds like simple speculation to me, and like a proper response to the fact that natural resources are limited.

>Or that the result of this is senseless bloodshed and destruction?

That's what I was clearly disputing, yes. You haven't even shown that conflicts are indeed started over diamonds. What we observe is that militias force people to mine diamonds, and this by itself clearly cannot support your conclusions.

>Or are you simply claiming that niggers are worthless so killing them is always morally justified?

Well, better to kill them than to betray your fucking race by starving millions of white children to death in the name of your socialist utopia, you fucking commie. See? Emotional appeals are annoying red herrings and waste everyones time. Can we talk like adults, please?

Now, for my real answer: No. I do not claim that.

>You have produced no argument based on facts, only vague rhetoric and snide remarks. Either prove that I'm mistaken or accept that you are the one emotionally clinging to a singular ethic and that ethic is flawed in that aggression is sometimes needed to prevent great evil.

How can I prove that, if moral intuitions are, by your own admission, all that matters? How, then, can you appeal to an objective standard of morality now?

>>71173

In no particular order:

>1. Constantly Fluctuating Price

>One problem is the constantly fluctuating value of gold. The value per ounce changes frequently leaving many people day-to-day not actually knowing the correct value of the gold in their possession. This is a major problem; if you own gold because it has value then you would certainly want to know what its value is. If you don’t care what the value is, then why do you have it? If you can’t determine the value of the gold you have, then how can you ever use it wisely? If you can’t effectively use the gold then why you would even both with it, to begin with?

Apparently, it didn't change value so quickly in the past that people abolished it voluntarily. It was a money for millenia, and yet Unruhe claims that it's somehow useless as money? That's deluded, and it conclusively shows him to be false. I want to stress that: The historical record alone disproves Unruhe. It is not one piece of evidence out of many, it is itself sufficient.

>Yes, I know, I can hear the criticisms already: “all you have to do is check the price of gold before you get to the store.”

No, that was not my criticism at all. Another way to think of the fluctuations of gold prices is to think of the price of gold staying fixed forever and all other commodities changing their costs. Io and behold, this is… no big deal at all, actually. In fact, it's what commodities do daily.

He also forgets that a) gold is not a currency nowadays, and its price developments now can hardly be extrapolated to what they would be like if it were still a currency, b) there is such a thing as demand for money, and thus money can be expected to change its costs, and c) his mohawk looks fucking retarded and I wouldn't let this guy near my children.

>10. What Value Does Gold Really Have?

>One of the supposed benefits of gold over fiat currency is that gold is said to have an inherent value.

That is not why we anyone with two brain cells really supports gold. It's a nice perk, but even if gold was completely useless in itself (which it isn't, although he implies it is because it has no use for some people, except when he doesn't - consistency much), then it would still have value as a currency. The only trouble, then, would be to explain how it acquired its purchasing power in the first place.

>>71173

>2. There Isn’t Enough of It

Technically, you could run an economy on just ten grams of gold. That you cannot do so in practice is because, well, you cannot handle individual atoms, and because there is far more gold around, so the money would inflate instantly. Still, the point stands: The actual, factual quantity of money is irrelevant for the question of whether it performs its

>What any gold-based system would have to do next is determine how many grains are in a single dollar. Roosevelt set it to about 15.25 gains per dollar, meaning each person would have about $5,259 of gold per person in the US. Even that is assuming that the US held all the gold in the world.

Not a genuine gold standard.

>I had someone in social media once argue that we don’t need gold for every single dollar. I explained to him how there are 24.4 tr. grains and that we would need 65 tr. to cover the world GDP. His response, being a gold standard supporter, was that we didn’t need gold to back every single dollar. The idea he proposed to me was to have two dollars for every grain that was produced. I told him this idea didn’t make much sense because if you do that then you now have dollars that are backed not backed by gold. If we can just arbitrarily decide that one piece of gold is worth twice as many dollars, then why stop there? Why not just make it three dollars per piece?

And here again, he demonstrates that he's completely obvious to how a gold standard would work. The price of gold against the dollar would simply be settled by the market. And if it turns out that a thousand dollars are worth one ounce of gold, then - so be it.

>Limiting Government Ability to Help End Recession

Keynesian bullshit.

>Gold Does Not Prevent Price Inflation

>One claim that comes out of the Austrian school is the claim that the gold standard prevents price inflation. This is one of their, particularly adamant talking points. Supposedly since each dollar is backed by a certain amount of gold, inflation can never increase.

>never

No one ever said that. Of course the gold supply can increase. In fact, Rothbard explicitly confirmed that, otherwise, his talk of the quantity of gold increasing would be kinda incoherent. As Unruhe would've known, had he actually studied Rothbard and the Austrian School.

>This is based on the Murray Rothbard claim that deflation was the natural tendency of capitalism. In actuality, this claim is only true in the fictional “anarcho-capitalist” world. The claim that doesn’t have anything back up it up. In the real world of economics, we do have substantial proof that indeed the gold standard does not prevent price inflation.

When living standards increase while the supply of money stays constant (or near enough to constant), then a deflation has happened. You can buy more with one ounce of gold than you could before. This is a pretty trivial insight.

1/10, would send to North Korea.

>>71186

>>Limiting Government Ability to Help End Recession

>Keynesian bullshit.

Also see the 1920 recession, that Keynesians usually to ignore.