It's a decentralized store of wealth but not a decentralized currency.
Because it doesn't work as a currency without centralization. (Not anymore anyways, in a digital/internet era.)
"Gold as currency" advocates, like the good people of goldmoney.com and like the Peter Schiffs of the world etc, will say someone can hold the gold and then issue you a ledger you can spend from using a debit card or whatever. Simple, right?
It's like the best of both worlds magically had a baby, until you think about it for a second.
It's not decentralized. It's not without the cost of paying them to do this for you, and then trusting them to hold the gold.
If this were actually the way of the future, it means the future would be riddled with all these centralized points of stress, where we need to account for and guard the money.
It's literally not possible for gold to be commonly used currency without centralization.
And then you'll always have a motivation for thieves. For conventional thieves, but also for government systems or other organized crime to either re-form or not go away. (The more you can centralize wealth, the better the landscape for people who want to steal.)
So even besides the direct cost of people stealing the gold, there's an implied cost of what happens when the world is setup for thieves to do well.
It seems so quintessentially "minarchist" rather than actually principled or what really makes intuitive sense.
Minarchist ideas are funny to me, because they're convinced that they're like the "practical" ones.
But then when you stop and consider it, it's the most bizarrely impractical thing anyone could possibly dream up.
Like, sure, the world won't become anarchic overnight. But the trend is towards that and eventually it can stick, where we no longer tolerate systems of aggression and they fade. Trying to contract the US government into something that exists but only builds fire stations and kindly stores the gold for everyone is not practical.
That's not ever happening. Lol.
Please, go prove to me how practical and worldly you are, I'd love to see it.
You may as well be intellectually consistent, because your compromise is absurdly less practical than the ideal anyways.
And it seems pretty similar with Bitcoin and gold.
Sure, the world adopting a decentralized currency like Bitcoin is probably decades or generations away. But it's actually practical, whenever the understanding is there and we're ready for it, whereas gold becoming the ubiquitous currency is fundamentally not a viable thing.
Asking people to painstakingly watch over your gold and then issue you digital ledger units is absurdly expensive and not practical. We're never doing that. The world economy is not ever going to flow from that.
Gold had its era as the dominant currency. Gold is still a store of wealth (and I don't doubt that it's a decent idea to own some). Gold probably always will maintain some role as money, if only as a fallback in case of internet outage*. But it's insane to think it's workable for gold to be the commonly used currency.
*Austrian theory explains why gold has monetary value. But this shouldn't be conflated with the idea that it necessarily has to be the #1 form of it in all circumstances. It can have a secondary or even a niche role, and the Austrian teachings of what gives it this role are still true. Austrian theory isn't trying to say that nothing else could ever work better.
That is definitely not ever happening haha. Laughed so hard. Love that humor. ;D
I do not own any gold (well, a few grams but that is nothing haha) but if I was investing then I probably would store a bit at home in a safe (and do not tell anybody about it; of course this safe should be at a safe place and well hidden; but that is what everyone thinks until burglars got it haha) and the rest at a bank (safe).
Absolutely correct. I can only agree with you there.
Have a good one!
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Maybe you should try to get some more gold, just in case it turns out Peter Schiff Was Right, you don't want them to be able to laugh too hard at us! 😆😆
Have a nice day gandalf!
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I will but there is nothing to laugh at (concerning my financial situation haha).
Furthermore crypto will be blowing up soon too haha
Thx bro you too!
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hahah, u funny.
ya, hard to want gold more than crypto, especially for smaller amounts. gold is good for safety, but btc/crypto much more upside.
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I think you hit it on the head with that.
It is probably a lot safer than say a savings account, assuming it's in a "safe" location. But it won't be easy to spend it in small qualities, and like you said nearly impossible to spend/send it over distances without a lot of costly infrastructure. But it is a great storehouse of wealth.
I still think that there is a place for one of the current governments to issue a gold backed currency. If it was proven that it can in fact be exchanged for gold, I think that it would stand above the fiats. But I'm not really holding my breath for that one. It would seem that the banking/gov corruption is just to great to allow for a non manipulable currency to exist. It would seem that any country that begins to talk about such a thing, soon finds themselves within the "axis of evil" or some such similar title.
I had never actually heard that term before, so not really sure what it means other than the basic definition I was able to look up. I tend to have more "Libertarian-ish" views on the Government, so depending on what definition it's possible I "could" fall into that category. But I don't really stand firm in any "camp," as I'm rather open minded on things.
I would agree that looking where we are today, I can't really see any "good" options for combating the massive abuse of force being displayed across the world. I've never thought of myself as an anarchist, but I do very much like the idea of self governance.
I suppose maybe some baby steps in that direction could be very beneficial. The giant beast that the system has become is a pretty daunting prospect the just disband. I think that there would be a tremendous amount of blood shed and abuse if this was attempted. So I can see the benefits of slowly trying to minimize it over time.
But long term is does seem a bit silly to think that something as powerful as the federal government would be content just putting out fires. :P
Thanks for putting out these thought provoking ideas, and engaging in meaningful discourse about them. I could probably go one for days about all this, so It's probably best I limit it to one or two thoughts at a time. I can already feel the plethora of rabbit trails forming.
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You might be right about gold not being decentralized. But I think most people don’t look at curency whether it is decentralized or not. They are afraid of dollar and other curency to collapse, especially when we know how much these idiots are printing. Most people say they want decentralized. But the truth is, they want protection against inflation and their curency collapse. Lesson learned in Venezuela .
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The safest thing to store is gold because gold has a market value since ancient times
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yup, probably! not much of any downside, if also not too much upside.
fiat is the worst of both... no upside at all and alllll of the downside 😆😆
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I have always believed in gold as the most solid and inflationproof currency. I do like Peter Schiff, however when it comes to crypto, I think he is wrong. I’m owner of physical gold as well as cryptocurency. They are both inflationproof in my opinion.
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Ya, inflation proof is one thing. A house is inflation proof, but we don't try to engineer reality in a way where it makes sense to use houses as currency.
It may be a good asset, but not a good currency in a digital world. I think people have gotten used to gold being the only known alternative to fiat, like they're pigeon-holed into this one outcome, but the failure of fiat isn't actually the same as the rise of gold.
Ya, and I mean it's true that "decentralized" doesn't have to be the same as "best". Although I don't think the "gold as currency" crowd would be too quick to concede that they're advocating a centralized solution. (In the case of currency, I do think it happens to be the same as best.)
You'd lose a lot to the costs of guarding the gold and the corruptions and thefts that are constantly skimming off of what you thought you had. All considered it might not really be too different than what we lose from holding fiat.
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