No, not as a slave ship at all.
If you could see my work area, you'd see that I am surrounded by brown accordian files stuffed with printouts of journal articles, and piles of books, and coffee cups.
All day long I read about what happens when things go wrong.
It's not pretty. Starvation, disease, impoverishment, war, the end of empires.
So any honest, intelligent attempt to straighten it out is fine by me.
The gold standard, per se, was not as long-lasting as most people think, but it's certainly true that the value of precious metals is something we can all agree on. As soon as this project is done I need to visit the dentist, and gold is the metal of choice for that, as far as I am concerned. Gold is the only thing I'll put in my earlobes, everything else itches and causes a rash.
But gold does not work well as money. So, we need something else, and paper and electronic data work well, as long as we are honest about what it is we are doing, monetizing assets to avoid barter.
"There cannot, in short, be
intrinsically a more insignificant thing, in the economy of society,
than money; except in the character of a contrivance for sparing time
and labour. It is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously, what
would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it: and
like many other kinds of machinery, it only exerts a distinct and
independent influence of its own when it gets out of order."
John Stuart Mill
Principles of Political Economy Book III, Chapter VII |
