What's that yellow stuff on my Globalstar satellites? It looks like gold. 
Modern money under construction.
Meanwhile, there is discussion that platinum might be priced at $1 trillion per coin [for at least two of them but having minted 2 at $1 trillion each, I'm sure such a money tree invention will lead to more of the same].
A couple of days ago, I had cause to reflect on bygone times. A friend from a third of a century ago during our lives in Ottawa swung by as part of some silly government to government trade negotiations which were held in Auckland at great expense, without "success".
We went for a walk around One Tree Hill on a beautiful day, showing her where hundreds of Maoris used to live in dugouts inside pa, with mounds where palisades were built for defence. It must have been cold in winter. Now there is just grass left, with sheep and cattle munching the grass, growing wool and meat, and tourists bringing money from far off realms to see the view from the top.
We looked out over Mangere where my ancestors were from, now all gone, deceased, with their farms and houses gone, making way for motels, motorways and an international airport with umpteen acres of industrial/commercial buildings.
We drove into downtown Auckland, walking through Britomart [the original old train station and Post Office, long gone, but in a throwback to the past a new train station has been built on the site] and all the way along to where BP Oil and Castrol used to blend lubricants and store petrol, diesel and whatnot, past the wharves and over the train tracks where decades ago I rolled huge wool bales with my bale hook, and loaded [by hand], sheep carcasses wrapped in muslin, butter in big blocks in cartons and all sorts onto pallets which were hoisted up into the holds of ships where we unloaded the pallets and stacked the good around the hold [some of the holds frozen but hard work generates plenty of heat so light clothing was enough].
Now, that's all gone, replaced with rows and rows of restaurants and recreational areas, with an old piano left under a big cement silo for anyone to play. For some reason, it hasn't been destroyed by vandals yet. It was a lovely summer's evening, but light enough at the end of the area overlooking Westhaven marina where the silo is. A young man sat down and played really well. A young woman with him added allure and danced a bit. Nobody around, just three of us a short distance away.
Economics is a funny business. Now, the money comes from mobile Cyberspace to me, rather than to me from loading ships [I prefer it this way]. There are dirty great straddle carriers and huge container cranes which load the ships, tens of tons at a time, with one finger twiddler high in the sky in the crane and straddle carrier to do the "work". No doubt they have CDMA/OFDM cyberphones. Soon, Globalstar will provide Cyberspace service everywhere globalstar.com
Hordes of people are cerfing into Cyberspace. Lots more want pixels than wanted butter, meat, wool and whatnot. Tourists love Zenbu wifi and CDMA/OFDM. I don't know how many tourists are carrying gold coins, or platinum, nor how many have stashes of gold and platinum somewhere. I suspect few since there is no apparent need for it.
Gold provides conductors in Cyberspace, but cannot be moved from one person to another. "Registered" ownership of gold can be pixelated, but that's just "paper". If push comes to shove, gold in a bank's vault will not necessarily remain allocated to the 'right' people if a government decides they need it more for better purposes.
I obviously have to make yet another major paradigm shift. Those bank intermediaries and government spivs are obsolete, like my grandparent's farms, the railway tracks to the downtown wharves and the lubricant blend plants and petrol storage tanks. Maori pas have had their day. They never did get into gold culture though there was plenty of it around in Waihi and Otago [brrrrrr.... too cold there for grass skirts/bare bums].
Mqurice |
