Ron,
Please excuse my not responding in a more timely manner. I needed to spend some time keeping my share of the interest payments on the national debt current.
Firstly, few of the participants here have any real hope or expectation of returning our sadly misguided country to a gold standard any time soon and certainly not while we're inside the latest and greatest bubble. And, as a matter of course, the topic of reversion to a gold standard has rarely even appeared on this thread. So, it seems quite odd that you've spent the amount of time you have, vehemently and laughably defending an anti-gold standard. My only conclusion is that you not only fear but believe in the real possibility of a return to gold following the coming fiat-based, leveraged-debt-induced fiasco that is upon us.
And now, I will again proceed to poke holes into that square inch of torn cheesecloth that passes for your rational thought processes:
(my previous comment) ". The inference being that, since gold has not achieved perfection in a monetary sense, it is no better than any other alternative, despite the vast historical record to the contrary."
>>And which historical record might that be??
That record would be the fact that I can take any old one-ounce lump of 500-year-old gold and use it to buy a decent men's suit, a couple hundred loaves of bread, or more than a year's worth of unlimited internet access. Show us the fiat monetary unit from even 50 years ago that can perform this same feat.
>>Gold/Silver has not been perfect, especially given the continuous fluctuations of inflation/deflation during the times it was the primary currency or backing for currency.
I see we're back to requiring perfection instead of mere superiority. Your lack of qualitative distinction is still intact.
Ron's logical fallacy #212: claim normal cyclic beahviour somehow aberrant, while completely ignoring the amplitude and progression of the two systems under consideration. Here's a revelation for you: a gold-based economy cycles. All economies cycle. You fail to note that an honest money system oscillates around a mean, eventually returning to an approximately standard value, whereas the fiat system cycles along a decreasing purchasing-power curve, eventually converging on zero. The amplitude of the oscillations in a fiat system can be demonstrated to be much less damped than in a fiat system.
>>Allow me to relate something from Grieder's book (that he gleaned from other historians.). Again, it deals with what happened during the Great Deflation after the Civil War (a justifiable war, I think most would concur), Pg. 250:
>>…insert lengthy, pointless excerpt describing the economics of Reconstruction Era sharecropping.
Let's put this little Civil War aftermath diatribe to rest once and for all, shall we.
Ron's logical fallacy #213: confuse effect with cause. You conveniently forget that the Confederacy printed massive amounts of script in order to purchase materials for their war effort. This alone was inflationary enough to eventually respond with a substantial contraction, even if they had won the war. Add the fact that they lost the effort, their government was destroyed, their monetary system discredited, their means of production burnt or bombed, and one does not need to look far for the causes of any post-war contraction. The contraction following the war was not caused by the gold standard, but by the fiat creation orgy of the war effort and the war itself. The example you provide actually refutes the very point you are attempting to make, demonstrating that funny money coupled with non-productive undertakings have consequences.
However, more disturbingly, by again implying that a gold standard somehow assigns too great a cost to conducting a war, you've yet again demonstrated, without a doubt, your total moral bankruptcy. Wars aren't free, though I'm sure the financiers and arms merchants of the world would like us to believe otherwise. At least under a gold standard, as the real money runs out, the war ends sooner rather than later. And under a gold standard, the "winners" for generations afterward, aren't coerced to pay perpetual, ever-increasing interest tribute on their war debts.
>>And Investor-ex... I may be amazing in refuting an accumulated history. But your even more amazing in that you created that history. It certainly wasn't as financially rosy and glowing as you make it out to be.
Ron, your inappropriately selective use of history is only surpassed by your total misinterpretation of it.
>>But I'm used to alternative histories.... like the day I met "Zera" from the Planet of the Apes while grabbing a late lunch in a DC eatery. The most amazing thing is Zera was masquerading as a human being, with a somewhat eccentricity about her that would make someone question her sanity.
>>But not me... not after my experience with practictioners of alternative history who wish to shape it and mold it to meet their narrow and selfish goals. And btw, Zera was an amazing person.. uh.. errrr... Ape. She could relate the entire history (to be) of the planet as so accurately portrayed in the movies and TV series of the '70's. Uncanny how we, as humans, were able to so accurately foretelling tomorrows yet to come.
And now, we have Ron's witty capstone to his cognitive tour de force. In other words, anyone who critically refutes your redundant blather is now a selfish, narrow monkey?
How about the men who penned the United States Constitution, Ron? How about the founders of this country who knew a sham when they saw one, a thousand miles away, and were intelligent and compassionate enough to attempt to write into law the prevention one of the greatest monetary evils known to man. Were those monkeys narrow and selfish enough for you?
|
