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To: TobagoJack who wrote (75381)	3/5/2001 4:21:52 AM
From: S. maltophilia	Respond to of 436258

I wouldn't take the gold either. Do you ever get The Twilight Zone in your area? Here's a classic episode: twilightzone.org .wav excerpts: members.nbci.com

To: TobagoJack who wrote (75381)	3/5/2001 12:24:30 PM
From: Mark Adams	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 436258

And your thoughtful reply deserves like consideration. Consider that upon stepping out from your time machine, you find a desolate planet, on which there is no one to accept your gold. At least you can eat your olives. <g> I understand the historical premium put on gold, due in part to it's ability to not rot while in storage, and in part due to the difficult of expanding supply. Not so many years, there was an effort to permit and build a huge leach mine operation in Eastern Oregon. Of course, after the capital had been sunk, had it gone forward, it would not be profitable today. My concern is that the human effort and environmental damage done to extract and accumulate a metal worthwhile to society thus far only as a medium to facilitate trade increases as the 'price' of gold increases. From an alien perspective, we invest huge amounts of attention to sift the earth for grains of gold, only to re-bury it in vaults. It makes little sense, unless the aliens have implanted a program on the human species to collect the gold unwittingly for them, at little cost to them. Now- PGMS, they have a real value to society in addition to being recognized as a potential monetary mechanism. There I concur with you, also on the importance of preservation. The olive analogy, flawed as it is, suggests that any item used to back a currency would see an effort to increase it's production, perhaps not to the ultimate benefit of society. It may also suggest that any basket of real goods (ie bread, cigarettes, wine, oil) could back a currency, as could the ability to produce such goods. With the exception of cigarettes, encouraging the production of these items might benefit society.