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I mostly agree with this, but you're missing post-1970s history where they replaced gold with oil by requiring USD for oil transactions (the "petrodollar"). Thi
by tehjoker 6y ago
I mostly agree with this, but you're missing post-1970s history where they replaced gold with oil by requiring USD for oil transactions (the "petrodollar"). This system that we live under has its own economic imperatives and sustains the USD as the reserve currency of the world. However, it has enriched the elites and impoverished the working class as imperial projects tend to do.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoThat is a good point, and is indeed the case. However, oil requires trading a tangible good, which makes it less efficient than the Bretton Woods system where money was simply infinite.
- tehjoker 6y agoI don't think that's true. In my understanding of this, the oil peg works for the world kind of like how requiring taxes to be paid in USD makes a paper currency "real". In our system, the money is effectively infinite until somehow the dollar is displaced from the reserve position.