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> the gold standard, for example, contributed in some ways to The Great Depression Most people don’t realize this. A great book on the topic is Lords of Financ

> the gold standard, for example, contributed in some ways to The Great Depression Most people don’t realize this. A great book on the topic is Lords of Finance which outlines how the gold standard made the Great Depression truly great. Even during covid, I don’t think people realize just how fundamentally important Fed actions were to basic things like keeping food on grocery store shelves.

bko 6y ago
There is plenty of blame to throw around during interventionist policies during the Great Depression. Take a look at Wickard v Filburn: > An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm. The US government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more than was permitted and so was ordered to pay a penalty. In response, he said that because his wheat was not sold, it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone "interstate" commerce (described in the Constitution as "Commerce... among the several states"). The Supreme Court disagreed: "Whether the subject of the regulation in question was 'production', 'consumption', or 'marketing' is, therefore, not material for purposes of deciding the question of federal power before us.... But even if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect It was illegal for farmers to grow wheat above a certain amount... on their own land... to feed their own animals... You have people trying to tinker with complicated system. Gold is not complicated. It's a unit of account. There's a fixed amount of it with a pretty well known supply and demand. This is the way the world existed since 1971. That's the main value prop of crypto currencies, and by the price appreciation and interest, its a pretty strong feature. Its good to have a fixed unit of account available in the world when money supply can jump by 25% at any time due to the actions of a dozen or so individuals appointed by politicians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
- pixl97 6y ago
  >Gold. There's a fixed amount of it with a pretty well known supply and demand. At least until someone lands a autonomous mining craft on an asteroid full of it can crashes the market. Anything can be upset by changes in technology.
  - bko 6y ago
    That's the innovation of bitcoin. Lot harder to break SHA256 ;-)
    - hammock 6y ago
      Do you really believe we will be (profitably) bringing gold back from asteroids before a quantum computer is developed?
      - gruez 6y ago
        Quantum computers isn't going to break hashing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography >In contrast to the threat quantum computing poses to current public-key algorithms, most current symmetric cryptographic algorithms and hash functions are considered to be relatively secure against attacks by quantum computers
      - bko 6y ago
        Not sure. I don't think quantum computer would necessarily break bitcoin encryption. I don't think it would come out of nowhere, but if it were to happen, I think there would be a hard fork to change the algo to one that is quantum secure (such algorithms do exist). I have more faith in the organization capabilities of the Bitcoin core developers especially with so much wealth at stake. Compare that to a gold supply shock. You'd have to get a lot of participants and organization to designate an alternative metal as defacto store of wealth. But bitcoin is superior to all of them in terms of verification and fixed supply, so I think they would come over to the dark side as well
- 6y ago

bko 6y ago

There is plenty of blame to throw around during interventionist policies during the Great Depression. Take a look at Wickard v Filburn: > An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm. The US government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more than was permitted and so was ordered to pay a penalty. In response, he said that because his wheat was not sold, it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone "interstate" commerce (described in the Constitution as "Commerce... among the several states"). The Supreme Court disagreed: "Whether the subject of the regulation in question was 'production', 'consumption', or 'marketing' is, therefore, not material for purposes of deciding the question of federal power before us.... But even if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect It was illegal for farmers to grow wheat above a certain amount... on their own land... to feed their own animals... You have people trying to tinker with complicated system. Gold is not complicated. It's a unit of account. There's a fixed amount of it with a pretty well known supply and demand. This is the way the world existed since 1971. That's the main value prop of crypto currencies, and by the price appreciation and interest, its a pretty strong feature. Its good to have a fixed unit of account available in the world when money supply can jump by 25% at any time due to the actions of a dozen or so individuals appointed by politicians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

pixl97 6y ago
>Gold. There's a fixed amount of it with a pretty well known supply and demand. At least until someone lands a autonomous mining craft on an asteroid full of it can crashes the market. Anything can be upset by changes in technology.
- bko 6y ago
  That's the innovation of bitcoin. Lot harder to break SHA256 ;-)
  - hammock 6y ago
    Do you really believe we will be (profitably) bringing gold back from asteroids before a quantum computer is developed?
    - gruez 6y ago
      Quantum computers isn't going to break hashing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography >In contrast to the threat quantum computing poses to current public-key algorithms, most current symmetric cryptographic algorithms and hash functions are considered to be relatively secure against attacks by quantum computers
    - bko 6y ago
      Not sure. I don't think quantum computer would necessarily break bitcoin encryption. I don't think it would come out of nowhere, but if it were to happen, I think there would be a hard fork to change the algo to one that is quantum secure (such algorithms do exist). I have more faith in the organization capabilities of the Bitcoin core developers especially with so much wealth at stake. Compare that to a gold supply shock. You'd have to get a lot of participants and organization to designate an alternative metal as defacto store of wealth. But bitcoin is superior to all of them in terms of verification and fixed supply, so I think they would come over to the dark side as well
6y ago