5 ms·

Indeed. This is the point that gold-standard people don't seem to get. Gold is just as arbitrary as anything else. More so, even, because it is absolutely /usel

• mjnaus 18y ago
  It is actually its finite amounts that make it valuable. Anything that can be produced at will not hold up as a currency.
  • potatolicious 18y ago
    But we do create more of it (or dig it out of the ground and refine it, as it were), there's simply a practically finite rate at which we can grow the gold supply. So the value of gold should in fact deflate over time, as we produce more and more of it.
    • mjnaus 18y ago
      No, we don't. No matter how you look at this, gold is not "created". Cold is extracted from gold mines, the only thing humans can do it try to find, but they simply can not create it. Key here is that the total amount of gold on this planet is finite - not the production or extraction rate - making it truly valuable. Same thing applies to other natural resources such as oil, natural gas and diamonds.
      • kragen 18y ago
        Wait, you can grow diamonds in a laboratory.
        • eru 18y ago
          But Carbon is finite, too. (And on the same note, Dollars are finite, too. We have to store the bits somewhere.)
          • gdee 18y ago
            >We have to store the bits somewhere. +1 for the fine, fine irony. Intended or otherwise as it might have been.
      • gdee 18y ago
        >but they simply can not create it. I seem to remember reading that that's not the case anymore. As in, we actually can make gold through transmutation. The amount of energy required to do so is bigger than the "value" of the resultant gold tough.
    • bsaunder 18y ago
      No, we mine it. We may discover more of it. But in ground reserve quantities are generally factored into the price of the stock of gold mining companies. So it is rather finite, and the more we explore and mine, the less likely we would be to discover more of it. Until someone invents the Philosopher's Stone.
  • Xichekolas 18y ago
    Actually it's the demand that makes it valuable. (And the demand stems from everyone agreeing that it is valuable.) There is a finite amount of uranium on earth too, but the only reason it's considered valuable is because there is demand for nuclear applications. Only a little over 10% of gold is used for industrial applications. Without the demand provided by people agreeing that gold has value as a currency, the price of gold would plummet. The high value of gold is self-fulfilling... it's based on people's faith that everyone else thinks it is valuable.
• gaius 18y ago
  That's not true tho'; it's resistance to corrosion makes gold industrially valuable. Currencies should be backed by something pretty fundamental. Eventually it has to be the Joule.
  • eru 18y ago
    High entropy joules are 'intrinsically' worthless and easy to come by.
• SapphireSun 18y ago
  Actually, the real bottom line is work transfer, which can be measured in energy. Energy can produce material goods. If I give you 1MJ in exchange for work, you could do something with it. The only law money needs to follow is conservation, which energy fits. OTOH, the US government does screw around with the conservation law a lot, but it does apply to normal people.
  • eru 18y ago
    Energy comes in a lot of grades. Low-entropy energy is useful (e.g. electricity). High-entropy energy is useless (e.g. the oceans at their normal temperature).
  • gravitycop 18y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=424877 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=424877 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=426142 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=426142 12 points by demallien 20 days ago | link Hey! Put some carriage returns in there! You're screwing up the page rendering...
  • DLWormwood 18y ago
    I know this is off-topic, but every time I see a post like this, I feel like I'm back on /. during the 90's, why does this site feel the need to make the page wider than screen whenever pre-formatted text has long lines. (Other sites solve this by inserting scroll bars or forcing line wraps, but not this one.)
    • Xichekolas 18y ago
      Depends on your browser. From what I remember, the pre's do properly size and have scrollbars in FF2, but not in FF3. The problem has to do with td cells expanding to fit their content I think. There is a GM script that fixes this in FF3: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039
  • TweedHeads 18y ago
    Fix the bug!
• ngvrnd 18y ago
  I suggest Germanium. (ducks)
• icefox 18y ago
  Well you can carry around gold chips which have a lot of value. A gold coin is worth quiet a bit. Can't say the same for a steel coin. Have to carry around a lot more silver (in volume) to get the same value.
• Xichekolas 18y ago
  Another thing is control. Having a gold standard means that gold mining companies can manipulate your currency. Suddenly find a huge new vein? Inflation! Go for a decade without any new discoveries? Deflation! Ask someone who supports a gold-backed currency if they would be willing to back their currency with oil, and they look at you like you are crazy... as they should. But it's no more crazy than gold. Oil producing countries just have a more visible bad rap, so the problem with that particular commodity is more obvious. I'd rather be in control of my own money supply thank you very much. Why you would want to leave it up to fate and potentially hostile entities is beyond me.