3 ms·

Gold, diamonds, and feathers are not 'relatively useless'. Not sure about seashells.

nosuchthing 11y ago
Relatively useless in that when most individuals go about their daily life, there is no demand for any of those materials.
- MCRed 11y ago
  Take 100 random people from your mall on a saturday-- so just regular people-- how many of them do you think are using gold and silver on a daily basis? IF you answered anything less than 100 you're wrong. First off, how many of them have jewelry? A great deal of them do. Not just necklaces and earrings, but wedding rings. Almost all of them have both gold and silver. How about college students? Their high school ring has both gold and silver too. How many have cellphones? Both metals are intrinsic in electronics manufacture. How many use cars? There you get too more monetary metals of even less familiarity-- platinum and palladium are essential for catalytic converters (they use whichever is cheapest at the time.) Finally the fact of the matter is, the use of gold and silver as currency is a perfectly legitimate, economic use. It is demand in itself. You don't need some other industrial use to justify its use as money. Because in all of history, no superior money has been found. People use paper currency because of Gresham's law, so long as they can, they will spend it. But people who collect wealth who have a longer view will have some of it in precious metals.
  - nosuchthing 11y ago
    No one I know would be interesting in accepting someone else's jewelry/gold/diamonds/platinum/silver in exchange for their food at the super market or a day's worth of work. The goal of a currency backed by a standard is to give it a predictable and concrete exchange value. Things susceptible to speculative price fluctuations would be less then ideal. There is a self fulfilling prophecy for people who "believe" in gold and diamonds that attribute a higher value to it than the practical value or worth in industrial applications.

Relatively useless in that when most individuals go about their daily life, there is no demand for any of those materials.

MCRed 11y ago
Take 100 random people from your mall on a saturday-- so just regular people-- how many of them do you think are using gold and silver on a daily basis? IF you answered anything less than 100 you're wrong. First off, how many of them have jewelry? A great deal of them do. Not just necklaces and earrings, but wedding rings. Almost all of them have both gold and silver. How about college students? Their high school ring has both gold and silver too. How many have cellphones? Both metals are intrinsic in electronics manufacture. How many use cars? There you get too more monetary metals of even less familiarity-- platinum and palladium are essential for catalytic converters (they use whichever is cheapest at the time.) Finally the fact of the matter is, the use of gold and silver as currency is a perfectly legitimate, economic use. It is demand in itself. You don't need some other industrial use to justify its use as money. Because in all of history, no superior money has been found. People use paper currency because of Gresham's law, so long as they can, they will spend it. But people who collect wealth who have a longer view will have some of it in precious metals.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  No one I know would be interesting in accepting someone else's jewelry/gold/diamonds/platinum/silver in exchange for their food at the super market or a day's worth of work. The goal of a currency backed by a standard is to give it a predictable and concrete exchange value. Things susceptible to speculative price fluctuations would be less then ideal. There is a self fulfilling prophecy for people who "believe" in gold and diamonds that attribute a higher value to it than the practical value or worth in industrial applications.