Ed,
One need not be interested in "digging up gold" to use gold as a measure of value. Of the three functions of "money" a "store of value" is really only applicable when gold (or some other commodity) is money. Of the other two functions, a "measure of value' is well satisfied by gold. About half the gold mined goes for monetary purposes, while the rest is used for adornment and making things we own seem superior (it also has some technical uses). In any event, gold is constantly in the market so we can continually relate it to all other things in the market - an invaluable characteristic. The amount mined each year is a very small fraction of the total gold in the world, so additional gold 'inflating the measure' isn't a problem. It's not too good for the third function - the medium of exchange, but that is well dealt with by the use of checks and credit cards - all written of course in terms of the measure of value. Perhaps the only measure we can trust is gold, but if a better one turns up the market will choose it. Dollar bills are certainly useful for small transactions like buying ice cream - perhaps coins are better. But, in practice we choose our personally manufactured 'exchange media' for buying things. (Unless one is a drug dealer with large cash transactions which neither of us is, and is perhaps why we are poor.) Our checks and credit card slips travel through banks for which service we shouldn't deny the banks a shekel or two. It is certainly cheaper than the cost of the State issuance of steadily depleting dollars. So, don't worry about "digging up gold". Someone else will do it and we could simply make use of the advantage of the yellow metal for our measure of value. Harry From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 8:25 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: futurework Subject: Re: [Futurework] [Ottawadissenters] Money as Debt The following are my comments on Paul Grignon's Money as Debt, <http://tinyurl.com/2uoexg> http://tinyurl.com/2uoexg . You might want to view the video before reading the comments. But be warned, it takes about 45 minutes. What I felt about the video is that it oversimplifies. As well as being debt when issued to a borrower by a bank, it is a medium of exchange. I bought an ice-cream cone the other day. It was a very simple transaction, but it would have been immensely complicated if I had no money with me and had to find something tangible to give the vendor. Better to go to my wallet, pull out a little fiat money, receive both the cone and a little certificate that says I'm now the cone's owner, and walk away and enjoy the ice-cream. A point that the video does not make, but should, is that there are good banking systems and bad (or not so good) banking systems, and there are governments that are able of enforce sound banking and governments that either cannot or may not want to. While nothing is ever perfect, I'm glad that I can access the Canadian banking system and not the Zimbabwean banking system. When I was in Russia in 1995, the banking system and everything else was in chaos. The ruble had fallen from parity with the US$ to 500 rubles to the $. This is not to say that the value of the Canadian $ hasn't changed. It has, but slowly enough to permit most people to adjust. When I was a student back in the 1950s I spent my summers working on the log booms on the BC coast. I was a top rate boom man, earning $2.12 an hour!! If I were a boom man now, my union would have ensured that I would be getting many times that amount. However, $2.12 was good enough in the 1950s. It enabled me to earn enough money to pay for my tuition, room and board and beer back then. What I'm arguing is that a modern economy, to thrive, requires a soundly administered banking system based on fiat money. It is far to complex and diverse to rely on digging up gold, on LETS or on single source money such as government expenditures. And yes, there will be abuses but we have to live with them. IMHO, people aren't moral by nature. They're moral only if they have to be. Getting back to Moscow in the 1990s, the place was in chaos because the rules under which people had lived for some six or seven decades had fallen away. People like the nomenklatura and the oligarchs got very rich; everybody else got very poor. What Putin and his ex-KGB associates have done is imposed new rules, step by step. The video, via some of the quotes it uses, suggests a conspiracy involving bankers, politicians and others in a position of power. Well, yes, that is likely the case. Wherever there are gains to be made and advantages to be taken, conspiratorial relations develop. I've just read John Perkin's "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" which documents quite a few of them (truthfully, I hope). So what. We live with, and try to improve, whatever we've got. And when it comes to the monetary system, I would far rather have ours than Zimbabwe's. 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