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On October 10 2025 01:15 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 01:14 Simberto wrote:On October 10 2025 01:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 10 2025 00:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 10 2025 00:50 Sadist wrote:
Gold is just as arbitrary as paper.
no, gold has objective value as a universal metal that can do 83759378 different things. Gold is not as arbitrary as paper. There is no such thing as a material having objective value. Value is subjective, by definition. Also, gold might be useful for a bunch of things. But that is not what it is mostly used for, or what people dig for gold for. Gold is not valuable because of any industrial use. gold is essential in medicine. it does stuff no other metal can do. Therefore, Gold is not as arbitrary as paper when it comes to its value.
And how much of the gold that is currently in human hands is used for that kind of stuff? How much of the gold being mined is being used for anything but someone hoarding it?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-industry-sector-share/
About 7%. (I will just assume that you medical uses are somewhere in those 7% for technology, because no other percentage is left)
More than 90% of the demand for gold is hoarding in the hopes it becomes more valuable, or being pretty (and also hoping it becomes more valuable, or at least having some money available if things go really bad).
To me, this clearly proves that the prices of gold is not based on its actual use in the industry.
Edit:
On October 10 2025 01:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 01:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote:This is pretty basic stuff. But, I'll outline it here any way. The problems with a fiat money system are #1. They can create new money at any time. This devalues the current money supply and hits savers the hardest. (b). as stated here earlier by another poster.... every dollar created corresponds to a liability somewhere in the system. and (iii): large institutions can behave recklessly knowing they'll be bailed out. In 2008 and 2020, trillions were printed to stabilize financial markets. the wealthy saw huge gains and wealth inequality skyrocketed. The average american got totally fucked over in 2008 and 2020. On October 10 2025 01:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 10 2025 00:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 10 2025 00:50 Sadist wrote:
Gold is just as arbitrary as paper.
no, gold has objective value as a universal metal that can do 83759378 different things. Gold is not as arbitrary as paper. There is no such thing as a material having objective value. Value is subjective, by definition. no, gold has many uses. that gives it value. To the people who want to use gold in those ways and/or have gold, it absolutely does have value! Gold can be valuable to many people, but that doesn't mean it has objective value. Paper money can also have value; it's certainly lighter and easier to carry than gold. Still subjective though. Bananas can also have value; you probably don't want to eat gold. Still subjective though. Value is based on priority.
This, btw, is the core basis of trade. If things had objective value, then trade would be stupid. The core reason people trade is because different stuff has different value to different people at different places, and you can thus create a situation where everyone is more happy, and you even get your share, just by swapping some stuff between people.
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On October 10 2025 00:49 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 00:48 LightSpectra wrote:
"Why don't you just ask the chatbot that hallucinates 40% of its answers about my conspiracy theories?" are you claiming that Miss Rand was not criticizing fiat money systems during Francisco D'Anconia's "the moral meaning of money" speech? Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 00:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 10 2025 00:42 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 10 2025 00:41 LightSpectra wrote:
Learning about economics from Ayn Rand is approximately the same as learning about biology from Andrew Wakefield. it is not an economic discussion. it is a moral and philosophical discussion. fiat money systems are a scam. Aren't essentially all major national/world currencies considered "fiat"? Would you recommend bartering one good/material for another good/material instead? before 1913 the US money system was not a scam. I recommend holding several different currencies and precious metals in your portfolio and watching the countries of the currencies you hold carefully. For example, in 2008, when the US dollar collapsed my grandparents and parents were protected because only 25% of their savings was USD.
This is has little to do with the concept of fiat currency and more to do with managing personal finances and portfolio allocation. The older you are the more you should be invested in stable enough things that survive momentary downturns.
On October 10 2025 01:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote:This is pretty basic stuff. But, I'll outline it here any way. The problems with a fiat money system are #1. They can create new money at any time. This devalues the current money supply and hits savers the hardest. (b). as stated here earlier by another poster.... every dollar created corresponds to a liability somewhere in the system. and (iii): large institutions can behave recklessly knowing they'll be bailed out. In 2008 and 2020, trillions were printed to stabilize financial markets. the wealthy saw huge gains and wealth inequality skyrocketed. The average american got totally fucked over in 2008 and 2020. Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 01:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 10 2025 00:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 10 2025 00:50 Sadist wrote:
Gold is just as arbitrary as paper.
no, gold has objective value as a universal metal that can do 83759378 different things. Gold is not as arbitrary as paper. There is no such thing as a material having objective value. Value is subjective, by definition. no, gold has many uses. that gives it value. it is used in the making of cars. it is an anti inflammatory. it is very useful in a plethora of medical devices , ortho implants. Gold is amazing.
Creating (or removing) money is not inherently a bad thing. Saving money (in the form of straight USD) is not inherently good. The problems you outlined are issues with policy, not the concept of fiat currency. I will hear the argument that fiat currency, at least our current system of it, can enable bad actors and bad policy that subsidizes risk for the few and transfers wealth around inequitably though. But it's not like there wasn't massive wealth inequality in times of the gold/silver standards.
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On October 10 2025 01:07 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 01:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 10 2025 00:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 10 2025 00:50 Sadist wrote:
Gold is just as arbitrary as paper.
no, gold has objective value as a universal metal that can do 83759378 different things. Gold is not as arbitrary as paper. There is no such thing as a material having objective value. Value is subjective, by definition. You can start a shitstorm with that statement if you say it to the right/wrong people. I agree though.
::shrugs:: Perhaps it'll be a different shitstorm than the ones we usually weather in this thread!
On October 10 2025 01:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
Gold is amazing.
Okay.
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On October 10 2025 01:14 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 01:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 10 2025 00:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 10 2025 00:50 Sadist wrote:
Gold is just as arbitrary as paper.
no, gold has objective value as a universal metal that can do 83759378 different things. Gold is not as arbitrary as paper. There is no such thing as a material having objective value. Value is subjective, by definition. Also, gold might be useful for a bunch of things. But that is not what it is mostly used for, or what people dig for gold for. Gold is not valuable because of any industrial use. Gold is valuable because people trust other people will also value gold. So if you acquire gold, you can be pretty certain that you can exchange it for whatever you want. People even "invest" in gold, meaning they hope that they will be able to exchange the gold in the future for more than what they exchanged it for before. But the value of gold is no less arbitrary than that of bitcoin or dollars. It is just a very historically stable meme, and thus self-perpetuates pretty well.
Totally agree.
On October 10 2025 01:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
it is used in the making of cars. it is an anti inflammatory. it is very useful in a plethora of medical devices , ortho implants.
No one is saying gold is useless. No one is saying that gold provides no value to anyone.
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United States43111 Posts
On October 10 2025 01:14 Simberto wrote:
But the value of gold is no less arbitrary than that of bitcoin or dollars. It is just a very historically stable meme, and thus self-perpetuates pretty well.
I agree with everything you wrote and I know you used the words "historically stable" which is a big picture view. But I do want to note that the purchasing power of gold within the United States quadrupled year to date. It is surprisingly unstable. If you paid people for things with gold then you would be incredibly unhappy with the prices that you paid for Christmas presents and would resolve to stop using your currency as a currency.
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Northern Ireland25851 Posts
On October 10 2025 01:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote:This is pretty basic stuff. But, I'll outline it here any way. The problems with a fiat money system are #1. They can create new money at any time. This devalues the current money supply and hits savers the hardest. (b). as stated here earlier by another poster.... every dollar created corresponds to a liability somewhere in the system. and (iii): large institutions can behave recklessly knowing they'll be bailed out. In 2008 and 2020, trillions were printed to stabilize financial markets. the wealthy saw huge gains and wealth inequality skyrocketed. The average american got totally fucked over in 2008 and 2020. Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 01:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 10 2025 00:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 10 2025 00:50 Sadist wrote:
Gold is just as arbitrary as paper.
no, gold has objective value as a universal metal that can do 83759378 different things. Gold is not as arbitrary as paper. There is no such thing as a material having objective value. Value is subjective, by definition. no, gold has many uses. that gives it value. it is used in the making of cars. it is an anti inflammatory. it is very useful in a plethora of medical devices , ortho implants. Gold is amazing.
They didn’t get fucked by Fiat currency though did they? That wasn’t the problem in those epochs
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United States43111 Posts
On October 10 2025 02:20 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 01:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote:This is pretty basic stuff. But, I'll outline it here any way. The problems with a fiat money system are #1. They can create new money at any time. This devalues the current money supply and hits savers the hardest. (b). as stated here earlier by another poster.... every dollar created corresponds to a liability somewhere in the system. and (iii): large institutions can behave recklessly knowing they'll be bailed out. In 2008 and 2020, trillions were printed to stabilize financial markets. the wealthy saw huge gains and wealth inequality skyrocketed. The average american got totally fucked over in 2008 and 2020. On October 10 2025 01:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 10 2025 00:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 10 2025 00:50 Sadist wrote:
Gold is just as arbitrary as paper.
no, gold has objective value as a universal metal that can do 83759378 different things. Gold is not as arbitrary as paper. There is no such thing as a material having objective value. Value is subjective, by definition. no, gold has many uses. that gives it value. it is used in the making of cars. it is an anti inflammatory. it is very useful in a plethora of medical devices , ortho implants. Gold is amazing. They didn’t get fucked by Fiat currency though did they? That wasn’t the problem in those epochs
He's talking about the expansion of the money supply in response to the CDO crash/COVID virus. Obviously the main problem with COVID was the virus but he's saying that in addition to all the dying the average American got fucked by the expanded money supply.
It's not really an argument though. I could equally argue that the existence of bad drivers makes the case for not having any hands on the steering wheel at all. The potential mismanagement of the money supply is not an argument for refusing to manage the money supply at all, it is an argument for better management.
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Northern Ireland25851 Posts
On October 10 2025 02:28 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 02:20 WombaT wrote:On October 10 2025 01:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote:This is pretty basic stuff. But, I'll outline it here any way. The problems with a fiat money system are #1. They can create new money at any time. This devalues the current money supply and hits savers the hardest. (b). as stated here earlier by another poster.... every dollar created corresponds to a liability somewhere in the system. and (iii): large institutions can behave recklessly knowing they'll be bailed out. In 2008 and 2020, trillions were printed to stabilize financial markets. the wealthy saw huge gains and wealth inequality skyrocketed. The average american got totally fucked over in 2008 and 2020. On October 10 2025 01:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 10 2025 00:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 10 2025 00:50 Sadist wrote:
Gold is just as arbitrary as paper.
no, gold has objective value as a universal metal that can do 83759378 different things. Gold is not as arbitrary as paper. There is no such thing as a material having objective value. Value is subjective, by definition. no, gold has many uses. that gives it value. it is used in the making of cars. it is an anti inflammatory. it is very useful in a plethora of medical devices , ortho implants. Gold is amazing. They didn’t get fucked by Fiat currency though did they? That wasn’t the problem in those epochs He's talking about the expansion of the money supply in response to the CDO crash/COVID virus. Obviously the main problem with COVID was the virus but he's saying that in addition to all the dying the average American got fucked by the expanded money supply. It's not really an argument though. I could equally argue that the existence of bad drivers makes the case for not having any hands of the steering wheel at all. The potential mismanagement of the money supply is not an argument for refusing to manage the money supply at all, it is an argument for better management.
Ok but I had a good time hanging around with Italian Americans and being an honorary guido in the 1980s, have you thought about that?
The element I don’t really understand is critics of fiat currency, are almost invariably big proponents of capitalism
I’ve long found that a bit incongruous, if anything I’d expect it to be more of a left position, or at least more likely to be
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On October 10 2025 02:50 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 02:28 KwarK wrote:On October 10 2025 02:20 WombaT wrote:On October 10 2025 01:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote:This is pretty basic stuff. But, I'll outline it here any way. The problems with a fiat money system are #1. They can create new money at any time. This devalues the current money supply and hits savers the hardest. (b). as stated here earlier by another poster.... every dollar created corresponds to a liability somewhere in the system. and (iii): large institutions can behave recklessly knowing they'll be bailed out. In 2008 and 2020, trillions were printed to stabilize financial markets. the wealthy saw huge gains and wealth inequality skyrocketed. The average american got totally fucked over in 2008 and 2020. On October 10 2025 01:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 10 2025 00:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 10 2025 00:50 Sadist wrote:
Gold is just as arbitrary as paper.
no, gold has objective value as a universal metal that can do 83759378 different things. Gold is not as arbitrary as paper. There is no such thing as a material having objective value. Value is subjective, by definition. no, gold has many uses. that gives it value. it is used in the making of cars. it is an anti inflammatory. it is very useful in a plethora of medical devices , ortho implants. Gold is amazing. They didn’t get fucked by Fiat currency though did they? That wasn’t the problem in those epochs He's talking about the expansion of the money supply in response to the CDO crash/COVID virus. Obviously the main problem with COVID was the virus but he's saying that in addition to all the dying the average American got fucked by the expanded money supply. It's not really an argument though. I could equally argue that the existence of bad drivers makes the case for not having any hands of the steering wheel at all. The potential mismanagement of the money supply is not an argument for refusing to manage the money supply at all, it is an argument for better management. Ok but I had a good time hanging around with Italian Americans and being an honorary guido in the 1980s, have you thought about that? The element I don’t really understand is critics of fiat currency, are almost invariably big proponents of capitalism I’ve long found that a bit incongruous, if anything I’d expect it to be more of a left position, or at least more likely to be
Isn't capitalism a win more system and position by default? Which central control of money or anything else often works against in their minds. Not understanding that if nobody centrally manages that you end up with company chits and nobody having anything to buy your product with. edit, which means a limited supply means you can win the game fully and nobody else can change the rules.
While left views want good control on the monetary system so they know how much money they can move around without breaking things and limiting the power of companies? edit, basically meaning nobody cares why it holds value.
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On October 10 2025 02:15 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 01:14 Simberto wrote:
But the value of gold is no less arbitrary than that of bitcoin or dollars. It is just a very historically stable meme, and thus self-perpetuates pretty well. I agree with everything you wrote and I know you used the words "historically stable" which is a big picture view. But I do want to note that the purchasing power of gold within the United States quadrupled year to date. It is surprisingly unstable. If you paid people for things with gold then you would be incredibly unhappy with the prices that you paid for Christmas presents and would resolve to stop using your currency as a currency.
Absolutely true, but i didn't mean "the value of gold is historically stable". While that is also true, what i meant was the more basic statement: "The idea that gold is valuable is historically stable".
For basically all of human history, gold has always been viewed as valuable, and thus no one expects it to suddenly stop being viewed as valuable.
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On October 10 2025 03:03 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 02:15 KwarK wrote:On October 10 2025 01:14 Simberto wrote:
But the value of gold is no less arbitrary than that of bitcoin or dollars. It is just a very historically stable meme, and thus self-perpetuates pretty well. I agree with everything you wrote and I know you used the words "historically stable" which is a big picture view. But I do want to note that the purchasing power of gold within the United States quadrupled year to date. It is surprisingly unstable. If you paid people for things with gold then you would be incredibly unhappy with the prices that you paid for Christmas presents and would resolve to stop using your currency as a currency. Absolutely true, but i didn't mean "the value of gold is historically stable". While that is also true, what i meant was the more basic statement: "The idea that gold is valuable is historically stable". For basically all of human history, gold has always been viewed as valuable, and thus no one expects it to suddenly stop being viewed as valuable.
Wouldn't us hitting enough space tech and infrastructure to do asteroid mining quickly devalue it? There is a lot of it out there. But that is still decades out.
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United States43111 Posts
Additionally I feel like the usefulness of gold is very much an argument against using it as money.
gold is amazing, you can make all sorts of medical devices with it to help sick people okay but you're not doing that, you've sucked up all the gold in the world and locked it away in a massive vault yes
If we're reserving the entire global supply of a limited resource to use as a token then please can we pick something that doesn't have medical applications? It feels like that shouldn't need saying and yet here we are.
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On October 10 2025 03:06 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 03:03 Simberto wrote:On October 10 2025 02:15 KwarK wrote:On October 10 2025 01:14 Simberto wrote:
But the value of gold is no less arbitrary than that of bitcoin or dollars. It is just a very historically stable meme, and thus self-perpetuates pretty well. I agree with everything you wrote and I know you used the words "historically stable" which is a big picture view. But I do want to note that the purchasing power of gold within the United States quadrupled year to date. It is surprisingly unstable. If you paid people for things with gold then you would be incredibly unhappy with the prices that you paid for Christmas presents and would resolve to stop using your currency as a currency. Absolutely true, but i didn't mean "the value of gold is historically stable". While that is also true, what i meant was the more basic statement: "The idea that gold is valuable is historically stable". For basically all of human history, gold has always been viewed as valuable, and thus no one expects it to suddenly stop being viewed as valuable. Wouldn't us hitting enough space tech and infrastructure to do asteroid mining quickly devalue it? There is a lot of it out there. But that is still decades out.
I don't think so. Stuff is "out there". but getting it to Earth is really expensive. To the point that it would be utterly pointless to do so. We'd need some major propulsion tech breakthrough for anything like that to be a reasonable idea.
The main reason space mining might be interesting because it allows you to have stuff in space without launching it from Earth, which is also really expensive. But space mining to transport stuff to Earth sounds unlikely to be worth it for a very long while.
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The problem JR is having with Fiat currency has nothing to do with currency. Its just that when anything becomes a speculative asset the perceived and real value of the object becomes warped. Span when it became a global empire faced the same kind of hyperinflation any nation that would have a fiat currnecy would face because it started bringing back so much gold and silver that was usable as a currency, that it drove the empire to ruin. When Salt was a currency that you paid troops with obviously, people are going to look into industrial-level ways of creating salt. Both gold and salt are fungible to anyone who can make a single step deduction on the methods of using gold and salt as currency.
Its just ignorantly being frustrated with the objective need for inflation to drive growth by making spending worth more than saving. A fiat currency is just easier to use/easier to control than any other form of currency.
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The problem with explaining how fiat currency works to someone whose entire education on economics comes from memes posted by libertarians is that you can't dumb it down enough to the babyfood-like intellectual consistency it requires to seem more compelling than memeslop.
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On October 10 2025 00:42 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 00:41 LightSpectra wrote:
Learning about economics from Ayn Rand is approximately the same as learning about biology from Andrew Wakefield. it is not an economic discussion. it is a moral and philosophical discussion. fiat money systems are a scam.
if you think those spheres are not intrinsically and indubatibaly linked - think again.
there are so many insanely good thinkers to choose from, many forgotten and rediscovered again as crisis after crisis chips away at things we thought we knew for certain.
do yourself a favour and go beyond Ayn Rand. she certainly has her place, but an unjustly elevated one. though as a mediocre thinker you can also get your place in the sun when you are in the right place at the right time. and you write about individualism and bootstraps and the horrible government just being in the way in the USA... during the struggle against the USSR. and the irony of having a bestseller ranting against government programs, later in life getting seriously sick and having to rely on such programs.
god is the ultimate dark humour comedian, and understandably unsympathetic to Atheists like Rand :p
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The annual gold production is some 3000 tons, which translates to 400-500B USD. That covers about 1/3 of the GDP growth of the USA. The world doesn't produce enough gold in a year to cover America's economic growth. How do you imagine switching to a gold standard in that scenario?
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United States43111 Posts
It’s self correcting, you just get deflation of money. That surely won’t cause any issues.
That’s why it is like just taking your hands off the steering wheel. The car is still moving, money still exists and the supply of new money is still happening. The only difference is that you’ve made a choice not to steer it. Maybe prospectors will find enough new gold, maybe they won’t, what happens happens.
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I did try and report him for breaking thread rules, but I guess we went down the rabbit hole anyway.
The whole idea of "fiat currency is bad, we need to return to pegging it to an arbitrary physical substance" is just so outdated I don't even know how to begin to debunk it.
And I am saying that as someone who has gold in their portfolio, and believe that gold is going to keep its value pretty much indefinitely. Not because it has any intrinsic value, but because humans have never not valued gold. It is cross-cultural, and atemporal.
But that's an argument to keep some as a reliable deposit of individual wealth. Money, however, is something different. Our understanding of what currency is and how to regulate it has evolved since the middle ages. And deciding that we no longer need to arbitrarily link the value of a unit of money to some amount of gold was simply a product of that understanding. For the same reason the horse and cart went out of vogue with the discovery of the combustion engine, so did the idea that currency needs to be grounded in a gold reserve with our increased understanding of macroeconomics. If for some reason you skipped all of that in highschool and instead read Atlas Shrugged, the onus is on you to pick up a highschool economics book.
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On October 10 2025 05:30 Acrofales wrote:
I did try and report him for breaking thread rules, but I guess we went down the rabbit hole anyway.
The whole idea of "fiat currency is bad, we need to return to pegging it to an arbitrary physical substance" is just so outdated I don't even know how to begin to debunk it.
And I am saying that as someone who has gold in their portfolio, and believe that gold is going to keep its value pretty much indefinitely. Not because it has any intrinsic value, but because humans have never not valued gold. It is cross-cultural, and atemporal.
But that's an argument to keep some as a reliable deposit of individual wealth. Money, however, is something different. Our understanding of what currency is and how to regulate it has evolved since the middle ages. And deciding that we no longer need to arbitrarily link the value of a unit of money to some amount of gold was simply a product of that understanding. For the same reason the horse and cart went out of vogue with the discovery of the combustion engine, so did the idea that currency needs to be grounded in a gold reserve with our increased understanding of macroeconomics. If for some reason you skipped all of that in highschool and instead read Atlas Shrugged, the onus is on you to pick up a highschool economics book.
Half of America is wrestling with outdated concepts that hold no water in a modern society so here we are.
In happier news, a federal judge told ICE to stop using chemical weapons on civilians for no reason in Chicago. They probably will anyways because worse case scenario they're held in contempt of court and nobody is going to arrest them, but hey it's a tiny moral win.
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EPT
