This is a conversation in response to a member of the ludwig von mises institute. Please read the entire post before commenting so we dont have to cover the same ground twice.
ChrisandAmber North We dont need sound money we already have that. We need sound currency. Money is the units of the measure of value that are not only a representation of value but also have value. Examples would be gold,silver, spices, sea shells, oil. Similar to the units of length that not only represent length but also have length examples would be an inch worm,a ruler or yard stick. Currency is only a representation of value it doesnt have any actual value. Examples would be the dollar, bonds, or digits in a computer or a piece of paper that you write an IOU or the verbal representation of a promise. Similar to the units of length that dont have any actual length like the inch, foot, or meter. Saying currency has value is like saying an inch has length or a pound has weight. They are all just representations. Even if gold where to be the dominant form of money we would still have currency in the form of pieces of paper that represented the gold. The problem with having a currency system that is limited by gold is that it limits the amount of value man can create. We dont limit the number of inches, or pounds, and we shouldnt limit the unit of the measure of value, because we dont know how much value man is capable of creating. Defining the unit of the measure of value in terms of gold is like defining the unit of the measurement of length in terms of an inch worm. There is not enough inch worms to measure all the length we might need to quantify just like there is not enough gold to measure all of the value man might be able to create. That is one of the main reasons we keep having to redefine the dollar, man created more value than gold was capable of representing. What limits the number of inches? the amount of length in the universe and the number of pounds is the amount of mass in the universe or the subjective unit of a byte is the number of charged particles in the universe. So what is a representation that could quantify all of the value in the universe, I would recommend a joule = a unit of currency.
17 hours ago · Like
Rodney Brett You might be interested in this, ChrisandAmber. The Austrians have addressed the "not enough gold" argument a few times. Gold is just used as a way to keep prices stable and accurate, the denomination to the currency it's tied to is relative.
http://archive.mises.org/17737/chancellor-not-enough-gold/Chancellor: Not Enough Gold
archive.mises.org
Edward Chancellor in The Financial Times (requires free registration) after a fe...
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17 hours ago · Like
ChrisandAmber North "because prices adjust not only to the quantity of goods but the quantity of money." That is not honest money! It is not the value of the currency that should change with demand but the quantity. That system enriches people by simply holding currency. That is immoral. You should not get increased value for doing nothing. That is the way bitcoin and currency speculation works now.
17 hours ago · Edited · Like
Rodney Brett Yes, but the reason for the dollars to be pegged to gold in the first place(or bitcoin, or some other market driven currency) is that it becomes much harder to arbitrarily increase the money supply due to the scarcity of the commodity it's tied to. Unlike central banks which can print fiat at will, manipulating metal quantities is harder.(even though this is still done with multiple sales of gold ETFs by big firms like J.P. Morgan). Also, there is nothing inherently wrong with speculation. The process of investment requires an entrepreneur or counter party to do some of that. Speculation involves risk. You can take big losses as well. The money you make from that risk is the reward for taking it in the first place. "Holding currency" as you say is what savings is. Does this make the act of savings an immoral thing? That savings is the foundation for sound investment, as opposed to borrowed capital. The fluctuations in value of that savings would work out for the benefit of production, because the savers would be able to afford more capital goods. Now, if you're talking massive speculative bubbles, you get those kind of things with central banks mostly. What the Austrians focus on are the factors that hinder productive growth. What would be the alternative to create sound currency if that very currency is not tied to a tangible commodity(or scarce commodity like Bitcoin) if left to fiat alone?
16 hours ago · Like
Rodney Brett Sometimes speculators can even contribute to actually keeping the prices honest. Robert Murphy broke it down pretty well here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKk3vCbnigcOil Speculators and Iran
In this ECON MOMENT, Dr. Robert P. Murphy explains how successful oil speculator...
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16 hours ago · Edited · Like
ChrisandAmber North Holding currency and gaining value is like holding pounds and gaining weight. Currency is just a representation of value it doesnt have value. It is the UNIT of the system of measurement of value. Units are objectively defined and a constant. It isnt the UNIT that should change with the amount of value we want to quantify it is quantity. An inch doesn't change length just because there are not enough rulers to go around.
16 hours ago · Like
ChrisandAmber North That is the state of currency today it is a system of measurement without a UNIT of measurement. It is pounds that change weight or inches that change length.
16 hours ago · Edited · Like
Rodney Brett ....so, tying that dollar measurement to gold, a commodity that rarely increases in supply, is bad because? You see, that's what gold is.. a unit of measurement, as you say. It's tracking the depreciation of the value of U.S. dollars. If you look at the 10 year chart for gold to dollar, it's the smoking gun that inflation has been occurring rapidly for decades. If you are looking for value to be completely constant, all the time, then what would that value be determined by and what would a market as complex as ours use to determine the correct nominal amounts?
16 hours ago · Edited · Like
ChrisandAmber North 1 UNIT of currency is = to 1 Joule it just like the gold standard, it is honest, but the difference is there is enough of them to go around.
16 hours ago · Like
Rodney Brett Who says its got to be tied 1 to 1? As long as the thing it's tied to is relatively stable, supply wise, then it'll keep the money honest.
16 hours ago · Edited · Like
ChrisandAmber North It doesnt but it has to say constant. UNITs are the constant we measure against. That is how governments default in the past they change the unit. They change the definition. It is like this you owe 10 inches and you only have 9 so you change the definition of an inch give me the 9 and call it 10.
14 hours ago · Edited · Like
ChrisandAmber North That is why they keep having to change the definition of a dollar from 1/25 to 1/36 to 35 dollars an ounce. As man created more wealth and value than gold could be mined they would have to change the unit.
16 hours ago · Like
Rodney Brett You are pushing for the case for gold, then, based off your statement. You're saying that the numerical amount should stay the same. I agree.. but it doesn't stay the same today because governments inflate currency. What allows them to do so is the fact that the same currency is not tied to a rare commodity. Dollar prices rise as a result of this distortion, yet an ounce of gold from 30 years ago still buys you the same as an ounce of gold today. Dollar value changed. Gold value did not. The value that became distorted as a result of increased gold mining is very nominal.
16 hours ago · Like
ChrisandAmber North You cant tie it to a fixed amount. We dont know how much value man can create. You would have to know how much value man could make so you could create enough representations to facilitate all the measurement. Like if you limited the amount of inches to a set number then you would have to know how much length there is in existence. A joule is a usable standard we dont know how many of them there are but it is finite and quantifiable.
16 hours ago · Like
Ben Osborne You can't fix ratios like that even if you wanted to, you would get hoarding of one or the other asset. But you wouldn't want to I you could, if you have been listening to enough mises media
11 hours ago via mobile · Like
ChrisandAmber North ^ not sure what you mean the ratio wouldnt be fixed. You would still have a pricing mechanism. So it wouldnt be price fixing. For example. If 1 unit of currency was a joule and I wanted to quantify the value of a gallon of water the ratio might be 50 to 1 then if I wanted to quantify the same gallon of water in the desert the ratio might be 100 to 1 or on the moon it would be 1000 to 1. The unit always stays the same the price is the qualifier. PRICE IS THE REPRESENTATION OF THE SUBJECTIVE NATURE OF VALUE.
3 hours ago · Like
ChrisandAmber North A good analogy is this. Imagine you weigh a bowling ball here on earth where the is an abundance of gravity. It weighs 10 pounds then you weigh the same ball on the moon where gravity is scarce and it now weighs 2 pounds. The UNIT is constant. As it should be the pound is still a pound. To express the change in human perspective we put in a qualifier. We say as weighed on earth or as weighed on the moon. Price is the qualifier in the system of measurement of value, but it doesn't have to be. We could use qualifiers for every situation. We could say water is 50 joules of value as measured next to a river or it is 100 joules of value as measured in the desert, or water is 1000 joules of value as measured on the moon.
3 hours ago · Edited · Like
Rodney Brett I looked into what you are talking about and found two resources. An extensive write up on the topic and a forum discussion. Both the comments from the first link and the forum discussion were interesting, but some of the things that struck me as being key in getting the "Joule Standard" to work was:
-centralized planning and distribution of its "currency".
-the total amount of joules to be relatively stable for the foreseeable future.
How do you get around dealing with initial centralized monopoly in terms of who measures these things? Since it requires a great deal of trust from the public that cannot hold a joule in his/her hands. How does a market know how to price things without an authority to tell them how many joules each individual action required to produce "X" goods, including every step of energy consumption to produce that good? Who do you elect to manage the accurate measurement of every single thing that's produced in a free market?
http://www.resilience.org/.../2013-02-06/the-joule-standardhttps://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=141950.02 hours ago · Like
Ben Osborne That's too intangible, a weight of gold is a weight of gold, and it will fluctuate against a measure of oil. Why introduce an intermediary? The goods are what's being traded, if you want to introduce another measure it has to be fixed to something so what's it going to be? Gold, oil or something else? It just further confuses the transaction. Goods vs a weight of gold it's all you need
2 hours ago via mobile · Like
ChrisandAmber North "-the total amount of joules to be relatively stable for the foreseeable future. " that is not true. If all the sudden there were an abundance of joules there would just have to be more representations. Everything else would reprice against the standard UNIT. For example 1 gallon of water cost 50 joules in an low joule environment then the same gallon of water would be repriced in a high joule environment to 200 joule per gallon of water.
You are right about there having to be an central issuing authority. Now we are getting to the heart of the problem with the existing monetary structure.
This was a very hard pill for me to swallow, but when helicopter ben suggested dropping currency from the sky he actually had a great idea. The problem is not that they create UNITS from thin air. That is where units come from. We just pluck them out of the air. Where does an inch come from? If we need more inches we just make them up. The problem is the distribution mechanism.
" How do you get around dealing with initial centralized monopoly" The way you get around it is the way that milton friedman suggested you let a computer issue the units. As demand goes up the digital currency could be randomly distributed into the wallets of the users of the currency as the demand went down it would have to remove units from the wallets of the users. Note that even though the number changes the purchasing power would remain the same.
We need a bitcoin that doesnt have a fixed amount and that is defined in objective terms. The elastic currency supply would have to expand and contract to keep the definition true.
2 hours ago · Edited · Like · 1
ChrisandAmber North @ ben there would be an intermediary in a gold based system. If I want to buy goods from china I am not gonna mail off gold and wait the 3 weeks for them to get it before they send off my goods. We need currency the piece of paper or the digit in the computer that has no value but represents the underlying value (gold in this case) to facilitate trade.
2 hours ago · Edited · Like
ChrisandAmber North You guys are asking the right questions
2 hours ago · Like
Ben Osborne Ahhh, I think we are advocating the same thing
2 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 1
ChrisandAmber North Austrians get caught up on the UNIT being tangible. It doesnt have to be tangible it has to be objectively definable. An kilowatt is not tangible but is is definable in objective terms.
2 hours ago · Like
ChrisandAmber North Currency is defined a system of money in a particular region. Money is defined as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a UNIT of account. Units are all definable in objective terms and a constant . The dollar and bitcoin are not currency because they are not definable in objective terms and are not a constant.They are not currency because they are not UNITS. When the dollar was definable in terms of gold it was currency the problem with defining the unit of value in terms of gold is that it is limited. Defining a UNIT of value in terms of gold is like defining a UNIT of lenght in terms of an inch worm. We dont limit the number of inches or pounds the universe does and we shouldnt limit the number of units of value.
2 hours ago · Edited · Like
Rodney Brett Keeping in mind that money largely lies in the faith of what people deem it so. It's not so much the Austrians exclusively are obsessed with precious metals as a unit, but also that gold has been historically accepted as money for centuries. Perhaps wh...See More
about an hour ago · Like
ChrisandAmber North ^ joules have a history of value that far exceeds the history of the value of gold. Gold has been valuable for about 6k years force over distance has been valued since the dawn of man.
about an hour ago · Edited · Like
Rodney Brett Yes, it has a history of value sure. I'm taking about its acceptance as a means of currency. It's a psychological thing. When people can hold it in their hands, they feel like they safely own it and it is secure. Like I said, a few more years of purely digital transactions may change this mindset.
about an hour ago · Edited · Unlike · 1
ChrisandAmber North If anyone can get this conversation in front of an economist or philosopher I would love the input of an authority. I would greatly appreciate it. Austrians need to stop advocating a gold standard and start advocating a joule/ kilowatt standard.
about an hour ago · Edited · Like
Rodney Brett Not all Austrians advocate the gold standard, although most do. Some advocate a market driven basket of alternatives that compete.. because Austrians are also de-Centralists, they wouldn't necessarily be against a joule standard, so long as the free market chose it to be currency. Conceptually speaking, what you are talking about is in line with Austrian economics. It's the initial implementation of such a system that they may be uneasy about.
about an hour ago · Unlike · 1
ChrisandAmber North
This is a link to the original
https://www.facebook.com/mark.thornton.3760/posts/10153448347155650?comment_id=45550099&offset=0&total_comments=32
