What if a Country go back to Gold (bitcoin) standard?

[Nicolas Dorier]

A country and a family want to import exactly as much as it export.
If you export more than you import, you depend on the solvability of the debtors.
If you import more than you export, you depend on your creditors not needing their money back all together earlier than you foresight.

This is true if you speak of import and export of money. (the so called, trade balance)
But for goods, this is false. You want import, not export. You want more goods coming into the house not less, and not equivalent.

Having a balanced trade balance while importing more good than exporting is what should be aimed for.
The only possible way of doing that is to add value to imported product before exporting less of them for the same amount of money.

The trap is we should not measure export and import in money terms to deduce if the country is wealthy.
A variable is missing, a variable that should not be measured in money. Goods. Accumulation of good, not accumulation of money.

[DhaniBoy]

between bitcoin and gold have similarities and differences, similarities among other
1. To get it together through the mining process, albeit in a manner different mining
2. The value of investment is quite capable to benefit more
3. have a tendency to rise in the exchange rate against the US dollar

whereas the difference among others:
1. The different physical form, gold has a physical form, and bitcoin is cryptocurrency
2. The gold can be directly used for trading, bitcoin can be used when there is an internet connection
3. The release of funds to the higher gold compared to bitcoin

so I think if a country back to the gold, it is a very good for the economy of a country, because gold is very unaffected against currencies of other countries, and according to the experience of countries which use gold as a currency, the country's economy is relatively more stable ... 

[painlord2k]

A country and a family want to import exactly as much as it export.
If you export more than you import, you depend on the solvability of the debtors.
If you import more than you export, you depend on your creditors not needing their money back all together earlier than you foresight.

This is true if you speak of import and export of money. (the so called, trade balance)
But for goods, this is false. You want import, not export. You want more goods coming into the house not less, and not equivalent.

Having a balanced trade balance while importing more good than exporting is what should be aimed for.
The only possible way of doing that is to add value to imported product before exporting less of them for the same amount of money.

The trap is we should not measure export and import in money terms to deduce if the country is wealthy.
A variable is missing, a variable that should not be measured in money. Goods. Accumulation of good, not accumulation of money.

We must define what is a "balanced trade balance".
I define it as exporting as much goods and service measured in money/gold as we import goods and services measured in money/gold.
If you do not use a common denominator you can not have a total balance, just individual balances you can not compare with each other.
If you export peas and  apples and import cars how do you balance them? You can not. But if you price them in gold or fiat you can.

Agree the balance of imports and exports and the quantity of imports and exports are not solid measures of wealth for a country.

But you miss the point, I think, because the act of importing and exporting happen not in a vacuum.
We import what we want more and export what we want less.
What we export is always less valuable to ourselves than what we import, because the exchange happen only when what we give is worth less for us than what we receive.
If the balance is always zero, but the input and output are not zero, both are increasing their subjective wealth because both are giving out what they value less in exchange of what they value more.

A dynamic equilibrium in the trade balance is beneficial for both parties, so both should prefer a hard currency.
In fact, really hard currencies will force all parties to have a balanced trade balance, like it or not

[countryfree]

Just look at the size of the market that deals with commodities trading. Every single investor in the world would want a piece of the pie, and he will buy currency from that country. After only a few weeks, value of the currency would have tripled, or more, causing every company which was successfully exporting goods to go bankrupt, causing mass unemployment. The good part being that the people who had money in the bank would enjoy unprecedented purchasing power of cheap imported goods.

Still, in a very small country which would ban currency convertibility, I guess it could work.

Having more import than export is the path to wealth.

Please, go back to school. It's the other way around. Germany and Japan got rich because they have been successful exporters for decades, and China's getting richer and richer because it's selling its goods all over the planet.

[Nicolas Dorier]

We must define what is a "balanced trade balance".
I define it as exporting as much goods and service measured in money/gold as we import goods and services measured in money/gold.

Yes, I define it like that also the key point is "measured in money/gold".

But imagine you import 2 car for 1000$ each + some raw material for 100$.
You upgrade one of these car with the raw material, and manage to sell the upgraded car for 2100$.
In term of trade balance, you are balanced => 2100 import and 2100 export.

In term of goods though, you are better off.
Since you imported 2 car + raw material, but only consumed the raw material + exported one car.
Your wealth has improved of 1 car, the added value of your work is 1 car. Even if the trade balance, is at equilibrium.

This is what I mean by "importing more than exporting", but only in term of goods, not in term of trade balance.
As you said, the trade balance will always tend to go into equilibrium.

The root of this incomprehension is that people tends to measure good's value objectively in money/gold.
When as you said, Mises clearly point out that value is subjective and always created when 2 actors exchange without coercion.

I agree that even if your position in the above example would not be improved by 1 car, the exchanges would have created value based on the subjective theory of value.

My point is that exchange of good should not be measured with money.
What you really do when you measure export and import in term of money is only looking the export/import of money itself. Not the export/import of goods.

[Nicolas Dorier]

Just look at the size of the market that deals with commodities trading. Every single investor in the world would want a piece of the pie, and he will buy currency from that country. After only a few weeks, value of the currency would have tripled, or more, causing every company which was successfully exporting goods to go bankrupt, causing mass unemployment. The good part being that the people who had money in the bank would enjoy unprecedented purchasing power of cheap imported goods.

Still, in a very small country which would ban currency convertibility, I guess it could work.

Having more import than export is the path to wealth.

Please, go back to school. It's the other way around. Germany and Japan got rich because they have been successful exporters for decades, and China's getting richer and richer because it's selling its goods all over the planet.

I'm a self taught person. Look at my previous post for understanding what I mean by that.
The point is that I do not measure goods with money, the so called "trade balance".

My point is not to run into deficit by importing more than exporting.
The point is having more good imported than you export. This is very different.


For comparison. As a family you don't want to run into debt.
However you want a furnished house, not an empty one where you had to sell all your furnitures to survive.
You don't want to export the furnitures, you want to import them.
But this is not the same as saying that you want to be in deficit.

[twiifm]

Just look at the size of the market that deals with commodities trading. Every single investor in the world would want a piece of the pie, and he will buy currency from that country. After only a few weeks, value of the currency would have tripled, or more, causing every company which was successfully exporting goods to go bankrupt, causing mass unemployment. The good part being that the people who had money in the bank would enjoy unprecedented purchasing power of cheap imported goods.

Still, in a very small country which would ban currency convertibility, I guess it could work.

Having more import than export is the path to wealth.

Please, go back to school. It's the other way around. Germany and Japan got rich because they have been successful exporters for decades, and China's getting richer and richer because it's selling its goods all over the planet.

I'm a self taught person. Look at my previous post for understanding what I mean by that.
The point is that I do not measure goods with money, the so called "trade balance".

My point is not to run into deficit by importing more than exporting.
The point is having more good imported than you export. This is very different.


For comparison. As a family you don't want to run into debt.
However you want a furnished house, not an empty one where you had to sell all your furnitures to survive.
You don't want to export the furnitures, you want to import them.
But this is not the same as saying that you want to be in deficit.

This post makes no sense.  Why would you compare a household to GDP?  Households don't import export.  They usually work for salary and buy things.  If they need furniture they work and save to buy

[Nicolas Dorier]

This post makes no sense.  Why would you compare a household to GDP?  Households don't import export.  They usually work for salary and buy things.  If they need furniture they work and save to buy

Milton Friedman is better than me at explaining why importing stuff is better than exporting.
http://doc.cat-v.org/economics/milton_friedman/the_case_for_free_trade

Another fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad. We eat bananas from Central America, wear Italian shoes, drive German automobiles, and enjoy programs we see on our Japanese TV sets. Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports or, equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports.

This talk on Youtube from Friedman : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9STBcacDIM

[pattu1]

Does anyone have an idea on what happen if a country decide to go back to a Gold standard?

Imagine that there is no threat to this country come from the others. It's a middle sized economy.

Its economy would become strong. It would not be able to inflate there currency for obvious reason.

What are the pros and cons? A fly solo like this is even possible/imaginable?

I'm just curious to know what you guys think it might happens.

That country will be forced to store large amounts of unproductive gold.
Don't you think it would be better off selling its gold and using that to build its infrastructure?

[painlord2k]

Does anyone have an idea on what happen if a country decide to go back to a Gold standard?

Imagine that there is no threat to this country come from the others. It's a middle sized economy.

Its economy would become strong. It would not be able to inflate there currency for obvious reason.

What are the pros and cons? A fly solo like this is even possible/imaginable?

I'm just curious to know what you guys think it might happens.

That country will be forced to store large amounts of unproductive gold.
Don't you think it would be better off selling its gold and using that to build its infrastructure?

NO.

The gold the country keep in reserve it is called savings. It is needed just in case something don't go as planned.
Your reasoning is like the people telling others like they should be lean and fit, like the people on a BodyBuilding magazine cover, the only problem being with too low fat you are at risk of a lot of physical/health problems.

If you had no savings, just spent everything you earn in consumption and investments, you have no way to pay easily if something go wrong: you must liquidate your investments at any price you can get i n a short time. If your check delay, if your refrigerator break and you food rot, and you have nothing in reserve, no money, no other reserve of food, etc. You must go out and sell that beautiful car just to eat. Or ask a loan to someone.
Sometimes others have extra capacity available and your loans will cost little more BUT think about the case you refrigerator stop working:
it was just your refrigerator or every refrigerator in the county?
Did your refrigerator fail or was the power lines?
In the first case you just go out and politely ask to your neighbour if he could loan you some bread and ham. But if was the power lines, your neighbours is in the same situation.
Then the idiot of a prepper (the one you called lunatics, paranoid, etc.) with autonomous power for his refrigerator can ask you and your neighbours to be paid to sell some of his 6 months reserve of food (payback time bitches).
Your neighbour have some money and can pay for the food immediately, a backup generators and fuel in the next few days, until thing improve some week later.
You, without savings available, can just liquidate what? What you have your prepper neighbour want? Your fine car? Now you must liquidate something worth 100 at 10 or less (food, a spare generator and enough fuel), because you would starve otherwise. Then the lack of savings will cost you ten times what would cost you to save something in a sensible form (like gold, silver, cash, bitcoin).

The same is true for countries.
When a recession come, all people will be short of cash, so all of them must liquidate what they have for what they can get to obtain what they need.
And it is not pretty.

A few weeks of savings often are a life saving. Few months savings are a real cushion in case of problems.
Wealthier you are, more saving you need.

[countryfree]

Just look at the size of the market that deals with commodities trading. Every single investor in the world would want a piece of the pie, and he will buy currency from that country. After only a few weeks, value of the currency would have tripled, or more, causing every company which was successfully exporting goods to go bankrupt, causing mass unemployment. The good part being that the people who had money in the bank would enjoy unprecedented purchasing power of cheap imported goods.

Still, in a very small country which would ban currency convertibility, I guess it could work.

Having more import than export is the path to wealth.

Please, go back to school. It's the other way around. Germany and Japan got rich because they have been successful exporters for decades, and China's getting richer and richer because it's selling its goods all over the planet.

I'm a self taught person. Look at my previous post for understanding what I mean by that.
The point is that I do not measure goods with money, the so called "trade balance".

My point is not to run into deficit by importing more than exporting.
The point is having more good imported than you export. This is very different.


For comparison. As a family you don't want to run into debt.
However you want a furnished house, not an empty one where you had to sell all your furnitures to survive.
You don't want to export the furnitures, you want to import them.
But this is not the same as saying that you want to be in deficit.

The comparison between a country and a family is a difficult one, because the average family doesn't produce anything.

Still, we may take the example of a farmer selling its produce on a local market. If he wants to buy furniture for his home (or a car),the value of the produce he sells on the market will have to higher than the cost of what he wants to buy. The situation will be even more difficult than for a country, since a country can run a budget deficit whereas banks won't allow that to happen in a small farm.

In the third world, where people don't have bank accounts, having a balanced budget and selling more than what you buy isn't a choice. There's just no other way around.

Back to the case of Switzerland, this is old people versus the young. The older folks want to play safe with solid gold stored at home.

[Nicolas Dorier]

The comparison between a country and a family is a difficult one, because the average family doesn't produce anything.

Still, we may take the example of a farmer selling its produce on a local market. If he wants to buy furniture for his home (or a car),the value of the produce he sells on the market will have to higher than the cost of what he wants to buy. The situation will be even more difficult than for a country, since a country can run a budget deficit whereas banks won't allow that to happen in a small farm.

In the third world, where people don't have bank accounts, having a balanced budget and selling more than what you buy isn't a choice. There's just no other way around.

Back to the case of Switzerland, this is old people versus the young. The older folks want to play safe with solid gold stored at home.

You don't understand my point, but again, maybe I'm not explaining well, I sugget you take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9STBcacDIM.

In the third world, where people don't have bank accounts, having a balanced budget and selling more than what you buy isn't a choice. There's just no other way around.

I'm not advocating having a deficit trade balance. (Even if, as Friedman explain, for a country, it is a good thing since nobody can print cheaper the green piece of money than you)
I'm advocating having more goods imported than goods exported. And it is important to not measure them in term of dollar.

Like I said :
If you buy 2 cars + some raw material for tuning for 1200$.
Tune one of the cars and sell it for 1200$, then your trade balance is balanced.
However your wealth improved of one car. You imported more goods than exporting and keep a favorable trade balance.

The comparison between a country and a family is a difficult one, because the average family doesn't produce anything.

Where does their paycheck comes from ? Is it not for importing more goods in their lives ?

[WestHarrison]

With an established standard like gold or bitcoin I would assume that banking, stocks, bonds, insurances as we know it would cease to be and they would transform into something else. Could be catastrophic on the short run since that country might get shunned, but maybe it could work if it's a very slow transition over many years.

[spazzdla]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-28/things-make-you-go-hmmm-swiss-gold-status-quo-showdown

Seems one might just try.

[painlord2k]

I'm advocating having more goods imported than goods exported. And it is important to not measure them in term of dollar.

Like I said :
If you buy 2 cars + some raw material for tuning for 1200$.
Tune one of the cars and sell it for 1200$, then your trade balance is balanced.
However your wealth improved of one car. You imported more goods than exporting and keep a favorable trade balance.

The comparison between a country and a family is a difficult one, because the average family doesn't produce anything.

Where does their paycheck comes from ? Is it not for importing more goods in their lives ?

The problem for your line or reasoning is simple:
you measure different things with the same meter.

When you write:
If you buy 2 cars + some raw material for tuning for 1200$.
Tune one of the cars and sell it for 1200$, then your trade balance is balanced.
However your wealth improved of one car. You imported more goods than exporting and keep a favorable trade balance.

The one untuned car he buy is different from the tuned car he sell.
You can not say his wealth improved of one car, because is the car tuned or untuned. The work of tuning the cars is free? NO.
The work to tune the car have a cost, so you must add it to your accounting.

This is even more evident with the other example you give:
Still, we may take the example of a farmer selling its produce on a local market. If he wants to buy furniture for his home (or a car),the value of the produce he sells on the market will have to higher than the cost of what he wants to buy. The situation will be even more difficult than for a country, since a country can run a budget deficit whereas banks won't allow that to happen in a small farm.


If the farmer want to buy furniture and sell corn it is evident he is selling something he value less (the corn) for something he value more (the furniture).
On the other side, the woodworker selling the furniture evidently value less the forniture he is selling than the corn he is receiving in exchange of it.
No one sell what  is worth (for him) more in exchange of something is worth less (for him). It would be a loss. Every voluntary exchange is a positive value exchange for both parties. Every time. At least ex-ante (before and when it happen). Someone could change its mind after, but this do not matter.

You mix the value (subjective) of the corn and of the furnitures for the woodworker, attribute it a objective value and then use these values to compute the profit of the farmer.
And it obviously it have no sense at all.

I could add to this, you must compute the trade balance in some common terms. Money (be it USD, gold, bitcoins, whatever). More stable is the value of the money used easier is to compute it.
If you talk about cars, apples, peas, massages, etc. You can not build a serious balance:
1) You balance every individual item (in effect import and export the same stuff)
2) You must decide the ratio between cars and peas, massages and apple, etc. And track them as they change. No minimally developed economy can do it. This is because money was developed naturally. As you have a minimally deep production line you MUST have a common denominator enabling you to calculate if the costs of a work are lower or higher of the possible price you foresee.

Money is just the common denominator for all other goods and services. Money being a good itself in a way or another. Just a good never used but only acquired to be exchanged at a later time for what you really want.

[Nicolas Dorier]

If the farmer want to buy furniture and sell corn it is evident he is selling something he value less (the corn) for something he value more (the furniture).
On the other side, the woodworker selling the furniture evidently value less the forniture he is selling than the corn he is receiving in exchange of it.
No one sell what  is worth (for him) more in exchange of something is worth less (for him). It would be a loss. Every voluntary exchange is a positive value exchange for both parties. Every time. At least ex-ante (before and when it happen). Someone could change its mind after, but this do not matter.

Yes, I agree, by reading again what I said about the farmer, I confused myself. For the farmer, the corn is worth less than the furniture.

However, I don't understand your reasoning on the car.

You can not say his wealth improved of one car, because is the car tuned or untuned. The work of tuning the cars is free? NO.
The work to tune the car have a cost, so you must add it to your accounting.

Where the added value appear of the work appear ?
Your work, the work that tuned the car and could sell it at higher price, increased your material wealth of 1 unturned car (the second that you kept for you) despite having a trade balance at 0.
In term of goods, you have more goods now than after. You imported more good in your possession than exported.

Why are you thinking that you are not wealthier now that before ?
Do you disagree with the fact that you just imported more than exported ?
If you agree with it, then why do you disagree with the fact that maximizing good import over export is what make you wealthy ?

[Btcparis]

in few yrs to come
guess many countries will go back to gold.

[galbros]

They would have to fix the price of their currency in gold very carefully.  This is always the hard part, especially if you are going alone.

Assuming they got that part right, their currency would generally be strong.  This would result in lower inflation for their citizens as imports would be relatively inexpensive but potentially hurt their exports as their goods would be more expensive in the marketplace.  This is the irony of strong currencies, countries often don't want them as they hurt exports, hence China's capital controls and very tight management of the RMB.

Also, countries are in no way like families.  It's counter intuitive but has been shown many times, e.g. paradox of thrift.

[Nicolas Dorier]

Also, countries are in no way like families.  It's counter intuitive but has been shown many times, e.g. paradox of thrift.

Can you show it to me ? What is the paradox of thrift ? Here is your counter argument : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9STBcacDIM
Gives me arguments not dogmas.

[Erdogan]

A state that went with gold, would have to have relatively free markets and a small government. That would be good for all, except for the government, which means that you probably will not see it.

Beware of different levels of gold standards. Private money, which would be gold coins produced by multiple businesses, and private paper media denominated in grams, and banks which are not in any way guaranteed by the public, could work. A gold standard money denominated in something else, backed by gold, but monopolistically produced by a government,will ultimately fail and lead us back to where we are now.