A hard currency standard is the key to world peace

[Hakurei Reimu]

The issue here isn't whether or not the currency is "useful," the issue is whether or not the currency is by its very nature forced to correspond to physical and social realities, which a fiat currency is not.

No currency is, ultimately, for currency is, by its very nature, a representation of value and as such has no physical reality. In a way, all currency is fiat. Even the earliest coins were based on some sort of trust: that the king's stamp was an assurance of the purity of the metal.

[zarus tathra]

Every currency can be faked, I know. But when you promise to redeem it for a metal that's in short supply, then that becomes a lot harder. It becomes even harder when redemption is expected to be near-instantaneous and unending.

[Hakurei Reimu]

A currency's value is not in its base. I know that the US dollar is fiat. I still use it, because I can buy stuff with it. Really, that's all that is needed.

[zarus tathra]

Will you always be able to buy the same amount of stuff with it? Are the Feds able to invisibly make money with which to finance their bullshit?

[Hakurei Reimu]

Will you always be able to buy the same amount of stuff with it?

Inflation has many causes, not just with currency. Sure, you can have rising prices when you print more currency than is appropriate, but you can have rising prices when the commodity itself is rarer or harder to produce or cannot keep up with demand — like what's happening to oil.

Just about every industry on the planet touches the petroleum industry in some way and demand keeps rising, yet the only recoverable oil reserves that keep getting discovered are all oil sands and similar hard-to-recover deposits that will take much energy just to be able to process into a usable form. Anyone with brains can see the writing on the wall: things are going to get more expensive, and your choice of currency will not matter one wit.

Are the Feds able to invisibly make money with which to finance their bullshit?

Have they? The only thing they've done so far is to take on more debt, which has fuck-all to do with currency.

[zarus tathra]

Sure, things cost more over time due to resource depletion. People do not manipulate currency to "lower costs," they do it to hide costs and shift them to other people without their knowledge or consent. Not only does this allocate costs unfairly, it also horribly obfuscates the problem of efficiently planning industry and capital. Which ends up increasing costs for everybody except for the currency manipulators and their favored groups.

Have they? The only thing they've done so far is to take on more debt, which has fuck-all to do with currency.

are you fucking retarded

[josephpalazzo]

Have they? The only thing they've done so far is to take on more debt, which has fuck-all to do with currency.

are you fucking retarded

 You're the one is who is fucking retarded. The FED bought $16T of assets from banks so they could start lending and prevent the financial crisis, which was in full swing in 2008, to get even worse than it had already reached. Had the Fed not acted, the unemployment rate would gone through the roof instead of climbing to 10% and then slowly gone down to the 7% as of today. Just a reminder: during the great Depression of 1929-45, the unemployment rate went over 25%.

[barbarian]

Joule currency would fall on its face due to the what it would be based on which after reading this thread has never been truly established from the start of the OP, well at least what I can see (point it out if it has). Can you please explain what your  joule "hard currency" is that you are referring to? I wouldn't mind entering this conversation but I need specific tangible things that governments can't simply strip from the common wealth that you would want to back this banking system with.

[zarus tathra]

The energy/power system would be based on joulebucks and wattbucks and energy shares.

Joulebucks would be based on energy. You get a database entry like a bank account and you'd be able to claim a certain amount of energy based on how many joulebucks you have, how much energy is lost getting it to your plug, the level of grid use, and probably some other factors which will probably be much smaller. Obviously, since I don't have real plans yet, the details have to be worked out. Maybe I'll have joulebucks degrade over time, like negative interest on Swiss bank accounts. Exponential increases in dollar assets can only really be supported by inflation and imperialism, a currency that is difficult to inflate would find great difficulty maintaining compound interest. This system wouldn't make any pretenses about being able to sustain something that's unsustainable.

Wattbucks would be base on how much power you can draw at any time. Joules are like liters of water, watts are like liters of water/sec through a pipe. These would probably degrade over time, too, since it's kind of insane to have a permanent claim on a nation's industrial output. You might be able to generate a corresponding, probably inferior # of joulebucks, but this convertibility is not as important as guaranteeing up-to-the-minute access.

Energy shares would be shares of the power capacity that has yet to be allocated to joulebuck and wattbuck users. If few people are using energy except the energy share people, like in a depression, then they get to stimulate the economy and use the unused surplus. Since this is the most generous of the systems, these people would eat last and would get the lowest priority. These shares would probably degrade over time. Or if they're given low priority, maybe degradation is unnecessary.

[barbarian]

We already have an an intangible system in place and your system is nothing more than that. You need to have something tangible, not intangible.

An intangible system, such as what energy is, as to what you are referring is way easier to manipulate than what we have in the current system.

I am holding out my hand please put what ever you are selling in it, so I can touch, look, hold and have something real.

[zarus tathra]

An intangible system, such as what energy is, as to what you are referring is way easier to manipulate than what we have in the current system.

I guess all those coal and uranium mines and power lines are there for show, huh.

It's not "intangible." It's actually the most necessary element of our current system. The paper bills you have are useful only as a medium of exchange. The same is true even of gold. Energy, though, energy is needed for everything. What's more, energy is measurable.

[barbarian]

An intangible system, such as what energy is, as to what you are referring is way easier to manipulate than what we have in the current system.

I guess all those coal and uranium mines and power lines are there for show, huh.

It's not "intangible." It's actually the most necessary element of our current system. The paper bills you have are useful only as a medium of exchange. The same is true even of gold. Energy, though, energy is needed for everything. What's more, energy is measurable.

Yes, I would like to withdraw a 2 1/2 train cars of coal and three 2 ton uranium rocks. This is unrealistic and you would still have to go by the markets manipulation of what it is worth, hmmm, just like we currently do...

You do realize that the energy market that you refer to is all ready part of the world economy, right?

The energy that you want to measure is intangible, once again it is far from something that you can call tangible. This is already a measured value of currency.

[zarus tathra]

You can measure joules/volts coming from a wall plug. You can see whether the lights are on and whether your appliances are getting the energy they need. You can tell whether or not your joulebucks are getting the face value.

And joules are intangible? Joules are abstract? Try saying that to a physicist, or anybody who knows jack shit about science. It's "value" that's intangible. Energy expenditure, though, that's real. That's measurable and material.

[barbarian]

You can measure joules/volts coming from a wall plug. You can see whether the lights are on and whether your appliances are getting the energy they need. You can tell whether or not your joulebucks are getting the face value.

And joules are intangible? Joules are abstract? Try saying that to a physicist, or anybody who knows jack shit about science. It's "value" that's intangible. Energy expenditure, though, that's real. That's measurable and material.

Are you seriously telling me that I can put electricity in my pocket? NO, you are saying that you want to back, say the "dollar," with it and call it something different. You can already buy this commodity on the market world wide.

[zarus tathra]

Yes, joulebucks are intangible. The point is that you'll know if your currency's getting debased IMMEDIATELY rather over the course of months or even years as the government floods the economy with bullshit just like you're doing now.

Do you seriously not understand that electricity is material? Do you not know what electrons are? I could plug my hands into a socket and get killed by maybe .05 cents of electricity. But increment a quantity in a banking database all you want, and nothing will happen to me if someone does not act on it.

And yes, you can buy electricity on the world market with dollars. Except the value you get is always going down. And down. And down. Our economics and politics is designed to hide this fact from you.