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Old 10-24-2007, 10:38 PM
Borodog Borodog is offline
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Default Re: Fiat money can be as good as gold, possibly better...

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From this analysis, many readers develop ideologies dictating that fiat money can never be money because there is no commodity to gauge past prices. This is the idea I intend to attack the most because the rationale is senseless.

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It's a strawman. No Austrian says anything of the sort. Of course fiat money is real money. It's a general medium of exchange. You don't need a commodity to guage past prices, you only need the knowledge of yesterday's prices in terms of the fiat money.

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In today's world the problem with fiat money is not economically based but rather the economic side targets the fraudulentness of the system of central banking, managed interest rates and open market operations.

Without the fraud a stable money supply that is allowed to free float will provide as useful a monetary structure as any other general commodity based money system.

Why does fiat money have the potential to be even better than gold?

Well the costs of dealing with gold on top of the perpetual increase in the gold supply include the productive resources and storage resources. A fiat money without the fraud would not entail any of the above.

Some may counter that gold is valued precisely for the fact that it is fraud-proof or much more so than any fiat money. This is likely true but doesn't counter the fact that a properly managed fiat system can bear all the benefits of a commodity standard.

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This is like saying, if only government were filled with angels, we wouldn't have to worry about them counterfeiting money.

Protecting assets in the real world of real human beings requires resources. Wouldn't it be much cheaper if, rather than having to buy a heavy chain and padlock to lock up my bicycle, I could just write "LOCK" on a piece of paper and tape it around the front wheel? Think of all the resources we could save!

This would be true even in an anarcho-capitalist society. The temptation for the people who have the capacity to print money out of nothing, without the check of having to actually redeem it for a commodity that cannot be counterfeited out of thin air, would be insurmountable.
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