I think an Iridium-backed currency would work better than regressing to a Gold-backed currency.

On Earth Iridium is a small bit rarer than Gold, and in the Global Finance Game it would be worth a bit more than its weight in Gold!

Since we do not have "enough" Gold at market price, perhaps a global currency should be backed by something other than a fiat currency that derives political legitimacy from a history of relying on Gold-backed currencies.

en.wikipedia.org...

You can see Iridium is fairly uncommon on Earth, and it would be hard to use the amount Humanity holds as the amount of cash we have. It is only being produced very slowly, however demand for it rises.

en.wikipedia.org...

If we speed up the rate at which we produce it, we could use it to back the new currency we need to remove ourselves from a fiat currency that is in the hands of those who disrupt democracy.

Uhm, I'm not an economist and I think property is theft, why am I telling you this?

Something better than an iridium backed currency, actual irridium. Paper is for a contract of future payment or service,not a great contract if all you get is more paper. Good for the fed, bad for you and me.

there is plenty of gold, they would just need to adjust the value to match demand.

like paper gold or iridium actually are valuable? You are just switching mirrors in the same old smoke and mirror show.

(holds hand up) I respectfully ask a question on this..and I say it this way, because I am truly curious as to your thinking here. I've never heard the idea of using something rarer and less abundant than gold for currency backing?

How would you actually see this playing out? Nations hold tiny but insanely valuable piles of Iridium and trade pouches of dust back and forth like the American gold miners of the late 1800's?

It's amazing to hear, but all the gold ever mined on this planet, through the long history of mankind, is estimated to hold a rough value of 7-8 trillion dollars, depending on how spot prices fluctuate. Our national debt is twice that and we have places like Bank of America casually tossing around figures of 10's of trillions to just move here or there to balance their books and make it look pretty.

So, I assume you've thought this out and frankly, I haven't. So, in using something considerably rarer than gold itself to represent assets and debts that stand many many times the value of that gold...what are the details? Heck..nothing logical can even HOPE to address the mess we're in now..so what the heck? Maybe you have a real idea here?

what about Osmium? that is even rarer! Or maybe ex-wives?

Originally posted by JoshF
what about Osmium? that is even rarer! Or maybe ex-wives?

We could just use another metal that we have plenty of and is, actually, FAR more valuable than gold.....it would even solve two problems at once!

Let's coin our money using Uranium. No No...really. Think of the beauty here. Small amounts don't kill..right away, anyway. Ask any military guy handling D.U. ordinance day in and day out. However....how about that 1% of the super wealthy? (evil grin) It would bring whole new meanings to the idea of being so rich it kills ya!

Originally posted by JoshF
what about Osmium? that is even rarer! Or maybe ex-wives?

Mmmm, but heavier. Just slightly. But going all the way to Osmium from Fiat currency that lies on a bed of Gold-backed currency might create more problems than it solves, you see the real value of an Iridium-backed currency is that it's not the Osmium-backed currency and if we use Iridium rather than Osmium to slowly close the fiat currency books as we find new economic measures to float the books, we can start reverting back to Gold on the promise that we don't try to develop the Osmium-backed currency because the actual valuable metal that backs our currency in the future may as well be an alloy of the true value of the market price for the economy it takes to mint that alloy.

Ultimately, I do not think it really matters what the currency is backed by. As long as there is a finite amount of it. Gold, lead, silver, iridium, clay, rocks or even dirt does not matter as long as it cannot be created out of thin air. If it has to be dug out of the ground to increase the wealth of a nation then so be it. Even stealing it from other countries would be fine with me, as long as someone cannot snap their fingers and magically create more I would not care what the currency is backed by. I could adapt no matter what it was backed by, as long as it is actually backed.

Originally posted by Skewed
Ultimately, I do not think it really matters what the currency is backed by. As long as there is a finite amount of it. Gold, lead, silver, iridium, clay, rocks or even dirt does not matter as long as it cannot be created out of thin air. If it has to be dug out of the ground to increase the wealth of a nation then so be it. Even stealing it from other countries would be fine with me, as long as someone cannot snap their fingers and magically create more I would not care what the currency is backed by. I could adapt no matter what it was backed by, as long as it is actually backed.

edit on 2-2-2012 by Skewed because: (no reason given)

>as long as someone cannot snap their fingers and magically create more I would not care what the currency is backed by

Erm, transubstantiation is real, eventually there will be fusion-powered transubstantiation to increase the production of iridium. It would create more value, not from tin air, but from disassembled subatomic particles reassembled into the new iridium needed to back a constant growth of economic prosperity.

Lead can be turned into Gold, but science has to make it non-magical to be explicable so we can value it at a rate of growth to be reflected in how much money we can print.

Fact is turning lead into gold has only recently been proven as plausible by atomic physicists, but we would have to disassemble lead to get gold, why not add up smaller more easily disassembled molecules into a more rare metal.... like Osmium, but easier?

reply to post by Sachyriel


Allow me to clarify my post a little.

Whatever backs the currency, it must also be freely available. Maybe not necessarily easy to get to but available none the less. Gold, for example. One could go to a dealer to get gold, or they could dig it out of the ground. If it is something that has to be processed/refined then I do not think it would be a good idea, as the process could be controlled/patented so that not just anyone can "create" money. Whereas gold on the other hand, anyone can go dig it out of the ground and be that much more richer. Something that must be processed would really be no different than the federal reserve as it is now.

Hang on...
You have only half educated yourself here, dive a little deeper in the water.
Its not paper thats the problem,paper money has worked better than gold and silver in the past,even stick money (yes sticks) worked in England.

Its the people who control it, thats the problem!
Paper money is the best currency if controlled by the sovereign government.