NationStates Jolt Archive

I am pro-standarization. I think that the world would benefit greatly by having worldwide standards that transcend national boundries.

The things I would like to see standardized:

Electrical Power:
There are currently four types of electrical Voltage and Frequency; they are 100-127V (with 50Hz and 60Hz variants) and 220-240V (with 50Hz and 60Hz variants). There are also nine incompatable outlet variants. One voltage/frequency standard in conjunction with a standard set of outlets to be used worldwide

Measurement:
There are two measurement systems being used. Our system, and the system used by the rest of the world except Liberia and Myanmar. Let me put it this way, either three of us are going to have to change or 189 of you are.

Calendars:
There are numerous calendars out there, both lunar and solar, based purely on religious usage. I say we start at year one with a new calendar for worldwide usage. Ten days a week, three weeks a month, twelve months with a half-week at the end of the year (six days every four years). No religion is going to eliminate their old calendars, but there'll be a secular worldwide standard.

Clocks:
Although most countries (surprisinly not all) use the current clock scheme, a day comprised of twenty-four hours of sixty minutes of sixty seconds of one thousand milliseconds is absurd. It works, but the conversions are absurd. One day of ten hours of 100 minutes of 100 seconds is more sensible, what with being base-10 and all.

Language:
No language should replace local languages, but I can't go to Uzbekistan and talk to someone. Esperanto is a simple language to learn and use. No one will have to stop using English, French, Tamil, Uzbeki, Mandarin, et cetera, but all international organizations should use Esperanto (or some other construct like Ido), and we should share a language for international usage. A hundred years ago, that language would've been French. Two thousand years ago it would've been Latin. Now it's English, but it's not going to be forever. An established international language for diplomacy and international usage should be implemented.

Currency:
We now have a little under 200 currencies in use, all of which are either tied to the credit of their respective nations' governments or tied to another currency altogether. An international standard on which the world's currencies are set is needed. I propose 30g Au, the SI weight closest to the traditional troy ounce. For example, in the US, 30g Au could be equal to $100. 30 grams of gold is always $100. All commodities are set in relation to this standard. In Japan, 30g Au could be equal to ¥1000 say. Same story, different prices. This ends buying currency for investment purposes, artificial inflation/deflation, and establishes a currency for international trade (currently the USD and less frequently, the Euro).

The Rules of the Road (brought to my attention by Demented Hamsters, actual standard by me):
A minority of the world's population drive on the left, the majority of nations drives on the right. Like US converting to metric, either 1/3 of the world switches, of 2/3 does.

Television Signal (brought to my attention by Aelosia, actual standard by me):
There are currently three television standards: NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. There should be a uniform set of standards for not just television signals, but all radio signals in general.

Time for me to put notes on these. First off, none of these are originally my idea. These are all things that I've heard others suggest and I like. I don't take credit for these ideas, so don't say something like, "Hey! The calendar and the clock are from the French Revolution!" because I am well aware. So, are there standards which should exist that I haven't thought of? Do you think that these are going to bring about the apocalypse?

Calendars:
There are numerous calendars out there, both lunar and solar, based purely on religious usage. I say we start at year one with a new calendar for worldwide usage. Ten days a week, three weeks a year, twelve months with a half-week at the end of the year (six days every four years). No religion is going to eliminate their old calendars, but there'll be a secular worldwide standard.
Just about all of the world uses the 12 month Gegorian calandar because it works (You got to make sure your year and the solar year end up matching unless you LIKE April in the middle of winter). The lunar calandars are usually used only for religious purposes and not government ones. Years though get counted in different forms and that could do with some tinkering.

Clocks:
Although most countries (surprisinly not all) use the current clock scheme, a day comprised of twenty-four hours of sixty minutes of sixty seconds of one thousand milliseconds is absurd. It works, but the conversions are absurd. One day of ten hours of 100 minutes of 100 seconds is more sensible, what with being base-10 and all.
How does that actually time to the planet's rotation though? Even our 24 hour day is slightly off.

Language:
No language should replace local languages, but I can't go to Uzbekistan and talk to someone. Esperanto is a simple language to learn and use. No one will have to stop using English, French, Tamil, Uzbeki, Mandarin, et cetera, but all international organizations should use Esperanto (or some other construct like Ido), and we should share a language for international usage. A hundred years ago, that language would've been French. Two thousand years ago it would've been Latin. Now it's English, but it's not going to be forever. An established international language for diplomacy and international usage should be implemented.
Good luck on that, lingua frankas have always had to do with power of the countries in question.

Currency:
We now have a little under 200 currencies in use, all of which are either tied to the credit of their respective nations' governments or tied to another currency altogether. An international standard on which the world's currencies are set is needed. I propose 30g Au, the SI weight closest to the traditional troy ounce. For example, in the US, 30g Au could be equal to $100. 30 grams of gold is always $100. All commodities are set in relation to this standard. In Japan, 30g Au could be equal to ¥1000 say. Same story, different prices. This ends buying currency for investment purposes, artificial inflation/deflation, and establishes a currency for international trade (currently the USD and less frequently, the Euro).
Er... there's a reason why just about no major currency is tied to a gold standard any more. There's just not enough gold on the planet to fuel the economy for it to be so.

Not a bad start, but I would like to hear answers to the problem of WHICH systems we pick because THAT'S what's going to start the wars.

The clock is actually dates right back to Babylonian times, not just the French revolution.
What's wrong with time as it is now?
60 has more factors than 100, so it's actually easier to use.

I think you might mean 3 weeks a month, not a year in you OP btw.

Electrical appliance standardisation is a good idea. IIRC the EU has been trying to standardise that for a few years now - every country in the EU has different plug standards.
Blame Tesla.

You didn't mention driving on the same side of the road. That should also be standardised.

Don't agree with you about langauge. Language isn't just about words, it also defines a culture. Lose the langauge and you lose that culture.

Not a bad start, but I would like to hear answers to the problem of WHICH systems we pick because THAT'S what's going to start the wars.METRIC!! METRIC!!

But seriously, it's creeping in everywhere. I see it on my bottles, I use it in my classes. Metric is the way to go, baby!

Not a bad start, but I would like to hear answers to the problem of WHICH systems we pick because THAT'S what's going to start the wars.

Fahrenheit vs Celsius vs Kelvin...
Well, Celsius and Kelvin are already dating, so...

METRIC!! METRIC!!

But seriously, it's creeping in everywhere. I see it on my bottles, I use it in my classes. Metric is the way to go, baby!
I'm actually getting used to dealing with metric more and more.

Though I never seem to get the hang of it when cooking.

IIRC the EU has been trying to standardise that for a few years now - every country in the EU has different plug standards.

No, we don't.

I'm actually getting used to dealing with metric more and more.

Though I never seem to get the hang of it when cooking.

Just switch to decilitres or grams. Tada!

I think a more pressing issue here is when the week starts honestly who the hell starts the week on a Sunday?!

I think a more pressing issue here is when the week starts honestly who the hell starts the week on a Sunday?!

Yeah, that's pretty demented. Monday is the first day of the week, hence that's when the week starts.

No, we don't.

Yes we do.

Just about all of the world uses the 12 month Gegorian calandar because it works (You got to make sure your year and the solar year end up matching unless you LIKE April in the middle of winter). The lunar calandars are usually used only for religious purposes and not government ones. Years though get counted in different forms and that could do with some tinkering.Don't Islamic countries' governments use the Islamic calendar? Also, I'd assume a new calendar would come with new names for months.


How does that actually time to the planet's rotation though? Even our 24 hour day is slightly off.Ah! Of that I'm aware. The ten "hour" day would be ten even divisions of one apparent (i.e. in relation to the sun) rotation of the earth. 10 decimal hours = 1 apparent rotation.


Good luck on that, lingua frankas have always had to do with power of the countries in question.You're right. But Mandarin could become the new lingua franca in 20 years, at least if there's an established int'l language, it'll be consistent.


Er... there's a reason why just about no major currency is tied to a gold standard any more. There's just not enough gold on the planet to fuel the economy for it to be so.I live with a pro-gold-standard economics major. I'll ask him.

Not a bad start, but I would like to hear answers to the problem of WHICH systems we pick because THAT'S what's going to start the wars.

The clock is actually dates right back to Babylonian times, not just the French revolution.
What's wrong with time as it is now?
60 has more factors than 100, so it's actually easier to use.The decimal clock does not date back to babylonian times. The decimal clock was invented during the French Revolution. Also, 60 does have more factors than 100. 12 has more factors than 10, but I still prefer the metric system.
Other than days being inaccurately stated as being 24 hours, having non-base-ten-friendly conversions between seconds, minutes, hours, and days, nothing is wrong with how we tell time.

I think you might mean 3 weeks a month, not a year in you OP btw. Fixed!

Electrical appliance standardisation is a good idea. IIRC the EU has been trying to standardise that for a few years now - every country in the EU has different plug standards.
Blame Tesla.I've heard that. Unfortunately, the rest of the world will still have random plugs, votages and frequencies.

You didn't mention driving on the same side of the road. That should also be standardised.Oh! That's a good one! I'm adding it!

Don't agree with you about langauge. Language isn't just about words, it also defines a culture. Lose the langauge and you lose that culture.Look at what I posted. I even made sure it was the first sentence of that section! How can you miss it? "No language should replace native languages." How can I be MORE clear about that? Seriously, it baffles me. I DO NOT THINK THAT THERE SHOULD BE A LANGUAGE TO REPLACE ALL LANGUAGES IN THE WORLD. I BELIEVE THAT LANGUAGE DEFINES CULTURE. I DO BELIEVE, HOWEVER, THAT MANKIND WOULD BENEFIT FROM A SHARED LANGUAGE FOR INTERNATIONAL AND DIPLOMATIC PURPOSES.

I hate to do that, but I just wanted to make sure I was as clear as possible.

Yes we do.

I can tell you from experience that my electric razor fitted the sockets in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Italy perfectly. So these countries at least are pretty similar.

I think a more pressing issue here is when the week starts honestly who the hell starts the week on a Sunday?!
i thought the end of a week was friday,
Anyway
I just hope uniformisation,goes along with emancipation ,
If it is not ,then. i have no clue about a language beeing esperanto,
Coming from armchair theorists.
And that the point.
I can speak with my finger.
You still will need the relation or context to understand it

Yes we do.

What was written was that "every country in the EU has different plug standards." No, we don't.

I am pro-standarization. I think that the world would benefit greatly by having worldwide standards that transcend national boundries.

The things I would like to see standardized:

Electrical power:
There are currently four types of electrical Voltage and Frequency; they are 100-127V (with 50Hz and 60Hz variants) and 220-240V (with 50Hz and 60Hz variants). There are also nine incompatable outlet variants. One voltage/frequency standard in conjunction with a standard set of outlets to be used worldwide

Measurement:
There are two measurement systems being used. Our system, and the system used by the rest of the world except Liberia and Myanmar. Let me put it this way, either three of us are going to have to change or 189 of you are.

Calendars:
There are numerous calendars out there, both lunar and solar, based purely on religious usage. I say we start at year one with a new calendar for worldwide usage. Ten days a week, three weeks a month, twelve months with a half-week at the end of the year (six days every four years). No religion is going to eliminate their old calendars, but there'll be a secular worldwide standard.

Clocks:
Although most countries (surprisinly not all) use the current clock scheme, a day comprised of twenty-four hours of sixty minutes of sixty seconds of one thousand milliseconds is absurd. It works, but the conversions are absurd. One day of ten hours of 100 minutes of 100 seconds is more sensible, what with being base-10 and all.

Language:
No language should replace local languages, but I can't go to Uzbekistan and talk to someone. Esperanto is a simple language to learn and use. No one will have to stop using English, French, Tamil, Uzbeki, Mandarin, et cetera, but all international organizations should use Esperanto (or some other construct like Ido), and we should share a language for international usage. A hundred years ago, that language would've been French. Two thousand years ago it would've been Latin. Now it's English, but it's not going to be forever. An established international language for diplomacy and international usage should be implemented.

Currency:
We now have a little under 200 currencies in use, all of which are either tied to the credit of their respective nations' governments or tied to another currency altogether. An international standard on which the world's currencies are set is needed. I propose 30g Au, the SI weight closest to the traditional troy ounce. For example, in the US, 30g Au could be equal to $100. 30 grams of gold is always $100. All commodities are set in relation to this standard. In Japan, 30g Au could be equal to ¥1000 say. Same story, different prices. This ends buying currency for investment purposes, artificial inflation/deflation, and establishes a currency for international trade (currently the USD and less frequently, the Euro).

Time for me to put notes on these. First off, none of these are originally my idea. These are all things that I've heard others suggest and I like. I don't take credit for these ideas, so don't say something like, "Hey! The calendar and the clock are from the French Revolution!" because I am well aware. So, are there standards which should exist that I haven't thought of? Do you think that these are going to bring about the apocalypse?

Personally, I prefer chaos. :)

Smoot FTW! :D

NTSC vs. PAL

What about that?

Language:
No language should replace local languages, but I can't go to Uzbekistan and talk to someone. Esperanto is a simple language to learn and use. No one will have to stop using English, French, Tamil, Uzbeki, Mandarin, et cetera, but all international organizations should use Esperanto (or some other construct like Ido), and we should share a language for international usage. A hundred years ago, that language would've been French. Two thousand years ago it would've been Latin. Now it's English, but it's not going to be forever. An established international language for diplomacy and international usage should be implemented.

Currency:
We now have a little under 200 currencies in use, all of which are either tied to the credit of their respective nations' governments or tied to another currency altogether. An international standard on which the world's currencies are set is needed. I propose 30g Au, the SI weight closest to the traditional troy ounce. For example, in the US, 30g Au could be equal to $100. 30 grams of gold is always $100. All commodities are set in relation to this standard. In Japan, 30g Au could be equal to ¥1000 say. Same story, different prices. This ends buying currency for investment purposes, artificial inflation/deflation, and establishes a currency for international trade (currently the USD and less frequently, the Euro).

First off, with currency, gold standards are particularly hazardous, and can be very volatile to commodity price fluctuations. For example, if someone strikes it big in Siberia and fresh gold comes onto the market, everyones money rapidly devalues. We can probably all agree that that would be no good.

Let us see about the use of esperanto here as well. I generally dislike this concept on the basis that it must be imposed from the top down. And even at that, there are plenty of conglomerate languages out there. English, for example, is 35% French, 30% German 10% Dutch 10% Latin 5% Finnish 5% Spanish and 5% something else. Clearly more of an agglomerate than the vaunted Esperanto, which is composed of a meager four languages. After all, as James D. Nichol said: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle [sic] their pockets for new vocabulary." Not that I'm proposing using English for an international language, just that your choice of Esperanto is rather arbitrary.

NTSC vs. PAL

What about that?
lobby and bizzness

NTSC vs. PAL

What about that?

And SECAM, don't forget about that. Yeah, IEC should get on that. I'm adding that in as well.

After all, as James D. Nichol said: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle [sic] their pockets for new vocabulary." Not that I'm proposing using English for an international language, just that your choice of Esperanto is rather arbitrary.

James D. Nichol makes me happy. :)

Just switch to decilitres or grams. Tada!
Yes, but I grew up measuring out table and teaspoons and cups and whatnot. Suddenly having to do ml and grams is driving me nuts.

Yes, but I grew up measuring out table and teaspoons and cups and whatnot. Suddenly having to do ml and grams is driving me nuts.
Teaspoon = 5ml, tablespoon = 15ml.

Cups are anybody's guess, they seem to be entirely arbitrary and change from recipe to recipe. I dislike them.

Yes, but I grew up measuring out table and teaspoons and cups and whatnot. Suddenly having to do ml and grams is driving me nuts.

Table and teaspoons are defined in millilitres. Cups are easily done away with by a sturdy decilitre measure.

Don't Islamic countries' governments use the Islamic calendar? Also, I'd assume a new calendar would come with new names for months.
For offical stuff, but I've never met anyone who did buisness who didn't operate via the Gegorian one.

Japan does the same with years. Offically it's Heisei 18 (and, sadly, I sometimes forget which Christian year I'm in) but most of the population will says 2006. Month names are, of course, different in just about every other country.

Ah! Of that I'm aware. The ten "hour" day would be ten even divisions of one apparent (i.e. in relation to the sun) rotation of the earth. 10 decimal hours = 1 apparent rotation.

That might make work times hard to deal with.

You're right. But Mandarin could become the new lingua franca in 20 years, at least if there's an established int'l language, it'll be consistent.
It's keeping it as an established intl language that would be the issue.

Er... there's a reason why just about no major currency is tied to a gold standard any more. There's just not enough gold on the planet to fuel the economy for it to be so.
Ummm...no. Has nothing to do with that at all. It has everything to do with government officials realizing that central banking with a fiat currency allows them to inflate the currency at will.

First off, with currency, gold standards are particularly hazardous, and can be very volatile to commodity price fluctuations. For example, if someone strikes it big in Siberia and fresh gold comes onto the market, everyones money rapidly devalues. We can probably all agree that that would be no good.I never said it was perfect, but the likelyhood of someone finding, say, a fifty-pound nugget is pretty unlikely. The likelyhood of some country hyperinflating its economy to pay off debt, thus driving its people into abject poverty? Pretty damn likely, and it's plagued every credit-based currency.

Let us see about the use of esperanto here as well. I generally dislike this concept on the basis that it must be imposed from the top down. And even at that, there are plenty of conglomerate languages out there. English, for example, is 35% French, 30% German 10% Dutch 10% Latin 5% Finnish 5% Spanish and 5% something else. Clearly more of an agglomerate than the vaunted Esperanto, which is composed of a meager four languages. After all, as James D. Nichol said: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle [sic] their pockets for new vocabulary." Not that I'm proposing using English for an international language, just that your choice of Esperanto is rather arbitrary.
I hear ya, the problem with English or any other language is that's hard to learn, and there's always going to be native speakers debating over which of their dialects is correct. Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua were all designed so anyone could them, and were created for the purpose I mentioned: international and diplomatic purposes. I just said Esperanto because it's the oldest and most well-known.

Table and teaspoons are defined in millilitres. Cups are easily done away with by a sturdy decilitre measure.
My issue is a pancake or cookie rescipe that calls for 1/8 teaspoon of this, and a half a tablespoon of that, and then 1/2 cup butter in Japan where butter is meassured by weight.

Cooking conversions are not fun. :P

Teaspoon = 5ml, tablespoon = 15ml.

Cups are anybody's guess, they seem to be entirely arbitrary and change from recipe to recipe. I dislike them.Strange, because it's teaspoon = Teelöffel and tablespoon = Esslöffel in Germany...

Why's currency tied to gold at all? The stuff's not very useful; there're only so many plugs you need gold-plated, and after that it's just used to make shiny trinkets.

Ummm...no. Has nothing to do with that at all. It has everything to do with government officials realizing that central banking with a fiat currency allows them to inflate the currency at will.
Really? I seem to recall a number of "You shall not crusify America upon a cross of gold" speeches that make that claim, not to mention the fact that Fort Knox couldn't begin to contain enough gold to match every dollar the US makes.

With the language we need a new alphabet. One has already been proposed: the decabet (http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75rdecabet.phtml).

Strange, because it's teaspoon = Teelöffel and tablespoon = Esslöffel in Germany...
Sorry, don't understand? (My single year of secondary-school German was a long, long time ago.)

My issue is a pancake or cookie rescipe that calls for 1/8 teaspoon of this, and a half a tablespoon of that, and then 1/2 cup butter in Japan where butter is meassured by weight.

Cooking conversions are not fun. :P

That's why you should just get yourself a European cookbook.

http://luckylookimages.com/lowRes/LL_069/LL_0690098.jpg

All hail the mighty decilitre!

Really?
Yes.


I seem to recall a number of "You shall not crusify America upon a cross of gold" speeches that make that claim,
WJB was a complete idiot when it came to economics....and most other things, really.


not to mention the fact that Fort Knox couldn't begin to contain enough gold to match every dollar the US makes.
Think that might be partially because the US has had a fiat currency since 1971?

That's why you should just get yourself a European cookbook.

http://luckylookimages.com/lowRes/LL_069/LL_0690098.jpg

All hail the mighty decilitre!
Er... Japan, not Europe, Japan. If I was cooking in Europe, that might help. ;)

Think that might be partially because the US has had a fiat currency since 1971?
A lot longer than that, the gold standard was abandoned with the New Deal IIRC (which I may not, it's late here and I'm off to sleep).

I really have no problem with an uniform language.
Be it ego as well as curious ,i'll vote for self awarness
As well as mutual consentment.
I"ll say ":fluffle: "

Er... Japan, not Europe, Japan.

Umm, there's something about Japan that makes it impervious to European books?

If I was cooking in Europe, that might help. ;)

So even the stoves are xenophobic over there?

Yes, but I grew up measuring out table and teaspoons and cups and whatnot. Suddenly having to do ml and grams is driving me nuts.

I do it all by eye: a teaspoon = a little bit; a table spoon = presumably a table is larger than tea, so a little bit more. A cup = does this look like enough? Meh, I'm putting some more in, just in case.

I'm not a very good cook.

A lot longer than that, the gold standard was abandoned with the New Deal IIRC (which I may not, it's late here and I'm off to sleep).
Eh....the Bretton Woods scheme had a half-assed gold-standard among governments. When Nixon ended it in 1971, we had a pure fiat currency.

For offical stuff, but I've never met anyone who did buisness who didn't operate via the Gegorian one.

Japan does the same with years. Offically it's Heisei 18 (and, sadly, I sometimes forget which Christian year I'm in) but most of the population will says 2006. Month names are, of course, different in just about every other country.The fact that 2006 is the Christian year (Anno Domini) and we're trying to cram it down other cultures throats is a little too allegorical for me to handle, and I'm a Christian.


That might make work times hard to deal with.Not really, the 24-hour day is supposed to approximate the apparent rotation of the earth, but it's off by a very small amount. That's why 1900 wasn't a leap year, to make up for the one day extra in time that had been alloted by that point. The ten-"hour" day would do the same thing. Just remember that 12:00 A.M. is 0.00, and 12:00 P.M. is 5.00.


It's keeping it as an established intl language that would be the issue.

Yes. But I think that if the UN implemented it as its official language, it'd stick.

Really? I seem to recall a number of "You shall not crusify America upon a cross of gold" speeches that make that claim, not to mention the fact that Fort Knox couldn't begin to contain enough gold to match every dollar the US makes.

It would make money very expensive a put a real barrier on economic growth. Governments also like to have control of inflation and money to keep foreign trade balanced, which is not possible with a gold or silver standard.

And that's one problem with having one currency for everybody. Different economies require different monetary policies, and it would be very difficult to implement with one global currency. Just look at all the trouble the EU went through with the Euro, and that's still not accepted by all EU countries.

It would make money very expensive a put a real barrier on economic growth. Governments also like to have control of inflation and money to keep foreign trade balanced, which is not possible with a gold or silver standard.

And that's one problem with having one currency for everybody. Different economies require different monetary policies, and it would be very difficult to implement with one global currency. Just look at all the trouble the EU went through with the Euro, and that's still not accepted by all EU countries.
i could have been accepted without vultures,
Government as well as private did run Amok,the prices are high and social issues are beeing kill in the egg.
The waLL was not good but gave capitalism a social face
the euro beating everybody while nobody asked for it

i could have been accepted without vultures,
Government as well as private did run Amok,the prices are high and social issues are beeing kill in the egg.
The waLL was not good but gave capitalism a social face
the euro beating everybody while nobody asked for it

What?

What?
What don't you understand?

It would make money very expensive a put a real barrier on economic growth. Governments also like to have control of inflation and money to keep foreign trade balanced, which is not possible with a gold or silver standard.At least in the US, the government creates inflation. And that's not a conspiricy theory, it's the truth. The Federal Reserve controls how much money is put in circulation. If the government needs to borrow money, it reduces how much money's available, creating deflation, borrows the money it needs. If it needs to pay back money, it floods the market with dollars, creating inflation, and pays back its debt. The Federal Reserve doesn't pay back the debt, the Treasury does. But the FED makes sure that the Treasury borrows money when it's worth more, and pays off debt when its worth less. It works splendidly for governments, but fucks with the average citizen.

What don't you understand?

Your post. I don't understand what you're trying to say.

Your post. I don't understand what you're trying to say.

Actually, me neither.

It works splendidly for governments, but fucks with the average citizen.

Not really. Inflation is a necessary evil in capitalism, it allows investment, industrial growth, and higher wages in the long run. The trick is to keep it under control and use it as a mechanism to ameliorate the boom and bust cycle inevitable in capitalism.

Inflation in the US is far from being high, while growth has been very good in overall terms for the last 40 years, without extreme swings for the most part. How this screws the average citizen I don't understand.

who relies on the "euro"
Who made the social structure breaking off?,
Who made the poor believe he could be rich?,
Why is a bread, costing more than 100% more than 5 years ago.
Why is it that people who can afford vacancies,all look like they want to eat you with a little vaseline.
Why is a DEMOCRACY not in the shops
Specialy the one around my corner
.....
Do you understand me now?

What was written was that "every country in the EU has different plug standards." No, we don't.
Gosh, aren't you Swedes pedantic?
Okay, not every EU country is different.
However:
4 Types of plug & sockets

* 4.1 Type A (American/Japanese 2-pin)
* 4.2 Type B (American 3-pin)
* 4.3 Type C (European 2-pin)
* 4.4 Type D (Old British 3-pin)
* 4.5 Type E (French 2-pin, female earth)
* 4.6 Type F (German 2-pin, side clip earth)
* 4.7 Type E & F hybrid
* 4.8 Type G (British 3-pin)
* 4.9 Type H (Israeli 3-pin)
* 4.10 Type I (Australian/Chinese 2/3-pin)
* 4.11 Type J (Swiss 3-pin)
* 4.12 Type K (Danish 3-pin)
* 4.13 Type L (Italian 3-pin)
You can see for yourself that there's at least 9 different types of plugs for the EU.

Speaking of plugs, a standardised colour coding schemata for the wiring would be a capital idea as well. At present, there's at least 6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_AC_power_plugs_and_sockets

Not really. Inflation is a necessary evil in capitalism, it allows investment, industrial growth, and higher wages in the long run. The trick is to keep it under control and use it as a mechanism to ameliorate the boom and bust cycle inevitable in capitalism.

Inflation in the US is far from being high, while growth has been very good in overall terms for the last 40 years, without extreme swings for the most part. How this screws the average citizen I don't understand.

No, America's fine. I'm just detailing its processes because I know them. But there are other countries (Weimar Republic, Turkey for a while, Bolivia, Mexico, Columbia, Chile, et cetera) who have suffered heavily due to hyperinflation created by their governments to pay off those governments' debts. By the by, what's the national debt right now? $7 trillion? If all those creditors come asking for their money, how is the US going to pay it off?

who relies on the "euro"
Who made the social structure breaking off?,
Who made the poor believe he could be rich?,
Why is a bread, costing more than 100% more than 5 years ago.
Why is it that people who can afford vacancies,all look like they want to eat you with a little vaseline.
Why is a DEMOCRACY not in the shops
Specialy the one around my corner
.....
Do you understand me now?

Just out of curiosity, what country are you from?

who relies on the "euro"
Who made the social structure breaking off?,
Who made the poor believe he could be rich?,
The Illuminati?

Why is a bread, costing more than 100% more than 5 years ago.
Why is it that people who can afford vacancies,all look like they want to eat you with a little vaseline.
Why is a DEMOCRACY not in the shops
Specialy the one around my corner
Why is there a strange number next to the nick when you quote someone? I guess they're related.
.....
Do you understand me now?
I think I do. You're saying that money was invented by the alien Lord Xenu to keep humans focused on material wealth, while at the same time market the products from his home planet thruogh subliminal ads in the news. Right?

No, America's fine. I'm just detailing its processes because I know them. But there are other countries (Weimar Republic, Turkey for a while, Bolivia, Mexico, Columbia, Chile, et cetera) who have suffered heavily due to hyperinflation created by their governments to pay off those governments' debts.
Yes, but those were cases of bad planning, mismanagement, and extreme short-sightness. It's not like inflation is an artificial construct of the government, it's a part of capitalism, but it has be managed sensibly.

By the by, what's the national debt right now? $7 trillion? If all those creditors come asking for their money, how is the US going to pay it off?
Bush and Cheney will have to sell their bodies in street corners.

I'm actually getting used to dealing with metric more and more.

Though I never seem to get the hang of it when cooking.

Metric measurements in cooking??!?:eek: OMG!

I guess I could get used to metric measurements of distance and all, but I'm probably too old for them to be meaningful to me. Ah, well.

It would make money very expensive a put a real barrier on economic growth. Governments also like to have control of inflation and money to keep foreign trade balanced, which is not possible with a gold or silver standard.
You have that wrong; it's not possible with a fiat currency. No nation which ever had anything like a gold/silver standard EVER experienced hyperinflation. Yet I can find many nations which had/have fiat currency and hyperinflation: Weimar Germany, Hungary after WWII, and currently Zimbabwe (just as examples).


And that's one problem with having one currency for everybody. Different economies require different monetary policies,
No, they only require one: hands-off.

The Illuminati?


Why is there a strange number next to the nick when you quote someone? I guess they're related.
.....

I think I do. You're saying that money was invented by the alien Lord Xenu to keep humans focused on material wealth, while at the same time market the products from his home planet thruogh subliminal ads in the news. Right?

ALMOST.but
MONNEY WAS NOT INVENTED.
it was a substitute to troc,to facilitate exchanges.

Sorry, don't understand? (My single year of secondary-school German was a long, long time ago.)I was trying to point out that we use spoons too, not bothering with milligrams when it came to spoons of sugar or salt.

Why is there a strange number next to the nick when you quote someone?

It turns into a direct link to the post you quote.

You have that wrong; it's not possible with a fiat currency. No nation which ever had anything like a gold/silver standard EVER experienced hyperinflation. Yet I can find many nations which had/have fiat currency and hyperinflation: Weimar Germany, Hungary after WWII, and currently Zimbabwe (just as examples).
I was talking about inflation, not hyperinflation. The problem with gold standard and stuff is that it limits growth as there's not enough gold to support the monet needed to buy machinery, pay wages, etc. The most recent example was Argentina when it was paired to the US dollar. For every peso in circulation there had to be one dollar in the central bank. The problem was that the country couldn't get enough dollars and that led to stagnation.

At some point, the gold standard won't be able to carry you further and you'll have to convert to a fiat currency, which has other downsides, of course, like hyperinflation and just plain uncoolness.

No, they only require one: hands-off.
That opens a whole other bag of problems. It'd be nice if the invisible hand of economy worked in a smooth even way, but it doesn't, it's bipolar and has a bit of Parkinsons. It alternates periods of growth with periods of depression. Government has to intervene to make depression short and shallow and growth long and more pronounced. Ideally, of course. Doesn't always work.

ALMOST.but
MONNEY WAS NOT INVENTED.
it was a substitute to troc,to facilitate exchanges.

Well, yes. He was making fun of you. What country are you from, though? I'm curious.

Well, yes. He was making fun of you. What country are you from, though? I'm curious.
living in the nederlands,born in france.
Grown up in the streets,spain france switzerland belgium germany
have no family,but work as a nurse


...are you still curious?

living in the nederlands,born in france.
Grown up in the streets,spain france switzerland belgium germany
have no family,but work as a nurse


...are you still curious?

Ah, non. J'ai veut savoir de quel pays tu es, c'est tout. Je suis désolé si mon français n'est pas bon. Je n'ai pas été dans une classe de français pour un an et demi.

I was talking about inflation, not hyperinflation.
And isn't hyperinflation "inflation that is out-of-control" (ok, so that's simplified, but....)?


The problem with gold standard and stuff is that it limits growth
No it doesn't. That's an utterly absurd myth which is annihilated by the fact that people can lend money and that gold can be mined.


as there's not enough gold to support the monet needed to buy machinery, pay wages, etc. The most recent example was Argentina when it was paired to the US dollar. For every peso in circulation there had to be one dollar in the central bank. The problem was that the country couldn't get enough dollars and that led to stagnation.
It just shows the problem of central banking and tying a currency to another fiat currency.



At some point, the gold standard won't be able to carry you further
Nonsense. It is only with governmental controls that problems arise.


That opens a whole other bag of problems. It'd be nice if the invisible hand of economy worked in a smooth even way, but it doesn't, it's bipolar and has a bit of Parkinsons. It alternates periods of growth with periods of depression.
...because of government intervention. If governments kept out, we'd see either no booms/busts, or very very very shallow boom/busts.


Government has to intervene to make depression short and shallow and growth long and more pronounced.
The opposite always happens: government intervention prolongs and deepens the depression.

i could have been accepted without vultures,
Government as well as private did run Amok,the prices are high and social issues are beeing kill in the egg.
The waLL was not good but gave capitalism a social face
the euro beating everybody while nobody asked for it
That's almost poetic.
Sounds like a curse from a blind seer near the start of a fantasy novel that sends our hero on his quest.

"Dingbat, the 7th son of DangleBerry, must now undertake an ardourous quest over the desert sands of Bor-Dom for the sacred egg of Amok"

I think a more pressing issue here is when the week starts honestly who the hell starts the week on a Sunday?!

Anyone in a Portuguese speaking country. Monday, in Portuguese, is Segundafeira = (literally) Second Fair. Thus monday is the second day, Sunday is the start of the week.

That's almost poetic.
Sounds like a curse from a blind seer near the start of a fantasy novel that sends our hero on his quest.

"Dingbat, the 7th son of DangleBerry, must now undertake an ardourous quest over the desert sands of Bor-Dom for the sacred egg of Amok"
thanks,death to the "immus"
lol

I am pro-standarization. I think that the world would benefit greatly by having worldwide standards that transcend national boundries.

Good idea. Let's see what you got:

Electrical Power:
There are currently four types of electrical Voltage and Frequency; they are 100-127V (with 50Hz and 60Hz variants) and 220-240V (with 50Hz and 60Hz variants). There are also nine incompatable outlet variants. One voltage/frequency standard in conjunction with a standard set of outlets to be used worldwide

Yes... you can't use US appliances in Europe... that be evil.

Measurement:
There are two measurement systems being used. Our system, and the system used by the rest of the world except Liberia and Myanmar. Let me put it this way, either three of us are going to have to change or 189 of you are.

The rule of customary is to not make sense... go metric!

Calendars:
There are numerous calendars out there, both lunar and solar, based purely on religious usage. I say we start at year one with a new calendar for worldwide usage. Ten days a week, three weeks a month, twelve months with a half-week at the end of the year (six days every four years). No religion is going to eliminate their old calendars, but there'll be a secular worldwide standard.

30 days per month... 12 months... 360 days... 5.26 left added on at the end... sounds good! 5 days added on per year, and extra every 4 years, and 2 extra every 100 years...

Clocks:
Although most countries (surprisinly not all) use the current clock scheme, a day comprised of twenty-four hours of sixty minutes of sixty seconds of one thousand milliseconds is absurd. It works, but the conversions are absurd. One day of ten hours of 100 minutes of 100 seconds is more sensible, what with being base-10 and all.

The clock is based on the degree measurement of the Earth... so no to THIS system... how about 60 hours per every 4 US hours with 60 minutes per hour and 60 seconds per minute? That way, time keeps its base.

Language:
No language should replace local languages, but I can't go to Uzbekistan and talk to someone. Esperanto is a simple language to learn and use. No one will have to stop using English, French, Tamil, Uzbeki, Mandarin, et cetera, but all international organizations should use Esperanto (or some other construct like Ido), and we should share a language for international usage. A hundred years ago, that language would've been French. Two thousand years ago it would've been Latin. Now it's English, but it's not going to be forever. An established international language for diplomacy and international usage should be implemented.

We need an entirely regular language that is POSITIONAl-based... like Minaxrican, my NS nation's language.

Currency:
We now have a little under 200 currencies in use, all of which are either tied to the credit of their respective nations' governments or tied to another currency altogether. An international standard on which the world's currencies are set is needed. I propose 30g Au, the SI weight closest to the traditional troy ounce. For example, in the US, 30g Au could be equal to $100. 30 grams of gold is always $100. All commodities are set in relation to this standard. In Japan, 30g Au could be equal to ¥1000 say. Same story, different prices. This ends buying currency for investment purposes, artificial inflation/deflation, and establishes a currency for international trade (currently the USD and less frequently, the Euro).

How about this system of $$, using some names I made up?

1 Euro= 1 Urion
10 Decirians= 1 Urion
10 centurions= 1 Urion
10 Millirions = 1 centurion

The Rules of the Road (brought to my attention by Demented Hamsters, actual standard by me):
A minority of the world's population drive on the left, the majority of nations drives on the right. Like US converting to metric, either 1/3 of the world switches, of 2/3 does.

Move to the right, everyone! And how about those street lights? Make it red, yellow, BLUE. That way, the colorblind can drive.

Television Signal (brought to my attention by Aelosia, actual standard by me):
There are currently three television standards: NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. There should be a uniform set of standards for not just television signals, but all radio signals in general.

Of course... that way, radio use is easier.

Time for me to put notes on these. First off, none of these are originally my idea. These are all things that I've heard others suggest and I like. I don't take credit for these ideas, so don't say something like, "Hey! The calendar and the clock are from the French Revolution!" because I am well aware. So, are there standards which should exist that I haven't thought of? Do you think that these are going to bring about the apocalypse?

Maybe a computer and Internet standard (Net Neutrality, Windows and not OS, one intuitive programming language, etc.), but I think that is it...

Good job.

Ah, non. J'ai veut savoir de quel pays tu es, c'est tout. Je suis désolé si mon français n'est pas bon. Je n'ai pas été dans une classe de français pour un an et demi.

no pro.
Calm down

And isn't hyperinflation "inflation that is out-of-control" (ok, so that's simplified, but....)?
Just like a sunburn is a tan gone bad.

No it doesn't. That's an utterly absurd myth which is annihilated by the fact that people can lend money and that gold can be mined.
Money based on what? Gold, of course, but what happens if there's no more gold? Who is going to lend you money? Gold can only be mined at a finite speed and there are limited amounts of it, very small, by the way.

It just shows the problem of central banking and tying a currency to another fiat currency.

Nonsense. It is only with governmental controls that problems arise.

...because of government intervention. If governments kept out, we'd see either no booms/busts, or very very very shallow boom/busts.

The opposite always happens: government intervention prolongs and deepens the depression.
Sensible government intervention can smooth the cycles. Most people prefer to err on the side of less intervention than more intervention since too much can have disastrous effects. But there are no guarantees that no intervention will mean better cycles. In fact, the causes of these cycles are not well understood and there are several competing theories.

Maybe a computer and Internet standard (Net Neutrality, Windows and not OS, one intuitive programming language, etc.), but I think that is it...

I think that the IEEE is pretty good about keeping internet protocols and computer hardware standardized. Also, if there were to be an international OS, it shouldn't force a monopoly or strip a company of its copyrights. Linux would be a good candidate for an international OS. As for one programming language, I don't know enough about computers, sorry.

I am pro-standarization. I think that the world would benefit greatly by having worldwide standards that transcend national boundries.

The things I would like to see standardized:

Electrical Power:
There are currently four types of electrical Voltage and Frequency; they are 100-127V (with 50Hz and 60Hz variants) and 220-240V (with 50Hz and 60Hz variants). There are also nine incompatable outlet variants. One voltage/frequency standard in conjunction with a standard set of outlets to be used worldwide

Measurement:
There are two measurement systems being used. Our system, and the system used by the rest of the world except Liberia and Myanmar. Let me put it this way, either three of us are going to have to change or 189 of you are.

These two I can agree on, but both would require an investment on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars to put in place.

Calendars:
There are numerous calendars out there, both lunar and solar, based purely on religious usage. I say we start at year one with a new calendar for worldwide usage. Ten days a week, three weeks a month, twelve months with a half-week at the end of the year (six days every four years). No religion is going to eliminate their old calendars, but there'll be a secular worldwide standard.
Ten days is far too long for a week. Even with 3 day weekends, could you imagine working 7 days straight every single week? Not going to happen. And having 5 full days every year not be a part of the calendar is a pain in the ass too. We have a 365 day year, that's a wierd number, and we have to live with it. There's no point in trying to manipulate it into an easier base. 5 days a week is too short (neither 4/1 nor 3/2 working/time off is very palatable), but the year can easily be divided into 13 months, each with four 7 day weeks, with a single day left over at the end (which is a lot easier to deal with than 5 days: just declare it to be "day 0" of the year, not a day of the week, just January 0th, make it a statutory holiday, and call it New Years Day. You get to keep the 7 day week (which is just the right length, and shouldn't be changed), and the Calendar becomes standardized so that, for example, every 17th of every month is a Friday.

Clocks:
Although most countries (surprisinly not all) use the current clock scheme, a day comprised of twenty-four hours of sixty minutes of sixty seconds of one thousand milliseconds is absurd. It works, but the conversions are absurd. One day of ten hours of 100 minutes of 100 seconds is more sensible, what with being base-10 and all.
Why? If anything, we should be switching everything else to base 12, not switching the clocks to base 10. Having a base 12 and base 60 time system is nice, because the numbers are so much more easily divisible, making it easier to deal with scheduling, especially when you are very busy.

Language:
No language should replace local languages, but I can't go to Uzbekistan and talk to someone. Esperanto is a simple language to learn and use. No one will have to stop using English, French, Tamil, Uzbeki, Mandarin, et cetera, but all international organizations should use Esperanto (or some other construct like Ido), and we should share a language for international usage. A hundred years ago, that language would've been French. Two thousand years ago it would've been Latin. Now it's English, but it's not going to be forever. An established international language for diplomacy and international usage should be implemented.
There is an established international language for diplomacy and international usage, and that language is English. English has a wider, more flexible vocabulary than any other language on earth, and while it might be a pain in the ass to learn, it is extremely versatile and already known by over a third of the world's population, so there is no reason to switch to a language known (and rarely spoken) by a fraction of a percent of the population just because it's a bit easier to learn. I can guarantee you that Esperanto's vocabulary is and never will be anywhere near the size of that of English.

Currency:
We now have a little under 200 currencies in use, all of which are either tied to the credit of their respective nations' governments or tied to another currency altogether. An international standard on which the world's currencies are set is needed. I propose 30g Au, the SI weight closest to the traditional troy ounce. For example, in the US, 30g Au could be equal to $100. 30 grams of gold is always $100. All commodities are set in relation to this standard. In Japan, 30g Au could be equal to ¥1000 say. Same story, different prices. This ends buying currency for investment purposes, artificial inflation/deflation, and establishes a currency for international trade (currently the USD and less frequently, the Euro).
As others have stated, there are a plethora of very good reasons that currency is no longer tied to the value of gold, and there is no reason for it to be.

The Rules of the Road (brought to my attention by Demented Hamsters, actual standard by me):
A minority of the world's population drive on the left, the majority of nations drives on the right. Like US converting to metric, either 1/3 of the world switches, of 2/3 does.
Like the measurement systems, a change of this nature would cost tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars to implement. I can think of much better ways to spend a country's money.

Once again, I am disappointed with people who know next to nothing about how economies work spouting ignorant garbage.

The business cycle is a natural cycle that will not magically disappear if governments did not in any way interfere in the economy. Government intervention can make matters much worse – you just have to look at the great depression for that – but they can also limit fluctuation and keep the economy more stable.

Internationally fixed currencies are a bad idea – it doesn’t matter if it is fixed to a commodity or just a single currency for the whole world. Pegging to a commodity – which fluctuates in value so your currency is fairly volatile anyway – removes a very valuable economic tool to manage growth. Central banks can control how tight or loose the money supply should be for optimal growth, which can put a break on an overheating economy or help encourage a stagnant one. Inflation is not inherently a bad thing, as it indicates a growing economy – it should optimally be around 1.8% to ensure continued growth.

Despite what companies trying to get you to buy gold want you to believe, it is not a perfectly stable store of value. Gold is a commodity just like anything else – it can spike or crash but there is no way for a central bank to limit the fluctuations.

A single international currency is going to have massive problems unless the entire world has a perfectly homogeneous single economy. The Euro is having problems with differences in economies already, and the entire world has a much greater disparity in economies than just Europe. Some economies need a loose monetary policy to encourage growth in stagnant areas while other economies need to tighten policy to slow inflation. A booming Ireland has differing needs from a stagnant Portugal.


Anyway, off the gold standard or single currency topic…

Electricity:
Electrical power should be standardized, but it simply will not happen anytime soon. The sunk cost of all the current electrical grids and electronic appliances is enormous. No developed system could afford to scrap all those assets and rebuild from nothing. The only way to move toward a standard system would be to work hard to ensure developing economies that lack a major electrical grid would build to a single standard. Old power systems would be intensely costly to switch over as everything from generation to transmission has to be changed as well. The only way to make that switch would be a very slow and costly process of requiring that everything be capable of running on both the current and the targeted system (which ups the cost of everything). After many years there should be enough in the system that a sudden changeover will not require drastic rebuilding – only the retrofitting of some very old systems, and the longer you incur the cost of the dual system the small the cost of sudden retrofit.

Measurements:
Switching to metric makes sense, but you do have the problem with the changeover cost in the US being enormous – after all, the measurements impact every facet of life. Just think of the number of legal regulations which need to be changed to fit the metric system. This is another instance where it would make sense to just have everything from now on being listed in both measurements so eventually we can just drop the old system.

Calendars and clocks are pretty standard the world over – I do not think this is a major problem worth addressing.

Language – let this address itself. Teaching everyone a shorthand trade language, which is very easy to learn and can convey simple concepts quickly and easily, would be useful but trying to have a regulated international standard language is equivalent to having everyone learn Latin. People will learn what they perceive as a useful common language – which we currently have with English.

Driving, like anything else, should be standardized. We currently have international standards for air and sea vessels, why not extend this to land vehicles as well? It isn’t anything pressing, but could be useful. A slow convergence on legal regulations (useful for a lot more than just driving) would facilitate travel.

Money based on what? Gold, of course, but what happens if there's no more gold?
Why wouldn't there be, other than we've mined every bit of it?


Who is going to lend you money?
Private lending firms. Private lending banks.


Sensible government intervention can smooth the cycles.
No it can't. It can only prolong one or the other to make a long boom eventually hit a catastrophic bust, or turn a small bust into a large one.

Well, maybe some women might like the latter.


Most people prefer to err on the side of less intervention than more intervention since too much can have disastrous effects.
No intervention is the best. This way, no false signals are imparted.


But there are no guarantees that no intervention will mean better cycles. In fact, the causes of these cycles are not well understood and there are several competing theories.
There's only one which accurately describes them: the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.

I'd agree with all of them but just make English the international language. It's already the de facto language of the world economy and is known by a lot of people pretty much anywhere in the world, so much of the knowledge base necessary to get people to learn it is already in place. Plus, English is a pretty dynamic language that can adapt very well to local languages and can even pick up loan words very easily; it's just the most flexible system we have for international communications.

Once again, I am disappointed with people who know next to nothing about how economies work spouting ignorant garbage.
The irony of that is astounding.


The business cycle is a natural cycle that will not magically disappear if governments did not in any way interfere in the economy.
It's not a very natural cycle, really. What is seen as a "natural cycle" is due to governmental intervention.


Government intervention can make matters much worse – you just have to look at the great depression for that – but they can also limit fluctuation and keep the economy more stable.
No it can't. Any intervention inserts false data into the market. Garbage in, garbage out.


Internationally fixed currencies are a bad idea – it doesn’t matter if it is fixed to a commodity or just a single currency for the whole world. Pegging to a commodity – which fluctuates in value so your currency is fairly volatile anyway – removes a very valuable economic tool to manage growth.
Thus showing how little you know of economics.

On the free market, then, the various names that units may have are simply definitions of units of weight. When we were "on the gold standard" before 1933, people liked to say that the "price of gold" was "fixed at twenty dollars per ounce of gold." But this was a dangerously misleading way of looking at our money. Actually, "the dollar" was defined as the name for (approximately) 1/20 of an ounce of gold. It was therefore misleading to talk about "exchange rates" of one country's currency for another. The "pound sterling" did not really "exchange" for five "dollars." [5] The dollar was defined as 1/20 of a gold ounce, and the pound sterling was, at that time, defined as the name for 1/4 of a gold ounce, simply traded for 5/20 of a gold ounce. Clearly, such exchanges, and such a welter of names, were confusing and misleading. How they arose is shown below in the chapter on government meddling with money. In a purely free market, gold would simply be exchanged directly as "grams," grains, or ounces, and such confusing names as dollars, franc, etc., would be superfluous. Therefore, in this section, we will treat money as exchanging directly in terms of ounces or grams.

[5] Actually, the pound sterling exchanged for $4.87, but we are using $5 for greater convenience of calculation.
http://www.mises.org/money/2s5.asp

Why is it that historically, the relatively free market never had to worry about people wildly setting up money factories and printing unlimited quantities?[7] If “money” really means dollars and pounds and francs, then this would surely have been a problem. But the nub of the issue is this: On the pristine free market, money does not and cannot mean the names of paper tickets. Money means a certain commodity, previously useful for other purposes on the market, chosen over the years by that market as an especially useful and marketable commodity to serve as a medium for exchanges. No one prints dollars on the purely free market because there are, in fact, no dollars; there are only commodities, such as wheat, automobiles, and gold. In barter, commodities are exchanged for each other, and then, gradually, a particularly marketable commodity is increasingly used as a medium of exchange. Finally, it achieves general use as a medium and becomes a “money.” I need not go through the familiar but fascinating story of how gold and silver were selected by the market after it had discarded such commodity moneys as cows, fishhooks, and iron hoes.[8] And I need also not dwell on the unique qualities possessed by gold and silver that caused the market to select them—those qualities lovingly enunciated by all the older textbooks on money: high marketability, durability, portability, recognizability, and homogeneity. Like every other commodity, the “price” of gold in terms of the commodities it can buy varies in accordance with its supply and demand. Since the de*mand for gold and silver was high, and since their supply was low in relation to the demand, the value of each unit in terms of other goods was high—a most useful attribute of money. This scarcity, combined with great durability, meant that the annual fluctuations of supply were necessarily small—another useful feature of a money commodity.

Commodities on the market exchange by their unit weights, and gold and silver were no exceptions. When someone sold copper to buy gold and then to buy butter, he sold pounds of copper for ounces or grams of gold to buy pounds of butter. On the free market, therefore, the monetary unit—the unit of the nation’s accounts—naturally emerges as the unit of weight of the money commodity, for example, the silver ounce, or the gold gram.

In this monetary system emerging on the free market, no one can create money out of thin air to acquire resources from the producers. Money can only be obtained by purchasing it with one’s goods or services. The only exception to this rule is gold miners, who can produce new money. But they must invest resources in finding, mining, and transporting an especially scarce commodity. Furthermore, gold miners are productively adding to the world’s stock of gold for non-monetary uses as well.

Let us indeed assume that gold has been selected as the general medium of exchange by the market, and that the unit of account is the gold gram. What will be the consequences of complete monetary freedom for each individual? What of the freedom of the individual to print his own money, which we have seen to be so disastrous in our age of fiat paper? First, let us remember that the gold gram is the monetary unit, and that such debasing names as “dollar,” “franc,” and “mark” do not exist and have never existed. Suppose that I decided to abandon the slow, difficult process of producing services for money, or of mining money, and instead decided to print my own? What would I print? I might manufacture a paper ticket, and print upon it “10 Rothbards.” I could then proclaim the ticket as “money,” and enter a store to purchase groceries with my embossed Rothbards. In the purely free market which I advocate, I or anyone else would have a perfect right to do this. And what would be the inevitable consequence? Obviously, that no one would pay attention to the Rothbards, which would be properly treated as an arrogant joke. The same would be true of any “Joneses” “Browns,” or paper tickets printed by anyone else. And it should be clear that the problem is not simply that few people have ever heard of me. If General Motors tried to pay its workers in paper tickets entitled “50 GMs,” the tickets would gain as little response. None of these tickets would be money, and none would be considered as anything but valueless, except perhaps a few collectors of curios. And this is why total freedom for everyone to print money would be absolutely harmless in a purely free market: no one would accept these presumptuous tickets.

Why not freely fluctuating exchange rates? Fine, let us have freely fluctuating exchange rates on our completely free market; let the Rothbards and Browns and GMs fluctuate at whatever rate they will exchange for gold or for each other. The trouble is that they would never reach this exalted state because they would never gain acceptance in exchange as moneys at all, and therefore the problem of exchange rates would never arise.

On a really free market, then, there would be freely fluctuating exchange rates, but only between genuine commodity moneys, since the paper-name moneys could never gain enough acceptance to enter the field. Specifically, since gold and silver have historically been the leading commodity moneys, gold and silver would probably both be moneys, and would exchange at freely fluctuating rates. Different groups and communities of people would pick one or the other money as their unit of accounting.[9]

Names, therefore, whatever they may be, “Rothbard,” “Jones,” or even “dollar,” could not have arisen as money on the free market. How, then did such names as “dollar” and “peso” originate and emerge in their own right as independent moneys? The answer is that these names invariably originated as names for units of weight of a money commodity, either gold or silver. In short, they began not as pure names, but as names of units of weight of particular money commodities. In the British pound sterling we have a particularly striking example of a weight derivative, for the British pound was originally just that: a pound of silver money.[10] “Dollar” began as the generally applied name of an ounce weight of silver coined in the sixteenth century by a Bohemian, Count Schlick, who lived in Joachimsthal, and the name of his highly reputed coins became “Joachimsthalers,” or sim*ply “thalers” or “dollars.” And even after a lengthy process of debasement, alteration, and manipulation of these weights until they more and more became separated names, they still remained names of units of weight of specie until, in the United States, we went off the gold standard in 1933. In short, it is incorrect to say that, before 1933, the price of gold was fixed in terms of dollars.

Instead, what happened was that the dollar was defined as a unit of weight, approximately 1/20 of an ounce of gold. It is not that the dollar was set equal to a certain weight of gold; it was that weight, just as any unit of weight, as, for example, one pound of copper is 16 ounces of copper, and is not simply and arbitrarily “set equal” to 16 ounces by some individual or agency.[11] The monetary unit was, therefore, always a unit of weight of a money commodity, and the names that we know now as independent moneys were names of these units of weight.[12]

[7] The American “wildcat bank” did not print money itself, but rather bank notes supposedly redeemable in money.

[8] On the process of emergence of money on the market, see the classic exposition of Carl Menger in his Principles of Economics, translated and edited by James Dingwall and Bert F. Hoselitz (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950), pp. 257-85.

[9] The exchange rate between gold and silver will inevitably be at or near their purchasing-power parities, in terms of the social array of goods available, and this rate would tend to be uniform throughout the world. For a brilliant exposition of the nature of the geographic purchasing power of money, and the theory of purchasing-power parity, see Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), pp. 170-86. Also see Chi-Yuen Wu, An Outline of International Price Theories (London: Routledge, 1939), pp. 233-34.

Since I am advocating a totally free market in money, what I am strictly proposing is not so much the gold standard as parallel gold and silver standards. By this, of course I do not mean bimetallism, with its arbitrarily fixed exchange rate between gold and silver, but freely fluctuating exchange rates between the two moneys. For an illuminating account of how parallel standards worked historically and how they were interfered with, see Luigi Einaudi, “The Theory of Imaginary Money from Charlemagne to the French Revolution,” in Frederic C. Lane and Jelle C. Riemersma, eds., Enterprise and Secular Change (Homewood, Ill.: Irwin, 1953), pp. 229-61.

Professor Robert Sabatino Lopez writes, of the return of Europe to gold coinage in the mid-thirteenth century, after half a millennium: “Florence, like most medieval states, made bimetallism and trimetallism a base of its monetary policy… it committed the government to the Sysiphean labor of readjusting the relations between different coins as the ratio between the different metals changes, or as one or another coin was debased… Genoa, on the contrary, in conformity with the principle of restricting state intervention as much as possible [italics mine], did not try to enforce a fixed relation between coins of different metals. Basically, the gold coinage of Genoa was not meant to integrate the silver and bullion coinages but to form an independent system” (“Back to Gold, 1251,” Economic History Review [April 1956]: 224).

On the merits of parallel standards and their superiority to bimetallism, see William Brough, Open Mints and Free Banking (New York: Putnam, 1898), and Brough, The Natural Law of Money (New York: Putnam, 1894). Brough called this system “Free Metallism.” On the recent example of pure parallel standards in Saudi Arabia, down to the 1950s, see Arthur N. Young, “Saudi Arabian Currency and Finance,” Middle East Journal (Summer 1953): 361-80.

[10] The fact that there was never an actual pound-weight coin of silver is irrelevant and does not imply that the pound was some form of “imaginary” unit of account. The pound was a pound of silver bullion, or an accumulation of a pound weight of silver coins. Cf. Einaudi, “Theory of Imaginary Money,” pp. 229-30. The fundamental misconception here is to place too much emphasis on coins and not enough on bullion, an overemphasis, as we shall see presently connected intimately with government intervention and with the long slide downward of the monetary unit from weight of gold and silver to pure name.

[11] The monetary unit was not just a pure unit of weight, such as the ounce or the gram; it was a unit of weight of a certain money commodity, such as gold. The dollar was 1/20 of an ounce of gold, not of just any ounce. And hero we find a crucial flaw in the idea of a composite-commodity money which has been overlooked: Just as we cannot call the monetary unit an “ounce” or “gram” or “pound” of several different, or composite, commodities, so the dollar cannot properly be the name of many different weights of many different commodities. The money commodity selected by the market was a single particular commodity, gold or silver, and therefore the unit of that money had to be of that commodity alone, and not of some arbitrary composite.

[12] This is why, in the older books, a discussion of money and monetary standards often take place as part of a general discussion of weights and measures. Thus in Barnard’s work on international unification of weights and measures, the problem of international unification of monetary units was discussed in an appendix, along with other appendixes on measures of capacity and metric system. Frederick A. P. Barnard, The Metric System of Weights and Measures, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia College, 1872).
http://www.mises.org/story/1829


Despite what companies trying to get you to buy gold want you to believe, it is not a perfectly stable store of value.
Money IS NOT A STORE OF VALUE!

Menger's breakthrough insight was to realize that "[v]alue is… nothing inherent in goods, no property of them, but merely the importance that we first attribute to the satisfaction of our needs... and in consequence carry over to economic goods as the… causes of the satisfaction of our needs." (Principles of Economics)

In other words, value is the name of an attitude or disposition that a particular person adopts toward a good: he chooses to value it. Although Menger set economics on the path to a correct theory of value in 1871, ancient errors die hard. We can still find many erroneous conceptions of value in contemporary discussions of economic issues.

For example, it is quite common to refer to money (or gold, or financial assets) as a "store of value." But an attitude cannot be stored! You cannot pour some of your attitude towards goods into a bar of gold, put it in a vault, and hope it "keeps." You can, of course, store the gold bar. And you will certainly hope that when you decide to take it from the vault and sell it, that others will choose to value it as well. But only the gold was stored.

Money is also referred to as "a measure of value." But if, following Menger, we regard valuing as an attitude people take towards things, then money certainly cannot measure value, since money itself is simply another thing that people choose to value (or not). Rather than "measuring" the value of other goods and services, money itself is valued by human actors based on its adequacy as a commonly accepted medium of exchange.
http://www.mises.org/story/1349


Gold is a commodity just like anything else – it can spike or crash but there is no way for a central bank to limit the fluctuations.
How exactly can it spike or crash without a central bank mucking things up?


A single international currency is going to have massive problems unless the entire world has a perfectly homogeneous single economy.
Non sequitur. Trading ounces of gold for something will work anywhere.


The Euro is having problems with differences in economies already, and the entire world has a much greater disparity in economies than just Europe. Some economies need a loose monetary policy to encourage growth in stagnant areas while other economies need to tighten policy to slow inflation. A booming Ireland has differing needs from a stagnant Portugal.
What they all need is no policy at all.



Calendars and clocks are pretty standard the world over – I do not think this is a major problem worth addressing.
I would also like to point out that the concept and initial implementation of time zones was a private industry creation.

Don't know about TV Signals. To be honest the difference in all doesn't bother me.

Rules of the road. I see your point but this will never happen. Ireland has recently introduced extremely harsh system one that would never be applicable say on the roads of India, All cars have to be tested every few years. If they are not up to scratch then the cars cannot be driven. THis would cause problems all over the world. However I support the standardisation of car insurance. The insurance on my parents car is too expensive for me. It would cost almost E2000. Crazy when you think of American prices.

I like your language idea.


Clocks should stay the same.
As for calanders: If some religious fruit bats want to stay on different time, then so be it.

Measurement and electricity should be standardised.

How exactly can it spike or crash without a central bank mucking things up?

When other commodities collapse it is very likely that gold will follow; artificial supply shocks to commodities like oil or metals will cause the price of gold and other commodities to skyrocket, and when the supply problem is addressed the price of gold will fall with the rest of commodities accordingly.

Gold is a hedge. When investors get scared, the price of gold rises because people are buying it to hedge their investments; sometimes, that rise in prices will start to attract more buyers and push prices up beyond fundamentals, which attracts even more buyers and speculators until the bubble bursts.

When other commodities collapse it is very likely that gold will follow; artificial supply shocks to commodities like oil or metals will cause the price of gold and other commodities to skyrocket, and when the supply problem is addressed the price of gold will fall with the rest of commodities accordingly.
And how does this happen in a non fiat-currency situation (since central banking inevitably leads to fiat currency)?

Anyway, off the gold standard or single currency topic…

Electricity:
Electrical power should be standardized, but it simply will not happen anytime soon. The sunk cost of all the current electrical grids and electronic appliances is enormous. No developed system could afford to scrap all those assets and rebuild from nothing. The only way to move toward a standard system would be to work hard to ensure developing economies that lack a major electrical grid would build to a single standard. Old power systems would be intensely costly to switch over as everything from generation to transmission has to be changed as well. The only way to make that switch would be a very slow and costly process of requiring that everything be capable of running on both the current and the targeted system (which ups the cost of everything). After many years there should be enough in the system that a sudden changeover will not require drastic rebuilding – only the retrofitting of some very old systems, and the longer you incur the cost of the dual system the small the cost of sudden retrofit.Oh, I know this won't happen. Haha. I mean, when 45% of the world uses one type, 45% uses another, and the remaining two 10%, somethings gotta give. I'm talking in more idealist terms for this one rather than practical. I would like to see is (otherwise I wouldn't have said so), but I do live in reality.

Measurements:
Switching to metric makes sense, but you do have the problem with the changeover cost in the US being enormous – after all, the measurements impact every facet of life. Just think of the number of legal regulations which need to be changed to fit the metric system. This is another instance where it would make sense to just have everything from now on being listed in both measurements so eventually we can just drop the old system.At least for Federal Regulations, things have been done in metric for over 125 years. But again, I love the SI dearly, but reality comes crashing down. I do like our system, it works well for us. And there are things like football (maybe a hectometer from endzone to endzone?) and baseball (maybe three dekameters from home to first, walls marked in dam?) that are too ingrained into our culture.

Calendars and clocks are pretty standard the world over – I do not think this is a major problem worth addressing.See, I thought that time was standardized, but there are one or two places that use different clocks. Nothing major, but it took me by surprise. And Calendars aren't standard. The week starts on Monday in a lot of cultures, ours starts Sunday, there's the Islamic calendar used in the Middle East and North Africa, it's not exactly standard.

Language – let this address itself. Teaching everyone a shorthand trade language, which is very easy to learn and can convey simple concepts quickly and easily, would be useful but trying to have a regulated international standard language is equivalent to having everyone learn Latin. People will learn what they perceive as a useful common language – which we currently have with English.
The thing is that there are people who have always spoken English (myself included) and we'll always have a distinct advantage over those who haven't when it comes to speaking English. A different language means lingual equality.

Driving, like anything else, should be standardized. We currently have international standards for air and sea vessels, why not extend this to land vehicles as well? It isn’t anything pressing, but could be useful. A slow convergence on legal regulations (useful for a lot more than just driving) would facilitate travel.

The only places where it really matters are Southern Asia and Southern Africa. These are the last remaining land borders between right- and left-hand-drive countries.

When other commodities collapse it is very likely that gold will follow; artificial supply shocks to commodities like oil or metals will cause the price of gold and other commodities to skyrocket, and when the supply problem is addressed the price of gold will fall with the rest of commodities accordingly.

Gold is a hedge. When investors get scared, the price of gold rises because people are buying it to hedge their investments; sometimes, that rise in prices will start to attract more buyers and push prices up beyond fundamentals, which attracts even more buyers and speculators until the bubble bursts.

You're absolutely correct. But that's because gold is a commodity, not a currency. On a gold standard, gold is (indirectly) the currency. What you would see is that the rises and falls in oil (which from a Bbl Oil standpoint would look like falls and rises in USD) would look pretty much the same. In the US, we might look at the price of a Euro for investment purposes much the same as we would currently look at gold, and in Europe, they do the same to Dollars. But would you invest in dollars in the US? No. Why? Because it's currency. And if $100=30g Au=€100, would you invest in gold or Euros? No. Why? Because currencies would be the same, there's no gain. The problem with investing in another country's currency is that you're betting against your own economy. If you bought €100 for $85 back in the day, you would now have $125 because Europe's economy became stronger than ours. By attatching all the world's currencies to a standard, it ends foreign investment in our money.

Yes. But I think that if the UN implemented it as its official language, it'd stick.Nah. French is the language of international diplomacy, and that hasn't kept the UN from having English, French, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and Spanish as its official languages, though French and English seem to be the main spoken diplomatic languages.

Why wouldn't there be, other than we've mined every bit of it?
And because you can only mine it so fast. Argentina collapsed not because there weren't enough dollars in the world, but because it could only get so many to fuel its economy.

Private lending firms. Private lending banks.
And where would they get money from?

No it can't. It can only prolong one or the other to make a long boom eventually hit a catastrophic bust, or turn a small bust into a large one.
How does government intervention accomplish such a thing? Any government intervention will do it? No matter what the government does it will be the wrong thing to do?

Explain me this, then, if all government intervention makes matters worse and practically all governments intervene in their economies, why are economies like those of Europe, the US, and Canada able to enjoy such good results? Periods of inflation and depression have been kept pretty much under control, but by your assertion they should be terrible. Not to say that there haven't been mistakes, there have; but nothing terrible in the past 50 years.

Well, maybe some women might like the latter.
And even more men.

There's only one which accurately describes them: the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.
Basically that the interest rate will adjust naturally by itself thus preventing inflation, guaranteeing full employment and sustained economic growth. I don't think it's a baseless claim, but I believe it's incomplete.

What?

Funky Allers English!

And because you can only mine it so fast. Argentina collapsed not because there weren't enough dollars in the world, but because it could only get so many to fuel its economy.
And that a central-banking state couldn't get enough outside fiat currency has what to do with a gold standard?


And where would they get money from?
Their own accounts or the lending accounts specifically worded and stated that the accounts are for lending, and not a demand-deposit account.


How does government intervention accomplish such a thing?
By sending false data into the market process.


Any government intervention will do it? No matter what the government does it will be the wrong thing to do?
It will have unforseen repercussions, like throwing a stone in a pond.

The best thing is to let it sort itself out, rather than trying to hijack it.


Explain me this, then, if all government intervention makes matters worse and practically all governments intervene in their economies, why are economies like those of Europe, the US, and Canada able to enjoy such good results?
That's a causa fallacy. They don't have good results BECAUSE of the interventions, they have good results IN SPITE OF THEM, and because of a relatively more free set of laws allowing people to do things which they really should be able to do anyway, and preventing them from much of the same.


Periods of inflation and depression have been kept pretty much under control, but by your assertion they should be terrible.
No, I didn't assert that.



Basically that the interest rate will adjust naturally by itself thus preventing inflation, guaranteeing full employment and sustained economic growth. I don't think it's a baseless claim, but I believe it's incomplete.
In what manner?

And how does this happen in a non fiat-currency situation (since central banking inevitably leads to fiat currency)?

Most likley during a war or a financial panic, when the demand for gold skyrockets relative to the supply and forces the government to print money in order to meet its obligations and keep the system from collapsing. The price of gold soars because supply has to balance demand, but the amount of gold isn't enough to cover the supply of paper money entering the market.

Most likley during a war or a financial panic, when the demand for gold skyrockets relative to the supply

Back to basics query to the resident economists: why would there be a demand for gold ? It is a pretty useless metal in daily life.

Back to basics query to the resident economists: why would there be a demand for gold ? It is a pretty useless metal in daily life.

Good question. I personally feel it's a historical and cultural thing rather than any objective sense of value; everyone wants gold, apparently, and gold is valuable in and of itself so people buy it to protect themselves from declining prices for paper money assets.

Ironically, both copper and iron were more valuable than gold in their early history.

Most likley during a war or a financial panic, when the demand for gold skyrockets relative to the supply and forces the government to print money in order to meet its obligations and keep the system from collapsing.
Then the gold standard is a check on the ability of government officials to go to war.

As for financial panics--rare is the one that wasn't caused by governmental interventions.


The price of gold soars because supply has to balance demand, but the amount of gold isn't enough to cover the supply of paper money entering the market.
Price. of. Gold.

What an interesting fiction.

Back to basics query to the resident economists: why would there be a demand for gold ? It is a pretty useless metal in daily life.
It's a medium of exchange--people value it quite highly and found it useful to be able to exchange it for other things, rather than relying on the double-coincidence of wants with barter.

I am totally for decimalising time. To answer whether it would fit the rotation of the earth, yes it would. Because you make it thus. Design a new system ground up where one year was a orbit of the sun (no leap years required). Then make months one tenth of a year. Make weeks ten days long. Any surplus days can be added as extra-calendar days in the middle of winter and summer. International holidays without outside of any month. Make days 10 hours long, and make hours 100 minutes long. Make minutes 100 seconds long. Then make all measurements metric and voila! Utopia achieved. The masses of the world would put down their weapons in utter awe of the simplicity and logic of the system. You'd have lebanese and Iraelis dancing with one another in the streets. Everyone would flock to the stores to trade in their WMD's and AK47's for rulers and timepieces. It will be a wonderful day.

I am totally for decimalising time. To answer whether it would fit the rotation of the earth, yes it would. Because you make it thus. Design a new system ground up where one year was a orbit of the sun (no leap years required). Then make months one tenth of a year. Make weeks ten days long. Any surplus days can be added as extra-calendar days in the middle of winter and summer. International holidays without outside of any month. Make days 10 hours long, and make hours 100 minutes long. Make minutes 100 seconds long. Then make all measurements metric and voila! Utopia achieved. The masses of the world would put down their weapons in utter awe of the simplicity and logic of the system. You'd have lebanese and Iraelis dancing with one another in the streets. Everyone would flock to the stores to trade in their WMD's and AK47's for rulers and timepieces. It will be a wonderful day.

1 year= 365.26 "days"
1 month= 36.526 "days"
1 day= 3.6526 "days"
1 hour= 0.36526 "days"
1 minute = 0.0036526 "days"
1 second = 0.000036526 "days"

...

OK, then... just explain how people will adapt to sleeping 3 times per day and the whole sun thing...

And that a central-banking state couldn't get enough outside fiat currency has what to do with a gold standard?
What would happen when you can't get more gold?

Their own accounts or the lending accounts specifically worded and stated that the accounts are for lending, and not a demand-deposit account.
What if they don't have any more money, because it all is being used in the economy?

By sending false data into the market process.
What false data?

It will have unforseen repercussions, like throwing a stone in a pond.

The best thing is to let it sort itself out, rather than trying to hijack it.
Yes, and by making no decisions the Austrian school pretends that there won't be bad effects, which is not necessarily true.

That's a causa fallacy. They don't have good results BECAUSE of the interventions, they have good results IN SPITE OF THEM, and because of a relatively more free set of laws allowing people to do things which they really should be able to do anyway, and preventing them from much of the same.
So, if I get cured it's a miracle, but if I get sicker is because of what the doctor gave me. Riiiiight...

No, I didn't assert that.
You said that all government intervention causes something to go wrong. Governments intervene. A lot. That they're more cautious now doesn't mean they don't. But things don't go too bad too often.

In what manner?
It starts with the assumption that the interest rate will naturally assume the value necessary for a healthy economy, but doesn't really explain how it would do that. It also doesn't explain why things don't go worse that they do.

Of course, no economic theory so far successfully explains economy fully, but I the Austrian school needs a bit more work in its fundaments. It'd be nice if it actually came up with a working verifiable model of the economy that prevented inflation and the concentration of wealth. It would make things a lot easier.

Back to basics query to the resident economists: why would there be a demand for gold ? It is a pretty useless metal in daily life.

Gold is scarce, which gives it value. But you also can't alter it, one gram of gold is one gram of gold everywhere. That makes it a very useful instrument to carry around and exchange for things.

What would happen when you can't get more gold?
People will value it more.


What if they don't have any more money, because it all is being used in the economy?
*boggle*

You're one of those who thinks it's a 0-sum game, aren't you?


What false data?
From the intervention. It's not "natural" data. It's artificial. It's something that's been inserted by an extra-market force. Whatever the data is--being it a price floor, price ceiling, extra costs due to certain regulations--whatever--it's false data. Causes a shift in resources that wouldn't have happened in the absence of the intervention.

Deny that and you deny what an intervention is.


Yes, and by making no decisions the Austrian school pretends that there won't be bad effects,
Evidence?

Oh that's right--you don't have any.


So, if I get cured it's a miracle, but if I get sicker is because of what the doctor gave me. Riiiiight...
Hi, I'm a false analogy. You just used me.


You said that all government intervention causes something to go wrong. Governments intervene. A lot. That they're more cautious now doesn't mean they don't. But things don't go too bad too often.
In your estimation. I suspect you have a very high notion of going bad. Going bad only means--what--global depression, to you?


It starts with the assumption that the interest rate will naturally assume the value necessary for a healthy economy, but doesn't really explain how it would do that.
But it does: Human. Action.


It also doesn't explain why things don't go worse that they do.
It can: the degree of freedom allowed by the restrictions.


Of course, no economic theory so far successfully explains economy fully, but I the Austrian school needs a bit more work in its fundaments. It'd be nice if it actually came up with a working verifiable model of the economy that prevented inflation and the concentration of wealth. It would make things a lot easier.
1. Models are for the hard sciences, not economics.

2. Concentration of weath--what exactly is wrong with that?

Then the gold standard is a check on the ability of government officials to go to war.

As for financial panics--rare is the one that wasn't caused by governmental interventions.

I think there are probably better ways of preventing governments from going to war. Like actually having government that responds to public opinion.


Price. of. Gold.

What an interesting fiction.

Yeah, that's the problem. If we were to go back to a gold standard, woe to you who are in debt. Gold standards cause deflation, which seriously hurts debtors (in the modern world, anyone who owns a house or a car). Population increases geometrically, while the volume of gold increases arithmetically. As more people are born, it outstrips the supply of available gold. Since all monetary values are tied to the amount of gold, the value of money increases as it becomes more scarce. If you go into debt, you end up paying an amount back that is worth more than the sum you borrowed.

Yeah, that's the problem. If we were to go back to a gold standard, woe to you who are in debt. Gold standards cause deflation, which seriously hurts debtors (in the modern world, anyone who owns a house or a car). Population increases geometrically, while the volume of gold increases arithmetically. As more people are born, it outstrips the supply of available gold. Since all monetary values are tied to the amount of gold, the value of money increases as it becomes more scarce. If you go into debt, you end up paying an amount back that is worth more than the sum you borrowed.

Which in turn inhibits economic growth and results in overall declines in living standards as the economy can't keep up with population growth and deflation eats away at the ability of entrepreneurs to invest in new production.

Living standards have risen faster and more equitably in the age of fiat money than in any time under the gold standard...I hardly consider that a disaster, and I'm more than willing to debase the value of the dollar to continue that growth.

People will value it more.
So? What does it matter that it's more valuable if I can't get any of it to increase production in my factory or to pay my employees?



*boggle*

You're one of those who thinks it's a 0-sum game, aren't you?
If I thought it was zero-sum, would I be talking about economic growth and wealth creation?


From the intervention. It's not "natural" data. It's artificial. It's something that's been inserted by an extra-market force. Whatever the data is--being it a price floor, price ceiling, extra costs due to certain regulations--whatever--it's false data. Causes a shift in resources that wouldn't have happened in the absence of the intervention.

Deny that and you deny what an intervention is.
What I deny is the concept that all that's natural is good, which the Austrian school simply assumes. It assumes that all prices will correct themselves and stay stable in a narrow band, when there's actually no evidence that that will happen.


Evidence?

Oh that's right--you don't have any.
Don't they contend that government should do nothing to control the economy?


Hi, I'm a false analogy. You just used me.
No, it's apt. Not recognizing that government intervention produces good results is like someone not recognizing that what a doctor did cured the sickness.

In your estimation. I suspect you have a very high notion of going bad. Going bad only means--what--global depression, to you?
It'd be hard to quantify as part of a forum discussion, I know it's a vague use of words. What I mean is that we see many cases in the world economy where periods of low economy have been turned around by government intervention. Of course, there were also the Clinton years where growth in the US lasted more than anyone was able to explain at the time, even though it wasn't more liberalized than at other times.

But it does: Human. Action.

It can: the degree of freedom allowed by the restrictions.
Which exist precisely to allow the markets to move within that range, but not get into wild swings.

1. Models are for the hard sciences, not economics.
Which is why the Austrian school hasn't come up with very useful predictive theories. It has come up with good concepts and ideas that other schools have taken and applied to predictive models. The problem with rejecting observation and statistical analysis is precisely the lack of predictability. Although relying on common sense has its pluses.

2. Concentration of weath--what exactly is wrong with that?
Just the social inequality, monopolization of the market, and lack of incentive for production and entrepreneurship as demand dries up because there's no people left who can afford your products and no money to invest. Other than that it's hunky dory.

It's not a very natural cycle, really. What is seen as a "natural cycle" is due to governmental intervention.
Cycles of expansion and contraction are inherent in economics – the only way to avoid them is through a totalitarian centrally planned government.
Here is a basic concept for you to grasp: supply does not equal demand. First year econ textbooks will tell you it does, but the real world does not look like a basic economic model so badly simplified a freshman can understand it. With the rarest of exceptions, supply equals demand only in passing - eliminating the business cycle would necessitate perfect information, foresight, and understanding by all parties involved (such amazing and universal clairvoyance is only found in beginning economics classes).

No it can't. Any intervention inserts false data into the market. Garbage in, garbage out.
Raising the interest rate is an example of intervention, they provide a disincentive to irrational exuberance by making it more costly to borrow money for speculative ventures and make it more attractive to save (or invest in things like government bonds). This helps to control an overheating economy. Lowering the interest rates does the opposite – it makes saving (or investing in bonds) less attractive, thus encouraging investments in making the economy grow). It causes a shift in the money supply to tighten or loosen monetary policy to encourage or discourage growth – while central banks occasionally make mistakes, making the assertion that they exacerbate the problem 100% of the time is ridiculous (simply by random chance they have to get it right on occasion). It is not a perfect tool, nor a very accurate one, but it is still a very useful means of influencing the economy to promote stability.

On the free market, then, the various names that units may have are simply definitions of units of weight. When we were "on the gold standard" before 1933, people liked to say that the "price of gold" was "fixed at twenty dollars per ounce of gold." But this was a dangerously misleading way of looking at our money.
A ‘dollar’ today does not mean a unit of weight in gold and has not since it was pulled off the gold standard. Even were it still on a gold standard, saying A equals B is identical to saying B equals A – it is entirely irrelevant.

If General Motors tried to pay its workers in paper tickets entitled “50 GMs,” the tickets would gain as little response. None of these tickets would be money, and none would be considered as anything but valueless, except perhaps a few collectors of curios. And this is why total freedom for everyone to print money would be absolutely harmless in a purely free market: no one would accept these presumptuous tickets.

There are many examples throughout history of companies paying workers in company script which were generally accepted as units of exchange in the towns around those companies. So long as someone is willing to accept these pieces of script in exchange for goods or services, it is by definition ‘money’.

‘Money’ is a unit of exchange – and a common currency does indeed act as an actual commodity, even if it is sometimes an abstract concept. If you want to say abstract concepts do not exist, you have to protest against using the number 0 as well. If you assert that currency is worthless because it only acts as a value of exchange, then you have to ask yourself what is the value of gold? It has very limited use in electronics or jewelry – it certainly has no intrinsic value sitting in a bank vault, it only has value as a medium of exchange (just like any other currency – be it paper or metal). Saying gold is valuable because it has uses is no different than saying dollars have value because it can be used as wallpaper. Tradition is the only difference between a bar of gold and a piece of paper with a picture printed on it.

Some small towns produce their own currency – it is their way of keeping the money circulating in their small economies (of course if you object they are legally required to accept as payment or compensate you with the country’s official legal tender, but most people are not so rude over small amounts – tourists take any change they have when leaving as sort of a souvenir). Some groups have even set up a babysitting currency – parents can babysit for other parents to earn points, which they can use to pay other parents to watch their kids (it is really a clever system – the price fluctuates depending on demand, so babysitting earns more on a Friday and you would pay someone else on a Tuesday). These babysitting points have not the slightest connection to a weight of gold. Many strip clubs print their own currencies as well – when you buy a drink, instead of giving you regular dollars, they give you their own currency which you can use to buy a drink or give to a stripper (though this isn’t such a great example because it has a fixed value to the local official currency). Since all these are accepted as payment, they are in fact money.



Money IS NOT A STORE OF VALUE!
Money has whatever value you assign to it. If people believe it to have value, and will accept it in exchange for goods or services, money does indeed have value – it has whatever value the two parties involved in a transaction place upon it. I am not saying that people could not wake up one day and suddenly decide not to accept Euros, thus the value of a Euro dropping to nothing. That works for everything though, if people do not value it, it has no value. This is not the same thing as saying money has no value – either you accept that ‘money’ is a store of value or you accept that the concept of stored value does not exist (which I would allow under a purely theoretical framework). Either way it is a pedantic argument.

Money is also referred to as "a measure of value." But if, following Menger, we regard valuing as an attitude people take towards things, then money certainly cannot measure value, since money itself is simply another thing that people choose to value (or not). Rather than "measuring" the value of other goods and services, money itself is valued by human actors based on its adequacy as a commonly accepted medium of exchange.
Money is a common benchmark or exchange. It is a medium of exchange used to facilitate trade, and thus is by its very nature a measure of value. A meter is commonly accepted as “a measure of length” yet is itself defined by something else (currently 1/299,792,458 of one light second – which with your pedantic need for definitions would require the evaluation of ‘what is a second?’). Every measure of every value of everything is simply in comparison to something else - money is no different.

How exactly can it spike or crash without a central bank mucking things up?
Central banks do not control the supply and demand of a commodity. When supply or demand of a commodity (gold is a commodity) shifts, the value of it changes. When the demand rapidly increases relative to supply, it is typically referred to as a ‘spike’ in the price. When the supply rapidly increases in relation to the demand, it is generally referred to as a ‘crash’ in the price.

Non sequitur. Trading ounces of gold for something will work anywhere.
Apparently you have not been paying attention – currencies have not been on a gold standard for quite some time.

I think there are probably better ways of preventing governments from going to war. Like actually having government that responds to public opinion.
Quite a believer in fantasies, aren't you?


Yeah, that's the problem. If we were to go back to a gold standard, woe to you who are in debt. Gold standards cause deflation,
They don't have to. Please don't speak of subjects about which you have no knowledge.



which seriously hurts debtors (in the modern world, anyone who owns a house or a car). Population increases geometrically, while the volume of gold increases arithmetically. As more people are born, it outstrips the supply of available gold.
Does it?

So? What does it matter that it's more valuable if I can't get any of it to increase production in my factory or to pay my employees?
Why can't you?


If I thought it was zero-sum, would I be talking about economic growth and wealth creation?
It never suprises me that people can hold mutually exclusive beliefs.


What I deny is the concept that all that's natural is good, which the Austrian school simply assumes.
So you believe that it can be good that initiatory coercion is used, and that some people think they know better how to use your resources than you?

I'm not seeing how that could possibly ever be construed as "good". Sounds more like slavery to me.


It assumes that all prices will correct themselves and stay stable in a narrow band, when there's actually no evidence that that will happen.
But there is.


Don't they contend that government should do nothing to control the economy?
Yes, but that's not what was meant.


No, it's apt.
No it isn't.


Not recognizing that government intervention produces good results is like someone not recognizing that what a doctor did cured the sickness.
It's utterly unlike that. What the government does is no different from, say, the xer church trying to sell people a cure (salvation) for a disease (original sin) which it invented.


It'd be hard to quantify as part of a forum discussion, I know it's a vague use of words. What I mean is that we see many cases in the world economy where periods of low economy have been turned around by government intervention.
....to be followed by a severe crash.


Of course, there were also the Clinton years where growth in the US lasted more than anyone was able to explain at the time, even though it wasn't more liberalized than at other times.
The economic problems we're seeing now are the result of the artificial bubble.


Which exist precisely to allow the markets to move within that range, but not get into wild swings.
The government interventions CAUSE the wild swings.


Which is why the Austrian school hasn't come up with very useful predictive theories.
Economics isn't like physics or chemistry or biology. Economics is a priori, not a posteriori.


Just the social inequality,
Is that bad?


monopolization of the market,
Only happens via government intervention.,


and lack of incentive for production and entrepreneurship as demand dries up because there's no people left who can afford your products and no money to invest.
Oh, you must be talking about when governments create monopolies.

I'm American I don't want to use SI until I flee from the burning embers of America's economy thank you very much.

Cycles of expansion and contraction are inherent in economics
Not really. They are really the creation of government intervention.


– the only way to avoid them is through a totalitarian centrally planned government.
And then you get chaos.


Here is a basic concept for you to grasp: supply does not equal demand.
You say that as if I didn't know that.

Did you know that resources are scarce? How about that you can't consume today what you consumed yesterday? Or that people act to attain that which they value? Did you know that when people exchange things in trade, they each give up something they value less for something they value more?


First year econ textbooks will tell you it does, but the real world does not look like a basic economic model so badly simplified a freshman can understand it. With the rarest of exceptions, supply equals demand only in passing - eliminating the business cycle would necessitate perfect information, foresight, and understanding by all parties involved (such amazing and universal clairvoyance is only found in beginning economics classes).
No, eliminating the business cycle (as we've seen it) requires merely for the government to stop intervening.


Raising the interest rate is an example of intervention, they provide a disincentive to irrational exuberance
Ah yes--the phrase the turncoat used.

I remember a speech that Ron Paul gave at the 2002 Mises Institute Supporters Seminar. He talked about how Greenspan used to be an advocate of the gold standard, and how he (Ron) had aquired a copy of the manuscript that was Greenspan's essay in Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. He asked Alan if he remembered it. Alan did. There were a couple other questions, but the last was "Would you like to write a retraction?"


by making it more costly to borrow money for speculative ventures and make it more attractive to save (or invest in things like government bonds). This helps to control an overheating economy.
The only way an economy overheats is if the government messes with the money supply or interest rate.

And yes: 100% of the time the intervention will have unintended consequences, and will ALWAYS lead to misallocation of resources. That is simply fact.


A ‘dollar’ today does not mean a unit of weight in gold and has not since it was pulled off the gold standard. Even were it still on a gold standard, saying A equals B is identical to saying B equals A – it is entirely irrelevant.
Mmmmhmm. Of the two of you (yourself and Rothbard)--which one of you had the PhD in Economics? Just wondering, s'all.

Also, when speaking of money in terms of a gold standard, you can't say that "gold's price is X" since it's not. Gold is the commodity/currency. The money has a fixed interchange with gold. That's it.



There are many examples throughout history of companies paying workers in company script which were generally accepted as units of exchange in the towns around those companies.
And not elsewhere. And those places had better be relatively self-sufficient, or else it's going to be very difficult trying to pay for things with a currency no one else accepts.

[snip some, since you're not actually saying anything that Rothbard hasn't said]


Money has whatever value you assign to it.
Mmmmhmmm. If I think that 1oz of gold will buy me a yacht, and the yacht salesman says "I don't think so"....fat lot of good my value is.


Money is a common benchmark or exchange. It is a medium of exchange used to facilitate trade, and thus is by its very nature a measure of value. A meter is commonly accepted as “a measure of length” yet is itself defined by something else (currently 1/299,792,458 of one light second – which with your pedantic need for definitions would require the evaluation of ‘what is a second?’).
Ah yes, by pedantic you mean "correct".


Central banks do not control the supply and demand of a commodity.
They control the supply of money.


Apparently you have not been paying attention – currencies have not been on a gold standard for quite some time.
Apparently, you have not been paying attention--the discussion is ABOUT the gold standard.

Umm, there's something about Japan that makes it impervious to European books?
Well... considering how my handbook for JET lists cooking conversions from Europe to Japanese measurements...

So even the stoves are xenophobic over there?
Nope, just almost non-existant.

Well... considering how my handbook for JET lists cooking conversions from Europe to Japanese measurements...

Really? I thought they used SI in Japan.

Really? I thought they used SI in Japan.
Depending on what's being meassured, yes. But when it comes to cooking I have a conversion list for a few different countries.

Namely cups of stuff.

We should all adopt a symbolic alphabet or whatever it's called. It'll make communication easier I think.

Oil viscosity desperatly needs standardisation of both the viscosity numbers and the temperatures at which those numbers are given

http://www.experimentalhelo.com/images/oilViscosity_full.gif