What is the point of this money? It has no value at all, it's just paper...

What is the point of this money? It has no value at all, it's just paper. Why don't we trade with stuff that's actually worthwhile?

It's just an abstraction since direct barter is really inconvenient.

And using paper specifically is just for ease and portability. More and more, money is just credits and debits on an electronic database somewhere

money has an agreed value as long as everyone agrees to give it value (the government mainly), meaning all the companies consider it having value so they can acquire and use it. In return, you are given services, food, or products. If the entire world decided money should be represented by goats and bottlecaps then congress would pass a bill and sign it into law and we would also follow suit. We would simply transfer the value of current paper money to it's equivilant in bottlecaps and goats.

The reason why we don't trade in worthwhile things is it becomes a huge barter fiasco the greater the pool of worthwhile stuff becomes. There is also a finite number of goods to trade, while paper or coin money can simply be printed on an agreed upon amount to represent value.

Given the choice, it is always better to represent currency than trade goats, at least when talking large trades. Who has 42 billion goats to buy a bank?

it's legal tender which means it has value equal to the face value guaranteed by the state and social contract.

it's also awfully convenient. if i had my salary in gold and had to pay in gold shavings at the store i wouldn't be very happy about it.

>walk into Starbucks
>order a latte
>attendant:"sir, that will be .000242 grams of gold please"
>get out measuring scale and gold scraping tool
>get icy cold stares of customers waiting in line behind me
It's like paying in pennies but worse!

duuude, money is a social construct man

Money is a claimcheck for goods and services in an economy. You don't hear people say:

>What is the point of this movie ticket? It has no value at all, it's just paper. Why don't we get into movie theaters with stuff that's actually worthwhile?

Then someone says 'let's not be retarded and just write what you owe me down and you can pay later'. Boom. abstract money is born.

Other customers see this and want in immediately. Boom, common currency.

'let's decrease the retardation even further and have one place where everyone can write down what they have and owe!' Boom, banking is born.

Money is an objective measurement of value.
It allows smooth transactions of value, labor, energy, etc.

Even the paper money is printed on is worth a bare-minimum amount of heat-energy from being burned as fuel.

they would probably have calibrated scales at every shop you just have to scrape some off your rod. the change is a bit problematic tho.

come to thin of it the precision scales you would require to buy a latte with gold would be a real problem even breathing in their direction would cause wild inaccuracies.

Gold is just a shiny rock.
It has no real value at all

You are operating on the false belief that people will be honest and transparent. The desire for fraud is far too great and with your proposed system you'd be encouraging those who wouldn't engage in fraud in our current system to do so in yours.

I believe our money should be backed by gold, rather than oil and drone strikes as it is right now.

>.000242 grams of gold

1 troy ounce = 31.1 grams
current gold spot is ~1.200 USD/oz

0.000242 grams of gold = ~0.00934 USD

cheap starbucks you've got there. i usually pay more on the order of 0.2 grams

But that wouldn't matter since it'd be cheaper for everyone else too

his argument wasn't about value or equality, it was about convenience. 0.2 grams is nowhere near as absurdly finnicky as scraping off ".000242 grams of gold". it's three orders of magnitude off, ffs! don't get me wrong, i think it would be redtarded to treat gold as an everyday currency, but his argument was stupid. there's better ways to show the silliness of the idea than to pull random numbers out of your ass.

because money is the tool to control fools, make slaves of others. it surely offers things in return...

>What is the point of this tendies? It has no value at all, it's just meat. Why don't we trade with stuff that's actually worthwhile?

Just become a hippie op

yeah it would be more like 0.13g gold for a coffee
that would still require very delicate scales tho.

not to mention we could have digital gold on cards operating the same way as money does right now. you deposit gold you get 1000 credits per ounce. if you want to retrieve it you can any time, it's possible you get some gold sand if it's not a round sum, but whatever.

Money has value. Taxes are collected in it and government paychecks are cut with it.

It is a medium of exchange, meaning it can be converted into whatever valuable good or service you so desire.

You're basically talking about Bitcoin, and if you aren't you should be. There is absolutely no way to know that you can convert digital gold into physical gold. It basically allows for double accounting... or perhaps triple, quadruple, etc., a la fractional reserve banking.

The whole point is that physical gold has to be physically stolen. If the government wants your gold they have to come take it, instead of raiding a website and shutting it down. Even art and antiques are extremely good stores of value, despite not being very liquid (convertible into currencies, etc.).

>You're basically talking about Bitcoin, and if you aren't you should be.
not really no, i'm talking about banks using gold as money exactly same as fiat. it's easily doable and could work. bitcoin is cumbersome and banks would never adopt a deflationary currency.

>The whole point is that physical gold has to be physically stolen.
you can put a small portion of your gold in the bank or the entire stash whatever you like it really just makes paying fractions more convenient faster and simpler. if you deposit your gold you have interest on it if you don't it's just sitting there nobody gives a fuck.

>fractional reserve banking
fractional reserve banking is based on debt. if nobody took a loan from a bank they could never "print" a single dollar.

>not really no, i'm talking about banks using gold as money exactly same as fiat. it's easily doable and could work. bitcoin is cumbersome and banks would never adopt a deflationary currency.

My point is there is no proof all of the gold is there. Fractional reserve banking, prior to fiat money, was a scam. You would take depositors gold and lend out a fraction of it—whatever they thought was a safe amount that would leave enough to pay depositors back.

>if nobody took a loan from a bank they could never "print" a single dollar.

Essentially true, but there is a base money supply that is pyramided off of. The Federal Reserve uses capital controls to add or subtract to the base money supply, and the banks increase it via fractional reserve lending.

what makes gold valuable anyway

why dont we just trade rice instead

Not to mention how many people would fix their scales to measure heavier than the good actually is.

This is exactly why money (and gold) is a bad investment. People value it way too higher.

Its better to invest in things with intrinsic value. Preferably assets that create value, like stocks.

Ok pay for that online porn with your potatoes. BRB opening a postal service.

>>>/polynesia/

"That'll be 317 grains of rice 75 if yiy want to get a bigger size"