Slashdot Mirror
Estonian Economist Suggests Abandoning Cash
J-Georg writes "Raul Eamets, professor of macroeconomics at the University of Tartu, proposed today during his TEDx talk that Estonia should stop using cash at all when adopting the Euro as the national currency (Estonian original). He also pointed out that abandoning cash would not be only important for the Estonian economy as a whole but also is a real challenge for both IT and banking sectors and would also improve Estonia's image as an IT-tiger."
Except that I trust gold to be real money, proven over thousands of years but I do NOT trust any fiat money.
Some silly people come up with silly arguments like this one:
"But at some point the gold will be everywhere, science will let us have unlimited amounts of gold".
Yeah, OK, excuse me if I do not worry about that remote possibility because there is the most real, the most overused thing that is happening forever: FIAT is printed in unlimited amounts now.
It is so easy to print actual cash, that gov'ts have never failed not to run out of cash IF they can print it. Printing cash is the reality of today, 'printing' gold is some remote possibility, even if it is ever possible at all in terms of creating gold by not spending more than the created gold is worth.
My point is this: I see gold as money and I see fiat money as fake. Whenever I have to do a transaction in fiat, I reluctantly exchange gold for that paper and I can't wait to get rid of it.
Money to me is something that cannot be inflated and so far all fiat currencies have shown time and again, that gov'ts inflate them and rob people of purchasing power.
You think the US gov't is not going to raise taxes? They are printing fiat USD every day - that's taxes on everybody who holds US dollars/bonds. That's taxes on net-worth, not just on your income, (taxing income - it's a crime in my book.)
You can't handle the truth.