In ancient Pompeii, brothel visitors used to document their sexual predilections with graffiti on the walls
In modern America (and probably elsewhere), we do this on bathroom stalls. I do not know what future archaeologists are going to glean from "Call 867-5309 for a good time", but it's probably not going to speak well about us.
Unfortunately, the flipped statement is also true. The overwhelming majority of people opposing the current implementation of computerized voting are computer scientists who have even casually looked at voting security. This makes for a fairly small group, and they deserve the assistance of those of us not qualified in CS but who think they're almost certainly right.
There are scientists out there who can have their opinion bought.
So if I read you correctly, you are saying that a system that requires private physical access to a huge number of ballot boxes is less secure than a system that is the equivalent security wise, of Internet of Things security cams?
I'd be pretty reluctant to hire a security expert or computer scientist that believes such a thing. Then again, there are people who belive we never wnet to the moon.
There is not one shred of evidence that Russia hacked or influenced the election. Let me repeat that for all of you out there. Not one shred of evidence.
You trying to get double ruble reward by repeating yourself?
This.
I think almost anyone with the slightest knowledge of embedded software and security practices would prefer paper over electronic.
If working in this industry has taught me anything it's that security is based mostly on hoping that no one will ever have access to your hardware for long enough to find flaws in it. Sure, there is some layer of security usually, but developing those properly is hard, and usually someone somewhere punches a hole in it so they can do practical things, like program the device with an initial firmware, or debug it.
Then we haven't even discussed all the flaws that just sneak in as coding errors.
You need to add human nature to the mix. Think of money. Think of gerrymandering. Humans will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that their side wins, including making it difficult for the other side to win.
A very hypothetical but plausible situation:
Joe Blow voting machines incorporated has a bit of an inclination toward one party or another. Well, one party or another would like to make certain that their party wins. So maybe 20 million dollars changes hands and is stored in some offshore bank.
JBVM simply adds backdoors that will slightly alter the results, weighted in favor of the group that gave him the money. I think it was Carnegie-Mellon U who originally came up with a hard to detect vote alteration method during one of their hacks of voting machines.
The ease with which electronic machines can be hacked makes it hard to believe that it hasn't occurred already.
Paper ballots can easily be destroyed, damaged, or faked. It's way too easy for someone to sneak in an extra box of fake ballots to rig an election. It's a shame that people like you who should know better are proposing to make it easier for criminals and foreign powers to rig elections. We would be far better off using blockchains to store votes and using that to ensure security. It's unfortunate that you and so many others are standing in the way of progress and better security.
Looks like we have prefect doing it's job as the enemy of good.
Besides, there is a world of difference between the effort it would take to coordinate a nationwide paper ballot hack. You would have to have a whole lot of people with physical access to the ballots, and a well coordinated ability to do the dirty work without detection, versus a few people sitting in a nice office somewhere altering the results.
Your blockchain idea is another example of how the next solution will be the secure one. Then the next one after that, then the one after that.
Nope, there is no way that we should allow voting to be yet another casualty of the Internet of Things debacle.
Simons is one of the most prominent such, but definitely not the only one. This has been a vocal point being made by computer scientists and other security experts since at least the late 2000s.
Why on earth is this modded at 1? The ease with which computerized voting systems can be compromised has been shown over and over again, that I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the access was planned.
Paper is not perfect, but at least it makes it a little harder to compromise.
Your issue is that you insist that others fit in the pigeonhole that you decide they fit into. And when they don't accept that, you demand the world know that they have a problem.
Sorry muchacho, I utterly reject your rigid outlook. I have no ideology, and atheism is not a religion. And your thoughts on the matter are.
Regardless, you are now to have the last comment reply.
Actually that is pretty much the argument I'm making and it does apply well to ideology. There is no ideological equivalent of atheism or "none of the above." If you ask a supposedly non-ideological person their opinion on a large number of issues, you can match them to an ideology which closely aligns with their beliefs. If you ask an atheist about which supernatural beings and/or forces they believe in, there is no religion for "none."
I'm still trying to get my head around the concept that abstinence is a sexual position.
I'm a pragmatist, which means I tend to gravitate toward things that work. Idealogues show time and again that they will stick to their "solutions" even when they are shown not to work. Me? If something doesn't work, I'll look for and adopt something that does. A compilation of my opinoins would show me to be center right, but with wildly veering outlier opinions that are sometimes considered far right or fairly far left. Probably my closest fit is as a Barry Goldwater conservative, but even then, it's hard to pin down.
An ideaology that is the rough equivalent of people thinking abstinence as a sexual position, or that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
So we're at quote-based Ad hominem and other falacies now.
Okay, allow me to attempt to get you off of your tactice of fallacy accusations. In argument simply accusing someone is insufficient, you have to explicitly point out th efallacy and suggest alternative. So instead of statements, I am moving to questions.
1. Is politically oriented hacking existent or nonexistent?
2. Is russian state hacking what is referred to as "Fake News?
3. Should Americans have any concern about hacking?
4. Should Americans and their media simply STFU?
5. Should America prohibit publication of any articles that mention Russian involvement?
6. As a researcher, do you have evidence supporting or debunking Russian involvement?
I've tried to distill these down to the argument at hand, and in the spirit of discussion, my answers to the question on order are:
1. Existent
2. Some is, and some isn't.
3. Yes.
4, No
5. No
6. Of course, I don't know, but am very interested in any verifiable data you might care to share.
We are in some rather difficult times right now, and ar ein the process of correcting the situation. Many people in other countries have difficulties understanding that we air our dirty laundry quite publicly, and do not find that to their liking. I am not accusing you of that - just in case you want to accuse me of another straw man argument. But it is true how we tend to work as a nation. This is a generalization. This is not a declarative statement that all Americans are this way.
As America goes through this process, I personally expect a lot of non-American people to get really tired of a lot of American media news. That is just an opinion, not a fact. Perhaps it would be better for those with that temperament to avoid American news in order to not be upset. Just a suggestion.
Interestingly enough, many of the people in America who will be negatively affected by this adjustment also think the media is making way too much of all of these things.What that means in the bigger picture is a matter for others to speculate upon, I make no argument either way.
Do you enjoy arguing with a person who engages in passive aggressiveness when he gets tired of you? I find it annoying, amirite?
As a non related to the discussion question, do you mind if I use your "Quote based Ad hominem" line? I just love it.
People who think they are not affected by ideology are often more likely to be more ingrained then those who realize their tendency. This may stop and listen to the counter argument a bit more. Then using their brain power to create a counter argument.
Funny you should mention that; as someone with too high of an IQ to be swayed by ideological (as opposed to logical) arguments, I've found that smartest Republicans I've never met tend to be measurably more intelligent than the smartest Democrats (of course, they're still all idiots to me).
Liberals and Conservatives are both equally likely to reject science when it doesn't fit with their ideals;
As a wildly reviled pragmatist, I can NetCraft level confirm that.
I would add however, that the liberal version of science denial provably pales in comparison to the crypto-conservative version.
But as a non-idealist, I'm willing to accept what science tells me. Whatever I "believe" or not "believe" is based on my support or lack of for various theories or hypotheses.
Funny you should mention that; as someone with too high of an IQ to be swayed by ideological (as opposed to logical) arguments, I've found that smartest Republicans I've never met tend to be measurably more intelligent than the smartest Democrats (of course, they're still all idiots to me).
Posting to undo an accidental positive moderation . Just like you deserve
The US is getting hacked every day by every country. But the only ones you hear about on the news are Russia, China and NK.
That's so incorrect as to expose some truths about you.
Ashley Madison, Equifax, Experian, MySpace, Home Depot and many more are not attributed to Russia, China, or North Korea.
Dmitry Dokuchaev is presumably tied to the Yahoo Breach.
It's very easy to attempt to extrapolate that all attacks are state-sponsored when you are so biased by media and politicians that only attacks from these countries actually exist.
But you see, that's all a story in your mind, or one that you are paid to speak about. There are many data breaches. You can read about them here https://www.usatoday.com/story...
I purposely used about as mainstream a source as possible - USA today. Not a breath about Russia, China, or North Korea.
Hacking can be done for many reasons. State strategic, criminal pecuniary, Penetration testing, or even as a form of entertainment by some folks.
You have to look at the hackee or the target to come up with likely suspects. You can do that. The only murky one here is the Ashley Madison hack. Very possibly Australian, but almost certainly not state. The others have some fairly obvious sources.
So would a penetration tester have hacked the DNC?
Would a criminal pecuniary hacker have hacked it?
We're pretty much left with hacking for the Lulz or state actor.
Yahoo? Equifax? almost certainly criminal pecuniary hacking.
Your premise that mainstream media only focuses on and only attributes hacking to Russia, China or North Korea is just completely wrong, as anyone who actually looks at the news can attest.
I'd call it a strawman argument if the "facts" weren't 100 percent false. So I'm being kinda kind here.
Now please, inform me of how there is absolutely no need for driverless cars to communicate with each other. Hell, if Driverless cars are going to bering the much promised safety, all drivered cars will have to comunicate with teh driverless cars.
Because if someone was injured in this accident, the no comms peopel would immediately shift into No True Scotsman mode.
So Trump's decision to remove the requirement is a death knell to the Autonomous driving initiative.
No matter how we measure it, there is simply not enough gold to support the US economy, much less the entire world's.
No, you're wrong.Suppose the world's currency were entirely backed by gold. A single ounce would be worth $200,000. You wouldn't be able to buy an ounce (at least, most people wouldn't, which is unfortunate because it's nice for decorating purposes).
The economy wouldn't collapse. People would start selling "micro-ounces" of gold, or use a bi-metallic standard. Banks would issue paper backed by gold, but each bill would only be worth a milli-gram or even micro-gram of gold. These strategies have been used for millenia.
No matter how much the value of the world increases, the current amount of gold (or any other thing) can scale up to represent it by further dividing it.
Magical stuff this gold. So it's value can increase infinitely it seems. And soon we will be trading atoms of it. At which point, what will you do that has true value with an atom, or even micro ounce? And how are you going to store that micro ounce, if it is a certificate for it, well welcome to fiat.
There is a reason we don't tie the world to gold. There isn't enough of it, and it's volatility is too high because people ascribe magickal properties to it.
Anyhow, I guess some people do eat it, so it's the equivalent of bread?
Nope, not fixed at all
2/1980 - $2,077.93/oz
2/2001 - $367.67/oz
2/2011 - $1573.27/oz
2/2016 - $1,168.00/oz
Tell the guy that bought in 1980 that the price always goes up.
These are inflation adjusted dollars.
Exactly. Some people have made fortunes on gold, and many more have lost fortunes. I have some precious metal investments, but the worst time to buy is when everyone is panicking. I look at it as walking around money that I can afford to lose.
With the American habit of buying high, and selling low, I'll leave it to others to determine who makes out the best.
One of the biggest problems with gold as a backup currency is that it represents a nuclear option. Because the ability to immediately exchange whatever amount of money you have for an equivalent amount of gold means that there must be no more wealth than can be covered by an immediate transfer from that wealth to gold
The price of gold isn't fixed. As soon as you buy some, the price of gold goes up. This is imperceptible for small amounts of gold, but the price will grow up dramatically.
Exactly. Now take all of the gold that has ever been mined. Once that is related to the world's say GDP, you star to see just how expensive gold will become. Its even worse because we won't have all of tyhat gold - some is buried with people, in active electronics, and other non-accessible places like space.
A good example that explains it is on Wikipedia - reom the article:
"The World Gold Council estimates that all the gold ever mined totaled 187,200 tonnes in 2017 but other independent estimates vary by as much as 20%.At a price of US$1,250 per troy ounce, reached on 16 August 2017, one tonne of gold has a value of approximately US$40.2 million. The total value of all gold ever mined would exceed US$7.5 trillion at that valuation and using WGC 2017 estimates.
In 2017, the world had a GDP of 77,988 trillion. The US alone is 19 trillion, with China at 11.7 trillion.
No matter how we measure it, there is simply not enough gold to support the US economy, much less the entire world's.
So it's either the price of gold rises outlandishly, or we reduce teh world's economic output to accomodate the amount of gold we have, and no more economic output is allowed until enough gold is procured to allow for that development.
Which is it? I kind of doubt that the world wants to scale back, or have gold hyper inflate. Gold does have uses that are quite practical. and once we have anything other than a pure commodity currency, it is fiat currency by definition and fact.
Are you referring to gold? Please explain, because gold is the logical opposite of fiat currency.
Commodity versus fiat. Commodity has a fatal flaw with regards to actual use.
Let us say the entire world shifts tomorrow to the gold commodity currency Standard.
So the day after tomorrow, everyone on earth demands their currency in physical gold. And being a commodity currency, the banks must give the entire world the gold that their currency represents.
So the conservtive radio hosts aren't complaining at all? You are a completely typical Trump voter, Yoiu seem to think that complete non sequitars are somehow relevant to the discussion at hand. My post just to have some tiny yet hopeful wish that you might engage in conversations wirth adults, is that I was remarking on the reactions of people like Limbaught and savage. Not some douchebag outfiut like Occupy Democrats. Don't rtefer to them, and I won't refer to Trumps NeoNazi and White Supremacists fine people. Kapeche?
Now go away until you can carry on a conversation with adults.
Are we hearing bitcoin commercials on conservative radio yet? It's hard to imagine how they could spin it to compete against "GOLD", but I'm sure they'll think of a way.
They do spin do they not? I've been having trouble listening to conservative radio recently. Angry old men yelling gets boring after a while.
I suspect the shrill level is through the roof after Tuesday's election results. MAybe I'll tun in thisafternoon to see how they blame it on not enough candidates hitching their wagon to the rising star of Il Duce the second.
One difference between gold and bitcoin (and there are many) is that gold is the currency of last resort for all superpower governments. Why do central banks still bother with gold in the age of fiat currency? Because they understand fiat currency better than us, and ultimately they don't fully trust it. Hence the backup. (It doesn't matter how much gold they own relative to fiat currency -- what matters is how much gold they own relative to other governments' gold supply. In a worst-case scenario, that's the bottom line.)
Both gold and bitcoin are independent of any central authority, and both are resistant to having their value diluted by a central authority. That would seem to make bitcoin a substitute for gold in some cases, but ultimately, the showstopper for central banks is that digital things can go "poof".
One of the biggest problems with gold as a backup currency is that it represents a nuclear option. Because the ability to immediately exchange whatever amount of money you have for an equivalent amount of gold means that there must be no more wealth than can be covered by an immediate transfer from that wealth to gold
The total amount of gold in 2014 - 183,600 tonnes of stocks in existence above ground".At $1,075 per troy ounce, 183,600 metric tonnes of gold would have a value of $6.3 trillion. So to go to a gold standard, there is either a price fix of the exchange rate or an immediate hyperinflation making any currency based on it worthless, and no more economic efforts can be accomplished without a commensurate amount of gold mined and processed, which would tend to dilute the value of the gold.
This was all known at the time the US dropped the gold standard. In the end, it was simply another fiat currency.
Slashdot Mirror
"Yes, I was over thirty, and she was 14, but she was gagging for it!"
Accidental Autocorrect might have been pretty insightful in this case?
Regardless, apparently the bible says 30 plus year old men and girls their daugheters age is okay. At least according to the Republican party.
In ancient Pompeii, brothel visitors used to document their sexual predilections with graffiti on the walls
In modern America (and probably elsewhere), we do this on bathroom stalls. I do not know what future archaeologists are going to glean from "Call 867-5309 for a good time", but it's probably not going to speak well about us.
My favorite, an oldie but goodie is:
Those who write on shithouse walls,
Roll their turds in little balls.
Those who read these words of wit,
Eat those little balls of shit.
Unfortunately, the flipped statement is also true. The overwhelming majority of people opposing the current implementation of computerized voting are computer scientists who have even casually looked at voting security. This makes for a fairly small group, and they deserve the assistance of those of us not qualified in CS but who think they're almost certainly right.
There are scientists out there who can have their opinion bought.
So if I read you correctly, you are saying that a system that requires private physical access to a huge number of ballot boxes is less secure than a system that is the equivalent security wise, of Internet of Things security cams?
I'd be pretty reluctant to hire a security expert or computer scientist that believes such a thing. Then again, there are people who belive we never wnet to the moon.
There is not one shred of evidence that Russia hacked or influenced the election. Let me repeat that for all of you out there. Not one shred of evidence.
You trying to get double ruble reward by repeating yourself?
This. I think almost anyone with the slightest knowledge of embedded software and security practices would prefer paper over electronic. If working in this industry has taught me anything it's that security is based mostly on hoping that no one will ever have access to your hardware for long enough to find flaws in it. Sure, there is some layer of security usually, but developing those properly is hard, and usually someone somewhere punches a hole in it so they can do practical things, like program the device with an initial firmware, or debug it. Then we haven't even discussed all the flaws that just sneak in as coding errors.
You need to add human nature to the mix. Think of money. Think of gerrymandering. Humans will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that their side wins, including making it difficult for the other side to win.
A very hypothetical but plausible situation:
Joe Blow voting machines incorporated has a bit of an inclination toward one party or another. Well, one party or another would like to make certain that their party wins. So maybe 20 million dollars changes hands and is stored in some offshore bank.
JBVM simply adds backdoors that will slightly alter the results, weighted in favor of the group that gave him the money. I think it was Carnegie-Mellon U who originally came up with a hard to detect vote alteration method during one of their hacks of voting machines.
The ease with which electronic machines can be hacked makes it hard to believe that it hasn't occurred already.
Paper ballots can easily be destroyed, damaged, or faked. It's way too easy for someone to sneak in an extra box of fake ballots to rig an election. It's a shame that people like you who should know better are proposing to make it easier for criminals and foreign powers to rig elections. We would be far better off using blockchains to store votes and using that to ensure security. It's unfortunate that you and so many others are standing in the way of progress and better security.
Looks like we have prefect doing it's job as the enemy of good.
Besides, there is a world of difference between the effort it would take to coordinate a nationwide paper ballot hack. You would have to have a whole lot of people with physical access to the ballots, and a well coordinated ability to do the dirty work without detection, versus a few people sitting in a nice office somewhere altering the results.
Your blockchain idea is another example of how the next solution will be the secure one. Then the next one after that, then the one after that.
Nope, there is no way that we should allow voting to be yet another casualty of the Internet of Things debacle.
Simons is one of the most prominent such, but definitely not the only one. This has been a vocal point being made by computer scientists and other security experts since at least the late 2000s.
Why on earth is this modded at 1? The ease with which computerized voting systems can be compromised has been shown over and over again, that I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the access was planned.
Paper is not perfect, but at least it makes it a little harder to compromise.
You can't be a pragmatist without some sort of ideology.
Okay, I like Sophia Vergara. So she's my ideology. Now we can all be happy! ;^)
I think I see your problem.
Your issue is that you insist that others fit in the pigeonhole that you decide they fit into. And when they don't accept that, you demand the world know that they have a problem.
Sorry muchacho, I utterly reject your rigid outlook. I have no ideology, and atheism is not a religion. And your thoughts on the matter are.
Regardless, you are now to have the last comment reply.
Actually that is pretty much the argument I'm making and it does apply well to ideology. There is no ideological equivalent of atheism or "none of the above." If you ask a supposedly non-ideological person their opinion on a large number of issues, you can match them to an ideology which closely aligns with their beliefs. If you ask an atheist about which supernatural beings and/or forces they believe in, there is no religion for "none."
I'm still trying to get my head around the concept that abstinence is a sexual position.
I'm a pragmatist, which means I tend to gravitate toward things that work. Idealogues show time and again that they will stick to their "solutions" even when they are shown not to work. Me? If something doesn't work, I'll look for and adopt something that does. A compilation of my opinoins would show me to be center right, but with wildly veering outlier opinions that are sometimes considered far right or fairly far left. Probably my closest fit is as a Barry Goldwater conservative, but even then, it's hard to pin down.
An ideaology that is the rough equivalent of people thinking abstinence as a sexual position, or that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
So we're at quote-based Ad hominem and other falacies now.
Okay, allow me to attempt to get you off of your tactice of fallacy accusations. In argument simply accusing someone is insufficient, you have to explicitly point out th efallacy and suggest alternative. So instead of statements, I am moving to questions.
1. Is politically oriented hacking existent or nonexistent?
2. Is russian state hacking what is referred to as "Fake News?
3. Should Americans have any concern about hacking?
4. Should Americans and their media simply STFU?
5. Should America prohibit publication of any articles that mention Russian involvement?
6. As a researcher, do you have evidence supporting or debunking Russian involvement?
I've tried to distill these down to the argument at hand, and in the spirit of discussion, my answers to the question on order are:
1. Existent
2. Some is, and some isn't.
3. Yes.
4, No
5. No
6. Of course, I don't know, but am very interested in any verifiable data you might care to share.
We are in some rather difficult times right now, and ar ein the process of correcting the situation. Many people in other countries have difficulties understanding that we air our dirty laundry quite publicly, and do not find that to their liking. I am not accusing you of that - just in case you want to accuse me of another straw man argument. But it is true how we tend to work as a nation. This is a generalization. This is not a declarative statement that all Americans are this way.
As America goes through this process, I personally expect a lot of non-American people to get really tired of a lot of American media news. That is just an opinion, not a fact. Perhaps it would be better for those with that temperament to avoid American news in order to not be upset. Just a suggestion.
Interestingly enough, many of the people in America who will be negatively affected by this adjustment also think the media is making way too much of all of these things.What that means in the bigger picture is a matter for others to speculate upon, I make no argument either way.
Do you enjoy arguing with a person who engages in passive aggressiveness when he gets tired of you? I find it annoying, amirite?
As a non related to the discussion question, do you mind if I use your "Quote based Ad hominem" line? I just love it.
People who think they are not affected by ideology are often more likely to be more ingrained then those who realize their tendency. This may stop and listen to the counter argument a bit more. Then using their brain power to create a counter argument.
Is existential nihilsm an ideal?
There's no such thing as a non-ideological person, but there are ideologically blind people.
Not the OP, but your statement is veering close to the terrible atheism is a religion argument.
Funny you should mention that; as someone with too high of an IQ to be swayed by ideological (as opposed to logical) arguments, I've found that smartest Republicans I've never met tend to be measurably more intelligent than the smartest Democrats (of course, they're still all idiots to me).
Liberals and Conservatives are both equally likely to reject science when it doesn't fit with their ideals;
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550617731500
As a wildly reviled pragmatist, I can NetCraft level confirm that.
I would add however, that the liberal version of science denial provably pales in comparison to the crypto-conservative version.
But as a non-idealist, I'm willing to accept what science tells me. Whatever I "believe" or not "believe" is based on my support or lack of for various theories or hypotheses.
Are you sure about your IQ? Because you might want to get refund on the test.
You have to admit, he made the perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect
Funny you should mention that; as someone with too high of an IQ to be swayed by ideological (as opposed to logical) arguments, I've found that smartest Republicans I've never met tend to be measurably more intelligent than the smartest Democrats (of course, they're still all idiots to me).
Posting to undo an accidental positive moderation . Just like you deserve
The US is getting hacked every day by every country. But the only ones you hear about on the news are Russia, China and NK.
That's so incorrect as to expose some truths about you.
Ashley Madison, Equifax, Experian, MySpace, Home Depot and many more are not attributed to Russia, China, or North Korea.
Dmitry Dokuchaev is presumably tied to the Yahoo Breach.
It's very easy to attempt to extrapolate that all attacks are state-sponsored when you are so biased by media and politicians that only attacks from these countries actually exist.
But you see, that's all a story in your mind, or one that you are paid to speak about. There are many data breaches. You can read about them here https://www.usatoday.com/story...
I purposely used about as mainstream a source as possible - USA today. Not a breath about Russia, China, or North Korea.
Hacking can be done for many reasons. State strategic, criminal pecuniary, Penetration testing, or even as a form of entertainment by some folks.
You have to look at the hackee or the target to come up with likely suspects. You can do that. The only murky one here is the Ashley Madison hack. Very possibly Australian, but almost certainly not state. The others have some fairly obvious sources.
So would a penetration tester have hacked the DNC?
Would a criminal pecuniary hacker have hacked it?
We're pretty much left with hacking for the Lulz or state actor.
Yahoo? Equifax? almost certainly criminal pecuniary hacking.
Your premise that mainstream media only focuses on and only attributes hacking to Russia, China or North Korea is just completely wrong, as anyone who actually looks at the news can attest.
I'd call it a strawman argument if the "facts" weren't 100 percent false. So I'm being kinda kind here.
Because if someone was injured in this accident, the no comms peopel would immediately shift into No True Scotsman mode.
So Trump's decision to remove the requirement is a death knell to the Autonomous driving initiative.
No matter how we measure it, there is simply not enough gold to support the US economy, much less the entire world's.
No, you're wrong.Suppose the world's currency were entirely backed by gold. A single ounce would be worth $200,000. You wouldn't be able to buy an ounce (at least, most people wouldn't, which is unfortunate because it's nice for decorating purposes). The economy wouldn't collapse. People would start selling "micro-ounces" of gold, or use a bi-metallic standard. Banks would issue paper backed by gold, but each bill would only be worth a milli-gram or even micro-gram of gold. These strategies have been used for millenia. No matter how much the value of the world increases, the current amount of gold (or any other thing) can scale up to represent it by further dividing it.
Magical stuff this gold. So it's value can increase infinitely it seems. And soon we will be trading atoms of it. At which point, what will you do that has true value with an atom, or even micro ounce? And how are you going to store that micro ounce, if it is a certificate for it, well welcome to fiat.
There is a reason we don't tie the world to gold. There isn't enough of it, and it's volatility is too high because people ascribe magickal properties to it.
Anyhow, I guess some people do eat it, so it's the equivalent of bread?
Nope, not fixed at all 2/1980 - $2,077.93/oz 2/2001 - $367.67/oz 2/2011 - $1573.27/oz 2/2016 - $1,168.00/oz
Tell the guy that bought in 1980 that the price always goes up.
These are inflation adjusted dollars.
Exactly. Some people have made fortunes on gold, and many more have lost fortunes. I have some precious metal investments, but the worst time to buy is when everyone is panicking. I look at it as walking around money that I can afford to lose.
With the American habit of buying high, and selling low, I'll leave it to others to determine who makes out the best.
One of the biggest problems with gold as a backup currency is that it represents a nuclear option. Because the ability to immediately exchange whatever amount of money you have for an equivalent amount of gold means that there must be no more wealth than can be covered by an immediate transfer from that wealth to gold
The price of gold isn't fixed. As soon as you buy some, the price of gold goes up. This is imperceptible for small amounts of gold, but the price will grow up dramatically.
Exactly. Now take all of the gold that has ever been mined. Once that is related to the world's say GDP, you star to see just how expensive gold will become. Its even worse because we won't have all of tyhat gold - some is buried with people, in active electronics, and other non-accessible places like space.
A good example that explains it is on Wikipedia - reom the article:
"The World Gold Council estimates that all the gold ever mined totaled 187,200 tonnes in 2017 but other independent estimates vary by as much as 20%.At a price of US$1,250 per troy ounce, reached on 16 August 2017, one tonne of gold has a value of approximately US$40.2 million. The total value of all gold ever mined would exceed US$7.5 trillion at that valuation and using WGC 2017 estimates.
In 2017, the world had a GDP of 77,988 trillion. The US alone is 19 trillion, with China at 11.7 trillion.
No matter how we measure it, there is simply not enough gold to support the US economy, much less the entire world's.
So it's either the price of gold rises outlandishly, or we reduce teh world's economic output to accomodate the amount of gold we have, and no more economic output is allowed until enough gold is procured to allow for that development.
Which is it? I kind of doubt that the world wants to scale back, or have gold hyper inflate. Gold does have uses that are quite practical. and once we have anything other than a pure commodity currency, it is fiat currency by definition and fact.
Are you referring to gold? Please explain, because gold is the logical opposite of fiat currency.
Commodity versus fiat. Commodity has a fatal flaw with regards to actual use.
Let us say the entire world shifts tomorrow to the gold commodity currency Standard. So the day after tomorrow, everyone on earth demands their currency in physical gold. And being a commodity currency, the banks must give the entire world the gold that their currency represents.
What happens?
Wrong:
https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocratsLogic/photos/a.1647169182167657.1073741828.1646874365530472/2001221336762438/?type=3&theater
So the conservtive radio hosts aren't complaining at all? You are a completely typical Trump voter, Yoiu seem to think that complete non sequitars are somehow relevant to the discussion at hand. My post just to have some tiny yet hopeful wish that you might engage in conversations wirth adults, is that I was remarking on the reactions of people like Limbaught and savage. Not some douchebag outfiut like Occupy Democrats. Don't rtefer to them, and I won't refer to Trumps NeoNazi and White Supremacists fine people. Kapeche?
Now go away until you can carry on a conversation with adults.
Are we hearing bitcoin commercials on conservative radio yet? It's hard to imagine how they could spin it to compete against "GOLD", but I'm sure they'll think of a way.
They do spin do they not? I've been having trouble listening to conservative radio recently. Angry old men yelling gets boring after a while.
I suspect the shrill level is through the roof after Tuesday's election results. MAybe I'll tun in thisafternoon to see how they blame it on not enough candidates hitching their wagon to the rising star of Il Duce the second.
One difference between gold and bitcoin (and there are many) is that gold is the currency of last resort for all superpower governments. Why do central banks still bother with gold in the age of fiat currency? Because they understand fiat currency better than us, and ultimately they don't fully trust it. Hence the backup. (It doesn't matter how much gold they own relative to fiat currency -- what matters is how much gold they own relative to other governments' gold supply. In a worst-case scenario, that's the bottom line.)
Both gold and bitcoin are independent of any central authority, and both are resistant to having their value diluted by a central authority. That would seem to make bitcoin a substitute for gold in some cases, but ultimately, the showstopper for central banks is that digital things can go "poof".
One of the biggest problems with gold as a backup currency is that it represents a nuclear option. Because the ability to immediately exchange whatever amount of money you have for an equivalent amount of gold means that there must be no more wealth than can be covered by an immediate transfer from that wealth to gold
The total amount of gold in 2014 - 183,600 tonnes of stocks in existence above ground".At $1,075 per troy ounce, 183,600 metric tonnes of gold would have a value of $6.3 trillion. So to go to a gold standard, there is either a price fix of the exchange rate or an immediate hyperinflation making any currency based on it worthless, and no more economic efforts can be accomplished without a commensurate amount of gold mined and processed, which would tend to dilute the value of the gold.
This was all known at the time the US dropped the gold standard. In the end, it was simply another fiat currency.