What will be the medium of exchange? It depends on the degree of any potential collapse. "Mankind can live without gold but not without salt." - Cassiodorus, Roman statesman, circa 500 AD. In a worst case scenario, people may give up on the idea of long term stores of value and instead use certain scarce perishables with intrinsic value (like coffee for example) as a compact short-term store of value and as a collectively-agreed item of collateral, a modern equivalent of bags of salt. (The phrase "worth one's salt" or "worth their salt" derives from the idea of salt as a form of money. Latin "sal" (salt) -> salarium -> salarie -> salary.) In a less serious collapse, the world may simply switch the US dollars as the single, trusted medium of exchange. Trust in the USD is already well established globally. As noted previously: Maybe people will again use gold and silver ubiquitously as a trusted medium of exchange, but it is a fallacy to believe these metals have intrinsic value and therefore are guaranteed to replace fiat. They are indisputably valuable over historic timescales, but gold especially, unlike salt, is only valuable because we agree it is. However, gold and silver are useful as money for their intrinsic properties; durability, divisibility and scarcity. The point is that a future post-collapse society may agree on something else. An interesting web page: ECONOMICS & SALT:
Do you really think just because the USD collapses fiat will dissappear ? really ? when the zimbabwe currency collapsed did any other country change their medium of exchange ? It will be business as usual in most places . just a lot of burnt people holding USD crying into their beer . Personally i cant see it collapsing . But if it does it will only be a matter of time before a new reserve currency is decided on & used Lets hope its a basket of currencies not just one .
Who are you responding too? Where was this claimed? There was no mention of a USD collapse. In fact, it is more likely economies and currencies outside of the US will lead any collapse and the USD will become a global currency by default. The people crying into their beers will be those who put their faith in idiotic conspiracy theories and inflated assets like Australian real estate, the archaic Australian energy sector, or shares in general. Idiots and their wealth are soon parted.
I was responding to you ! You were the one who started the thread . Well what was the thread about ? whats going to collapse the whole worlds fiat system ? lol oh dear :lol: The share market ? All the worlds economies ? Please try to be clearer in your posts to make it clear what your talking about because frankly i have NFI at this stage . You thread title is "what will be used for money" . is it not ? so it implies the fiat money system will collapse & the USD is the mainstay of the fiat system ... not too much of a long bow to think ur talking the USD . . your talking trading salt & shells ..what else could you possibly be talking about . Your words "In a less serious collapse, the world may simply switch the US dollars as the single, trusted medium of exchange. Trust in the USD is already well established globally. As noted previously:" So in a more serious collapse the USD will die ? ...again not to much of a long bow to draw Again WTF are u talking about :lol:
Renovator: Put brain into gear before opening mouth. You're responding at best disingenuously, and at worst like an idiot when you attribute such ridiculous inferences. It would be appreciated if you could show some maturity and integrity for a change otherwise stop polluting threads with your gibberish. It may simply be that you lack reading comprehension, but if you truly are bordering on illiteracy then I apologise and wish you luck in overcoming whatever neurological affliction you are struggling with.
International Roast will be the only coffee worth stacking as it tastes the same no matter what its use by date is.
Can confirm from experience. The only competition will come from Nescaf Blend 43 which will come in those little packets you get in hotels.
Money is ok I guess but it isn't the perfect solution. If I want to go on holiday I have to swap my money for another type of money, and pay money to do it! Then I have to spend the whole time converting back and forwards in my head to work out if I am being ripped off over the cost of the pizza. If I go to the supermarket, load up my trolley and get to the checkout only to find I have forgotten to bring my money then I have wasted a journey. If someone with a knife wants to take my money off me then they probably will and if my house burns down I will lose my money stored at home as well. I think that the future will be electronic, depending on the type of collapse, I think it will be decentralised, non-government, unbacked, easily divisible (not just rounding up or down to the nearest 5, up to many decimal places!), unperishable, no intrinsic value whatsoever. Banks will not be able to lend it, they will still be able to conjure it out of thin air, but so will everyone else so their monopoly will collapse, you won't be able to earn any interest on it so there will be no need to put it in a bank, or hoard it or speculate on it going up in value, and it will not be denominated in dollars or pounds but in hours of labour, there will not be credit unless someone trusts you to do some work in the future. People the world over will get the same amount for of money for the same amount of labour, there will be no financial benefit in offshoring your workforce. All assets will be valued at the amount of time taken to produce them, houses priced at the time it takes to build one and the time it takes to produce the materials etc. Or something like that. I am stacking coffee just in case...
Thanks Jislizard always a well thought out responce. cheer$ edit to add that if you were at the PM snake release that I doubt anyone would get your money without a fight
As long as there are governments there will always be politicians with knifes at their command, wanting to take your money off you. If there is still global trade then there's a risk that someone will order replica coffee (decaf ) from China and undermine the market. Bastards.
Except for those things which people consider more valuable yet take less time to produce or cannot be or will not be quantified in labour hours. Which is most things.
Well, it might need a bit of work Although this is not a serious proposal I would like to bring up why people think some things are more valuable than others and how we judge value when we know so little about what goes into producing the things we want. Particularly some things when we might have an idea that they are very rare (i.e. take more hours to find them) or that they are very hard to process (takes more hours of labour to produce them) but we are not always correct. Half a day spent watching "How It's Made" on YouTube and you can see the enormous amount of energy that goes into making everyday items which are selling for next to nothing which we discard after use. Economies of scale aside, I am shocked by how cheap everything is when you look at how long it takes to make things. There are so many stages to each process that if you were given an aluminum drinks can and asked to make one from scratch you would probably be way off the mark.
