Back in 2021 I bought some gold to ward off inflation. Like a crucifix to ward off vampires. Though I felt somewhat vampiric myself being so materialistic and self-interested. I didn't buy an amazing amount. About half an ounce in total, and it cost me about £750 altogether, premium and postage included. I'm now selling it for the spot price, so I should make about £300 profit approx.
I don't know if it's wise to sell now, but it feels like a good time to take the money and run. Reinvest it elsewhere.
The Gold Standard
It's got me thinking about gold standards again though. I've been watching all the various goldbugs on YouTube. The opinions are always interesting - they certainly make good criticisms of the fiat system. However, I think they don't quite get it when it comes to gold standards.
I've stated before that gold standards don't work.
Warm Silver Porridge: Not too hot, not too cold - just right!
To get a better sense of this, it's useful to look at why historically silver was used as a "standard."
Silver is a natural intermediary between copper and gold. So it's natural to use it as a measure.
Let's imagine you live in earlier times - in the age of metals - and you have five ounces of silver saved in a bank, and an IOU from the bank saying they owe you that five ounces of silver. In theory, you could redeem that money in copper or gold instead. However, it wouldn't be as practical.
Say, at the time, one ounce of silver was worth fifty ounces of copper, and one ounce of gold was worth fifteen ounces of silver.
To redeem the equivalent of that five ounces of silver in copper would mean having to carry a big, heavy bag of two hundred and fifty ounces of copper out of the bank. Likewise, redeeming it in gold would mean having to take out a tiny 1/3 fraction of a one ounce gold coin. Which would be harder to break down if you wanted to split it further. So, five silver coins is much easier. Like Goldilocks (or rather, Silverlocks) - not too big, not too small.
It's like paying a bus fare. Using a £50 note to pay a £3 bus fare isn't practical. The bus driver would be quite annoyed. Similarly, paying it with three hundred 1p coins would be annoying and impractical too. So things in the middle - £1 coins, 50p pieces, £5 notes - are more appropriate to the task.
If banks or states used copper as a standard it wouldn't be very practical for wealthy people saving/borrowing/trading/paying tax in large amounts. On the flip side, a gold standard wouldn't be very practical for poorer and more regular people with their much smaller amounts. Some that may never have even seen a gold coin in real life before. So silver is the happy medium.
It's Only Natural
Historically there were silver "standards" not because people chose to have silver standards, but because that was just the most natural way to do things.
On top of this, it also wasn't a "standard" as we would think of a "gold standard" now. They weren't issuing paper currency backed specifically by silver (though banks might issue written IOUs). The "standard" was just the official measure. Gold, silver and copper coins were all equally valid and used for trade. The standard just stated what the official conversion rates were.
So, to give a simple example, let's say all citizens have to pay one silver coin in tax. However, there are poorer people that don't have access to silver, so have to pay in copper. The state then says how many copper coins equals one silver coin so people know what to pay. Of course, in the real world, the value of copper in relation to silver is changing all the time. So the official rate is there just to make tax collection simpler. It could be they set the rate as one ounce of silver being equivalent to forty ounces of copper. That being a close approximation to the real market value at the time. However, this wouldn't be a good approximation forever, as values fluctuate. Therefore, sometime later, the official rate might be changed to better reflect the changing real world market values. Maybe changing to 41 to 1 instead, and so on.
So, again, these official rates were approximations of a real world market where people used metal coins - of all different metals - that had actual physical value relating to their scarcity. That floated around relative to each other, and kept each other in check. If gold became too scarce people would use silver, and vice versa. Like in the simple example above, where you could pay your taxes in copper if you didn't have silver.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, in the real world market place anything can be a currency. It's only the demand that tax be paid in a specific currency that moves things away from this more natural state of affairs. You could make that argument that the poorer people with copper coins in that simple example earlier could have just converted them to silver to pay their tax (i.e. buy one silver coin with their forty copper coins). However, if people had to get the actual silver, that demand would push the value of silver up further. So the real world silver price would get skewed by the demand this special status creates.
Likewise, if you have a gold standard where everything must be paid in gold, you end up with an unnatural economy.
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