[anticodon]

Ghaddafi planned to stop selling oil for dollars and sell it for gold.

It would be a disaster for US, because US enjoys benefits of printing as much money as it needs to purchase anything from abroad exchanging zeros and ones that cost nothing for real natural resources and goods from other countries.

Just about any country leader that announced plans to stop using USD for trade, was killed in some way.

Or, if USA isn't brave enough to openly attack the country, they declare it "hostile" and try to suffocate using sanctions (e.g. Iran).

[dmitriid]

> ones that cost nothing

Second largest economy in the world

Second-fourth largest industrial country in the world

...

costs nothing

[akiselev]

More military spending than the rest of the world's superpowers and their vassal states combined...

Costs nothing!

[dmitriid]

1.5 trillion in trade with EU, China and Japan alone.

But yeah, sure. The dollar is a worthless piece of paper that has nothing behind it except the military.

[anticodon]

USA has a huge and constantly increasing trade deficit, meaning that it buy more goods and resources than it produces itself. It's an unequal trade that greatly benefits US and makes all the other world poorer with each batch of printed money.

Industry output percent in the USA GDP is small and becoming smaller with every year, while US consumes about order of magnitude more energy per capita than even EU countries.

This is why US needs most expensive army in the world and the need to rig elections, organize coups and revolutions in almost every other country.

[akiselev]

I used the same ironic "Costs nothing" phrase as you did.

But yeah, sure. Get all defensive about someone agreeing with you. :)

[dmitriid]

It's hard to translate sentiment and emotions through short text in the internet :)