[chrisweekly]

Wow. That was eloquent, and coherent, and depressing. I'd be grateful for someone to counter with something less dismal. Good things are still happening in the world. A positive future remains possible -- but we have to be able to imagine it to bring it into being.

[Dylan16807]

Semi coherent. The greed and corruption is a real theme but would still be 100% possible while on the gold standard.

[immibis]

They'd have to physically steal gold from people, and people would notice that. Or they could mine more gold, but that's hard. Or they could publicly and officially change the exchange rate (of dollars to gold), and people would notice that politicians make it go down, the same way that people notice when politicians make taxes go up (they notice way more than when prices other than taxes go up).

With the current system, they (the central bank) can just increase some people's numbers in some spreadsheets, and the effects are extremely indirect. Nominally this is in exchange for assets of equal value so the situation returns the normal after some time, but that hasn't been happening - the amount of money created this way has not been decreasing at any meaningful rate.

[habinero]

Considering the amount of panics and depressions and general economic insanity that happened on the gold standard in the 1800, none of this is true.

[Dylan16807]

Just selling bonds would have raised more than enough money to give out corruptly.

And corporate bailouts are downright cheap compared to the federal budget.

[immibis]

And it would be impossible to bail out those bonds when they defaulted, nor to reuse the bonds to back money.

[Dylan16807]

> And it would be impossible to bail out those bonds when they defaulted

Well the US hasn't defaulted so changing how a default works wouldn't really affect the trajectory we took. And a default would be pretty catastrophic either way.

> nor to reuse the bonds to back money.

I don't know what you mean here.

[immibis]

Well the US isn't on the gold standard. If it was on the gold standard then it would have defaulted. That's why it moved off the gold standard.

Actually, by moving off the gold standard, it defaulted on dollars (at the time a kind of gold bond) rather than defaulting on dollar-denominated government bonds.

[greenavocado]

You're goddamn right corruption existed under gold. Nobody's claiming it was some purity paradise. But here's the difference: gold didn't enable systemic looting on a planetary scale. Gold didn't prevent sin. it prevented the industrialization of sin. The robber barons were sharks in a pond. Today's fiat-enabled oligarchs are gods reshaping reality. When you can print the fucking rules, accountability evaporates. That's why Nixon's 1971 decision wasn't just policy. It was an engraved invitation for the largest wealth transfer in human history.

Greed and corruption absolutely festered under the gold standard. Boss Tweed embezzled a fortune from New York City coffers, Vanderbilt strong-armed railroads, and Rockefeller crushed competitors with predatory pricing. But here's the huge distinction: gold acted like a leash on a rabid dog. It didn't kill the beast, but it kept it from devouring the whole goddamn village. When robber barons got too greedy in the 1800s, their schemes imploded under gold's brutal discipline. Jay Cooke's bank collapsed in 1873? No Fed stepped in with trillions in printed cash to resurrect his corpse. Markets purged the rot, losers ate shit, and the system reset in years. Not decades of zombie corporations propped up by cheap debt. Corruption back then was like a bar fight: bloody, ugly, but contained. Tweed stole existing gold coins. He couldn't order the Treasury to mint him a fresh fortune overnight.

Vanderbilt couldn't borrow billions at 0% interest from a central bank to buy every competitor; he had to convince investors with real profits, not financialized vapor. Fast-forward to today: fiat didn't invent greed. It weaponized it. LBJ funded Vietnam and the Great Society without raising taxes because the printer go brrr. BlackRock gobbles neighborhoods with Fed-subsidized debt while renters bleed. Tyson jacks food prices 20%, blames "inflation," and pockets record profits because fiat decouples prices from real value. Banks peddle toxic mortgages knowing the Fed will bail them out. Politicians pass $6T "stimulus" bills while your paycheck buys less bread than a 1950s factory worker's. That's the cancer Nixon unleashed in '71. Not corruption itself, but its metastasis into a globalized, systemic looting operation where elites privatize gains, socialize losses, and inflation becomes a tax on the powerless. Gold didn't stop crooks. It stopped crooks from becoming untouchable gods. The 1800s proved humans will always be greedy. Fiat just gave them the universe's credit card and told your grandkids to foot the bill.

[sillyfluke]

Well on the bright side blood avocados are still green. Which the poster also seems to appreciate.

[greenavocado]

Lately I've had to resort to buying avocados from Costco in those little plastic cups because whole avocados in many supermarkets in my region have started to spoil too quickly. Sad.

[attila-lendvai]

until people learn money, the concept, nothing will change. and that in turn will hardly happen while the bad guys own childhood (compulsory schooling).