I'd base it off of love and compassion, and instantly watch the value sink to the negatives.
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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But then profits would hinge upon such concepts. It might actually be brilliant long term.
And then you ask yourself, is it possible to game the sociopath into working for humanity instead of against it?
Pogs
Finally, my collection of Pogs will be worth something!
Remember ALF?
He’s back!
In pog form!
If you want a non-fiat currency, you want the backing thing to:
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Not be easily produced/obtained, and to have a fairly predictable cost of production/obtaining.
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Be fairly-rare, so that it can be value-dense, to reduce storage and transportation costs.
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Not degrade.
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Be hard to counterfeit.
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It would be nice if it were divisible.
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Not have much by way of critical non-backing uses, so that its use here doesn't distort that.
Probably gold. It ticks pretty much all the boxes; there's a reason that it was used in the past.
The big problem for me was something Ben Bernanke said: the process of taking gold out of a hole in the ground (a mine) just to put it into a different hole in the ground (a vault) is a pretty terrible waste of resources. And you need to continue mining it in order to stave off deflation, which means you have to keep doing that forever; and eventually that's just not going to work anymore. Mining gold is only going to become more expensive as time goes on.
Not to mention, our economy is too big and moves too quickly for gold to be a moderating force to inflation anymore. The numbers are just too big and moving too fast; we need a more nimble lever, and right now interest rates are a pretty good one.
All of that to say, there's a reason every country has come off of the gold standard since the mid- to late-20th century.
All of that to say, there's a reason every country has come off of the gold standard since the mid- to late-20th century.
Because controlled inflation is necessary for an economy to function and nothing but a fiat currency has the desired characteristics.
Gold is still the best option if you insist on having the currency backed.
Sure taking gold out of a hole to put it in a different hole is a waste of resources but there's kind of a driving force towards that because if the currency is actually useful then people aren't going to use it as currency and if it's easy to produce they're going to counterfeit it
Same with cryptocurrencies, they're hard to produce and functionless, so a huge waste of resources, and frankly same with (high frequency) trading of stocks, as you don't own them when the dividends are paid yet you put huge resources into them because other people want them because of their inherent value
But doing something just for the sake of finances...it doesn't add anything to the world. The original question was "what do you pick?" and I don't like the idea of picking an energy-intensive activity that doesn't help the world in any way.
I mean we would use gold in electronics a lot more if it wasn't considered valuable. So it's not perfect because it actually has a wonderful use outside of being valuable.
Rather unlucky society picked gold and silver to he valuable with how useful they.
It could actually be a benefit if it does slowly degrade. Let's support work, not hoarding.
That's what inflation is and why governments target a low but positive level of inflation with monetary policies. The fact that your dollar slowly loses value pushes you to reinvest it. Very few rich people are just sitting on piles of cash.
If they didn't also aggressively suppress increases to minimum wage and tax recapture benefits, I might agree, but in the long run inflation does more to devalue labor than it does to mitigate hoarding.
I mean the hack which leads to the best result would be pegging it to the Euro, Pound or Yen as a strong currency controlled by a US ally
That said, backing it with recaptured pollutants or something would be interesting as although it has no inherent value, that's no different to how it is currently and it'd be interesting to see the mechanics of how people act
crypto currencies. Just to fuck with all those crypo shills.
Seeing heads explode because of USD and StableCoins both being pegged to EACH OTHER... yeah, I can get behind that. I'll bring popcorn for you too.
KWh
Energy credits coming in hot.
Maybe people. A country with lots of people should at least in theory be capable of achieving the most "stuff". You already rent people for a limited amount of time when you employ them.
God, imagine a country going into irrevocable debt and having to actually export people.
Also, currency would fluctuate wildly as people immigrate/emmigrate.
Do you count tourists? Illegal immingrants? Legal, but not sovreign, citizens (or whatever the term is for someone working in a country on a visa)?
What if people fudge their measurements?
Does put a direct price on war, i guess.
No way to back any currency anymore. So I choose to be backed as is by a bunch of manmade zeros into a computer network.
The US Dollar.
Gold. Just like it always had been. Then you would finally have balanced budgets
Yes, because the fundamental problem of trying to shovel money at the rich was always caused by printing too much money
Tiny dicks.
We already assume the shitty people have tiny dicks.
If tiny-dick-syndrome person wants money, they need to tell everyone how tiny their dick is.
If they want respect, they can waste their money on penis enlarging cream until they are poor with a tiny dick, or they could be a nice person.
Rubber ducks. Would be sweet to know how many one can get for bills when needed.
Corn Oil earmarked for deep-fryers.
American cheese. Your cheese would gain value over time, because the held amount would diminish in the form of grilled cheese sandwiches!
Pretty sure that's how that works.
Looney Tunes box office figures
McNuggets
NFTs.
Freedom.
So the more money you have, the more freedom you have?...
I think it already works like that.
No, the more freedom America has, the more value American currency has. Our currency would be backed by freedom and eagle sounds, not the other way around.
Greed. The US dollar would catapult to the sky. Capitalism is the economic system based on greed. It has a built-in supply.
That is a terrible choice. You want to back currency with something scarce. I propose backing it with goodwill towards the US.
Currency needs to be backed by something other countries would want and actually hold. If nobody is holding a supply of it "backed" it would be pushing the currency value down.
On a more serious note, it should be something no single country has a majority of control over, and it shouldn't be a limited resource, like gold which was previously used.
Trees? There I fixed global warming.
If every dollar printed meant the US planted a tree, then anytime a tree is cut down (even on private land) you have to turn in a dollar to be taken out of circulation, it technically would work.
I would peg it to the number of weapons (manufactured prior to the change) that are destroyed by that country, plus the number of millionaires and billionaires taxed at more than 50%, less the number of weapons manufactured or purchased by that country in a year and the number of citizens living at or below the poverty line.
Now, if the US doesn't want the value of the dollar to go down, it has to destroy three nuclear warheads and 10,000 assault rifles every year, and house 10,000 people and hike up taxes on Musk and Bezos. China could make the yen a very attractive investment by pledging to destroy their entire nuclear arsenal, driving the value of the yen way up. Russia would go broke even more quickly than they already are as the value of the ruble plummeted.
"What happens when the whole world is disarmed and everyone is housed?" Uh, I dunno, man. Mission accomplished? Like, we should be so lucky to be faced with such problems. And really, in a world without weapons or billionaires, in a world where no one is unhoused, do we even need money anymore?
If we find it still serves our interests to maintain a financial system, tie the value of currency to the elimination of a different societal ill (disinformation, maybe?). Or tie it to scientific discoveries made, or works of art created within each country's borders.
That's not how backing works...
You can't back something with a lack of something, that's just a scheme to reward actions if the actions are performed by others, or nonsensical if they're performed by you; you know the government's just going to produce more cheaper and low quality weapons especially for destroying if that's how the value of the dollar works.
You also need to have two way exchange of the same material - if you give the government 1 dollar they'll destroy weapons for you, but in that situation you should be able to exchange that one dollar for your thing back, but what do you get? Do they reproduce the weapons? Do you have to destroy your own weapons? What if you don't have any?
That's not how backing works...
I know that. But if I'm given the chance to change the way it works, why limit myself? Choosing a random commodity is boring and doesn't solve the underlying problem.
you know the government's just going to produce more cheaper and low quality weapons especially for destroying if that's how the value of the dollar works.
Hence the destruction of weapons created before the edict, minus all weapons created or purchased.
what do you get? Do they reproduce the weapons? Do you have to destroy your own weapons? What if you don't have any?
This is just shifting the problem forward to the endgame of a disarmed, de-billionaire'd world. In that world, currency would represent "some positive benefit to humanity," so maybe you get a portion of a park named after you, or a tree planted in your name.
I know that there are many, many problems with this idea. I am under no delusions that this would work. But the idea is interesting, and thinking about ways that we could incentivize the governments of the world to act in the interest of the world's people is probably a useful exercise.