gold based monetary system

[Mr Skeptic]

No, its a currency system. Or rather, a Financial System.

 

A company would be free to place whatever margin they want on their product. Say a product has an energy cost of 0.4kJ (or whatever) the company could apply a 50% margin and sell it for 0.8kJ if they wanted to.

 

All the tying into energy would do is provide some rules for how money behaves. A lot of the economic problems caused (such as hyper inflation) are caused by currency not being a conserved value. ie. currency can appear and disappear on the whim of a government which means people, and people are about as sensible as a platypus on a platinum pogostick.

 

Energy on the other hand IS a conserved value. It's value isn't going to wave about, it's value is universal and its value is stable even when there are large fluctuations that would send the stockmarkets into a death spiral.

 

Nope, Earth is not a closed system. We gain and lose energy, and in fact now we're gaining a bit too much energy and not losing enough, so we're getting warmer. Gold, useless as it is for most purposes, is nearly corrodeproof and will stay here unless we lob it into space. It's much more conserved and much easier to trade.

 

Also, using energy as currency would just result in absurd overproduction of energy, with the result that much of it will be wasted or used inefficiently, compounding our global warming issues.

 

for instance, if we had an energy based currency and tomorrow somebody started up a massive fusion reactor that could power half the globe do you know what would happen to the value of a Joule? nothing.

 

Actually, the value of everything else relative to the Joule would plummet. The Joule will still be 1 kg m/s^2, sure, but what would it be in gold, bread, blowjobs, or whatever else you wish to compare it to? Since energy can't be stockpiled no one would want any more than they need, people would have to make up some new less important uses for it and so it would have lower value.

 

Furthermore, energy has different value in different places (just look at the price of energy).

 

now lets take a comparable situation with our own currency. Lets say tomorrow all the governments in the world decided to print currency until their printers broke or they ran out of paper. BAM economic collapse that would make the current situation seem like a slight blip in the market.

 

energy is safe, energy is sensible, energy has rules. I've yet to see either of these three things in the current currency system.

 

Energy is actually one of the most dangerous things there is, especially so when in concentrated storage.

 

ADDITIONAL: Sort of Cap'n. I would also prefer to do away with 'hard' currency and move to an electronic one. more efficient, cuts down on the incentives to perform muggings etc.

 

But i imagine that wouldn't be too popular with enough people so there probably would be a hard version and yeah, that would work like a gold (or whatever) backed currency.

 

Yes, I think electronic currency would be ideal. No more currency getting lost, stolen, used for obvious criminal activities, etc. And the government could actually put some teeth into bans on prostitution and such. But that would just mean it cannot ever reach 100% acceptance, since criminals and their patrons will simply switch to some other form of currency, eg gold.

 

Hm, I wonder if there would be any way to make electronic currency that is also private?

[mississippichem]

Why not tie currency to energy?

 

Energy is used in manufacturing every product, service and so on. That way, the price of something reflects the resources needed to make and supply it.

 

This would encourage efficiency improvements and so on.

 

Also, you can't create more energy and you can't get rid of it either so balancing the books is nice and easy for accountants if they understand how to perform a simple energy balance.

 

This will never happen, but I think a uranium based currency would be interesting. Unlike gold, its got real power and use not to mention it is truly scarce (like gold). Not only is it useful for power plants, ships, and bombs, but it also holds a certain psychological significance much like gold. It does represent clean energy as well.

Edited November 22, 2010 by mississippichem