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And gold's doing quite well today. I don't think I fully appreciated the fact that it is cold storage custodiable money. I'm definitely not custodying any of it, but there is Bitcoin and there is gold and the rest is just paper.

Actually I don't know if gold can be money and not just store of value/collateral, not sure what the coin size denomination would have to be.

If I were a bank in a small town with no internet and no electricity, I could have a vault and issue currency backed by the gold.

Each piece of paper that I issue would match an entry in my journal. I would just need the citizens to let me know who they give the notes to so I could make sure no one is counterfitting my birch bark notes (paper has been used up in this economy).

Comte de Sats Germain 9mo ago

I've seen some gold money that was paper money with enough gold leaf on it to be a store of value as well as medium of exchange. At least I assume it does... Its really cool looking. But I don't own any.

If you want whole coins to be gold, or electrum so its not super soft (that's gold and silver mixed), then I think we'll need to mine the Psyche asteroids. Supposedly there's enough gold in those asteroids to make gold worthless, if it were all brought back to earth.

What I like about the possibility of gold becoming transactional money again is, the existence of bitcoin might prevent debasement, since any debasement will cause a flight to safety into bitcoin. Or the gold money gets debased, but its fine because bitcoin exists - then democracies can be retardedly irresponsible and people don't have to fear the socialist collapse and the genocides they invite.

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Discussion

gojiberra 9mo ago

oh that sounds cool--paper money with gold dust in it. it could just be burned and the gold can melt into a bigger UTXO. Gold Utxo consolidation would just be a pot with burning dollar bills in it.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 9mo ago

gold pressed latinum :)

gojiberra 9mo ago

star trek! i had to ask Ai as I did not watch star trek, star wars or any of that. my childhood was just reruns of "Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier." I don't think there was any money mentioned in those movies. Except for the riverboat episode in which the pirates sink with treasure in the boat.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 9mo ago

yeah, they have some funny ideas about money in star trek, they make it seem like only those big ear guys use it but that's nonsense obviously... the replicators meant that there was very little need for basic construction and the computers could build a lot of things but the simple fact was they were a military organisation, and the stars of the show were a recon ship, essentially, that's why they were so science focused

gojiberra 9mo ago

hmmm. i sometimes wonder if military type orgs could be better run than private enterprise. especially if the hypothetically well-run military institution had unlimited funding that hamstrings the private enterprise.

Amtrak has this problem .it's national and threatened to be privatized. but then when things get privatized, the vision gets reduced to short term profit. so bold visions need national support, even if it's just the vision of sitting on a train across the desert.

privatized services start skimping on the station cleanliness and the silverware turns to plastic etc.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 9mo ago

military organisations don't have unlimited funding, they do however have the lion's share of the budget from taxation

without taxation, militaries cannot be expeditionary, aggressive forces

the original model for defense for the USA was militias, which were entirely self funded... soldiers were all like the same as a reserve force in that they did other work much of the time and maintained their training to stay effective

just keep in mind that prior to the Federal Reserve, the federal tax was like 2%, and the USA had no standing army before this, and if they needed money they basically would beg for it, mainly from the wealthy people whose products were needed and whose interests were in maintaining security

the modern social democratic state is an evil institution that grows like a cancer and consumes the wealth of the people, and gives nothing back, scaling government back to pre-20th century would be worthy of being called a golden age

Comte de Sats Germain 9mo ago

I think Amtrak will become good when bitcoin is the dominant money. That's because I think corporations become a lot more efficient when they can't beg for the money printer to go brr - that's basically what's going on when corporations get special deals with government, special interest rates, guarantees, mote-raising regulation, etc.. Look at how the railroads were originally built - the only thing the government did was offer a prize of 1 or 2 million dollars (forgot, but not more than 2 mil) to the first RR to reach the west coast. The RRs had to buy the land - there was shady stuff, but they paid. The winner got the prize, the losers had to figure out how to turn a profit to repay debts.

One of Amtrak's problems is that they are required to provide service to places that aren't profitable. And they aren't profitable because suburbia spreads out the population, so the traffic at one station is always relatively sparse. Hard money fixes suburbia, too. Land/homes stop being a store of value, people lose whatever incentives they've had not to have chickens, and population reorganized to both higher and lower densities. I would definitely not want to own a suburban house while bitcoin is monetizing. Anyways... Amtrak will be fine after the US realizes it actually does have to learn from the models built in other countries.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 9mo ago

amtrak shouldn't exist... idk if you read Atlas Shrugged or played any of the Railroads! games but before the mid 20th century all train companies were private businesses, pretty much also all across the world

if a business can't be run as a private company it isn't a viable enterprise, there should not be any exceptions to this, because the only way to fund them is to take people's money away for it, it doesn't matter which way you frame it, that's extortion if people don't give it voluntarily.

that's the point - the train company should be funded by its customers, not arbitrary other people

Comte de Sats Germain 9mo ago

Oh, as a government thing, it definitely shouldn't exist. I think the entity will probably continue on, though. It'll privatize.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 9mo ago

and it will become way more efficient if they do, i like how Trump is razoring the size of the federal government but i'm sure he will be fought every step of the way and the result will be middling, and people will forget these times and let it slide back to shit again in the future. Unless maybe something else happens to end their tyranny.

Comte de Sats Germain 9mo ago

Bitcoin will fix it. I think Trump has to give some oligarchs military spending to get their support against the welfare oligarchs. War is obviously stupid, but I'd rather the government literally light the money on fire than make more people dependent on welfare in all its various forms.

gojiberra 9mo ago

I guess I'll survive if Amtrak privatizes, but what about porta-potties in city parks.

I'm so tired of public restrooms being "closed for maintenance" and contracts given to some porta-john provider ("Honey Buckets" in Texas).

And all the portajohns were probably all at the Coachella event last week and sprayed out and installed at the kite festival this week

And I will use one next week at the ride-a-retired-train festival next week.

Meanwhile the umbrella portajohn company is buying Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 9mo ago

yeah the government used to pay for toilets to be maintained, funny how they don't seem to be able to do that now... too busy raising their own pay rates endlessly and demanding the government issue more debt to cover it, while we have to pay more taxes on the other side

happened all over the world... in bulgaria one of the solutions is private companies take over the toilets and they charge like 30 cents to use it, TP included at the counter, would be good if more countries would adopt this strategy... and they really need an attendant at these things, so they don't go for a day or more without service

here on madeira, there is a few public toilets in parks and you see the cleaners in them pretty regularly, yet ironically, at the one right next to the main town hall of this area i live in, is pretty awful and smelly and poorly maintained, but the ones in the tourist district are good

if they aren't gonna maintain them, they should sell them and let private individuals make it profitable enough to keep a person there to watch over them and clean up any messes that arise through the day... i'd happily pay to use a toilet that is actually really nice and clean, i think everyone would

but that shades into the other issue that these corrupt governments, especially local ones, are doing all kinds of things that result in escalating street crime and the junkies make a mess of the toilets because they are out of it and don't have any moral fibre

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 9mo ago

yeah, that's the thing... it almost seems like they put trump in to pull things back a little so it doesn't lead to total loss of trust in the government, and then once everything seems nice again they will lets the rats back out to play

jamw 9mo ago

I recall this from Voyager, which always made me smile.

https://video.nostr.build/c383aae3a410fa929f64f4b8d7ef0e41bc2103debc76e0366c7f332decfbcaab.mp4

gojiberra 9mo ago

Very cool. It's so funny how we write stories that become the future