Why Its Pointless To Argue With Global Warming Believers 2072

Disagree. Large numbers of people want those things for themselves, not merely as a medium of exchange. They might not be usable *to some other end*, but they're still usable.

The same isn't really true of gold. Yes, there's some demand for e.g. gold jewelry, but even that's driven largely by the fact that people believe gold is valuable and they want jewelry made of valuable materials. Gold doesn't really have specific intrinsic properties that make it better than any other metal for jewelry. In fact, its softness makes it a fairly bad choice, from a practical standpoint.

And it's fine with me if gold trades on commodities exchanges for whatever price people are willing to pay. But if you're planning to back your currency up with some commodity, it really doesn't make much sense to choose one that isn't much 'harder' in terms of its value than the paper it's supposed to replace.

Basically, that's what I'm trying to point out.

-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." -- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005