Re: Money, Money,Sharks Teeth and Oil

Julian:

In the days when gold was money it wasn't necessary to produce a new volume of 
gold for every transaction since the gold could be used over again until it 
wore out.

Byron
 (----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Julian Vein 
  To: WSM_Forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 9:34 AM
  Subject: Re: [WSM_Forum] Money, Money,Sharks Teeth and Oil



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: "balmer_dave" <balmer_dave@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  To: <WSM_Forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 11:34 PM
  Subject: [WSM_Forum] Money, Money,Sharks Teeth and Oil

  >
  >
  > On the surface of things it makes no difference whether the
  > international reserve currency is the Euro or the US dollar.
  >
  >
  > In the good old simple days money was a commodity, gold, something
  > that took human effort to produce, therefore it had value. It is
  > true that as the universal money commodity its use value was as
  > money, a complex issue that I will ignore.
  >
  > But let's return to gold and green paper. When gold was money,
  > really let's face it, it was as useless as green paper, but gold was
  > expensive to produce, it took human effort. In fact what made gold
  > useful as money was perhaps that it was concentrated value, human
  > effort, as well as the fact that it didn't go off or deteriorate.
  >
  > People believed that it had human labour embodied in it and was
  > equivalent to the same amount of human labour embodied in something
  > else. So the 10 hours of labour embodied in a table was worth the 10
  > hours of labour in a gold sovereign, so the table sold for a
  > sovereign, one pound. OK, so it was bollocks but it made some kind
  > of sense. Well a lot more sense than the money system now.
  >
  ==================
  Did that mean that for every commodity produced an equal amount of "gold 
  hours" had to be worked? In other words, were half the workforce engaged in 
  producing gold, whilst the other half were (generally) producing something 
  useful?

  Why is gold still being mined today, apart from adornment?

  Julian Vein 



   

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