The Onion gives us one for the gold bugs & "kill the beast" types:

[trotsky]

U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion
http://www.theonion.com/articles/us-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money,2912/

"It's back to basics for me," Bernard Polk of Waverly, OH said. "I'm going to till the soil for my own sustenance and get anything else I need by bartering. If I want milk, I'll pay for it in tomatoes. If need a new hoe, I'll pay for it in lettuce."

When asked, hypothetically, how he would pay for complicated life-saving surgery for a loved one, Polk seemed uncertain.

"That's a lot of vegetables, isn't it?" he said.

:rofl:

[realisticphish]

1. I love it

and it always bugs me when people claim the alternative is to "buy gold" because it doesn't have arbitrary value... for some reason. Gold is shiny. Other than that, and using it to coat a few electronic connections, it's totally useless as anything else. How is that different from money?

[FiveGoodMen]

2. "How is that different from money?"

Only insofar as it's harder to find new gold than it is to print new money.

So gold's a little less inflation-prone.

Otherwise, yeah, gold and paper currency are both just tokens of actual wealth.

[realisticphish]

4. yeah

it IS more stable (though it's had problems lately with falling values, at least that's what I had heard)

[ChadwickHenryWard]

15. And that only matters if you are rabidly opposed

to inflation. Inflation is frowned upon by financial types because it lessens the value of wealth sitting in a bank account. The people that study the economy are generally people that have some measure of money already, so they have a vested interest in keeping inflation low. On the other hand, people who owe money benefit from inflation because now the actual value of the quantity of dollars that they owe is less. These people, however, tend not to be economists.

[lazarus]

3. I read an article a few weeks ago

it may actually have been on Cracked. When the Soviet Union broke up, the economy plunged into a complete shambles. Turns out, gold was worthless. Liquor, particularly vodka, became the currency of choice.

My great-grandfather was a moonshiner, so it's in my blood. I just have to remember how to build a still when the shit hits the fan.

[realisticphish]

5. liquor makes more sense

tobacco wouldn't be as much now, but 50 years ago you bet your ass

Although, when you think about it, you're not using the vodka to drink necessarily, you're using it as currency, with its value determined by demand. It's still not strictly barter-based

[lazarus]

6. that's how they used it

but it's better than gold, because it has an end-use. Gold just sits there and looks, well, gold. Vodka you can drink.

[realisticphish]

7. true that nt

[Silent3]

8. It can also serve...

...as an anesthetic, an antiseptic, paint thinner, or rocket fuel.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. The Financial Times suggested the Mars Bar as as index in 1981; The Economist the Big Mac

in 1988, it would seem:

http://specials.ft.com/nicocolchester/FT3WNIFSEIC.html

http://www.economist.com/markets/bigmac/index.cfm

The Economist's semi-serious excuse is that a Big Mac contains a bit of basic foodstuffs, widely available around the world (but which they tend to get in the region where possible), and a bit of basic local labour to produce the thing in a city.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

11. Gold is just as arbitrary as fiat money.

That's why it was used. It had no intrinsic value until after it was no longer used to back up currency. It has no use in barter - it is just a store of value, like fiat money. The only difference is that it makes it harder to regulate the economy - which is what the Libertarians really want. To me, that's like choosing a ship because it's worse at weathering a storm at sea.

[realisticphish]

14. very much this

We had some goldie come in here and start talking about how paper money was arbitrary, etc.

When I challenged him on proving the material, concrete worth of gold, he started talking about economic stability, low value fluctuations, etc. Which are all well and good, but don't address the fact that, as you say, the value of gold is entirely arbitrary in the exact same way as "unbacked" money.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

16. Well, gold is useful in computing.

But I think that is a strike against it. Gold is used as a store of value, and I think that it's important for such a store to have no intrinsic value. I'm not an expert, but it seems that that interferes with the storage of value.

[realisticphish]

17. well sure

its a good conductor, etc (though a lot of those "super cables" are pure bullshit). And diamonds can cut things... but that's not the primary reason they're valuable.

and that's another reason you're correct about it being a strike against. If the best defense someone can give is the conductor thing (which they do) it kid of showcases how pathetic their argument is...

[LeftishBrit]

9. ROFL...

but unfortunately sometimes it's hard to tell some of the serious stuff apart from The Onion!

[ChadwickHenryWard]

10. That is one of my all time favorites.

The Onion pretty much nails it every time, but they really hit that one into the stratosphere. The beautiful subtlety of that last line is something really rare. I think it really drives home the point - we have this whole huge edifice - banks, financial institutions, the Fed, the stock market - but it's all just imaginary. Money is only as good as what it buys. At the same time, it points out that it is what allows us to function as a modern society. So really it makes two points at once - that is a level of brilliance and delicacy that is hard to come by.

[TZ]

12. Has anyone here read Terry Pratchett's "Making Money"?

Its a Discworld novel but maybe the best satirical commentary on gold bugs, bankers and stuff. A perfect commentary given whats happened in the last few years

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. Yes, and I read it in 2008

just after things started hitting the fan. He wrote it in 2007, and I was wondering "did he think there was trouble coming? Or was it just coincidence?"

All Pratchett books are worth reading, but it is a particularly good one.

[TZ]

19. Yeah I couldn't help but wonder about that

it is awfully awfully predictive of the Wall Street/bank meltdown. He's obviously very very observant- or at least knew some very in touch economists.