BreakPoint
Random Posts (An alternate to side discussions)
@Ben wrote:
How do you get a broken sled out of the back country after a failure like that?
Very carefully. 
Drivetrain's fine, but the steering was b0rked. It turned left fairly well, but trying to turn right was met with a "nopenopenopenope" and a slide down the hill.
Snaked our way through the trees and back to the trail, and took it easy on the trail back.
Loading it was interesting, as soon as the carbides hit plywood it took a sharp left turn. And by "sharp", I mean the left ski was hanging off the ramp and tied up in the door cable. 
It used to be that people understood that it was the material a coin was made from that made it valueable...
| face value of coin | $ 1,000,000,000,000.00 |
| spot price of platinum ($/oz) | $ 1,675.00 |
| volume of platinum (gallons) | 208444 |
| my swimming pool's volume (gallons) | 15000 |
| number of my pools solid-filled with platinum | 13.9 |
Unless the king president makes a coin 14x larger than my swimming pool...
@jcarmody wrote:
... Unless the
kingpresident makes a coin 14x larger than my swimming pool...
The $1T coin would have had Obma's face on it. That's where the value would have came from. We have become so dumbed-down and ignorant as a nation. The very idea of a $1T coin should have been unthinkeable because of it's absurdity. But then again, more absurd things have happened. 
Let me ask a question, why would a $20 gold coin, for the purpose of discussion made from "$20 worth" of gold, be worth $20? Why does an ounce of gold have any "value". It is all an agreement among those who are using it. A bushel of wheat is worth a chicken because those that are trading the two have decided it. A coin is an abstract concept that allows the two to not have to tote around 10 sheep, two cows and three dozen eggs to transact their business. So a 1 trillion dollar coin has no real intrinsic value, any more than the $20 gold. Gold became the "standard" because it was rare (can't have the masses minting their own coins) and because it lasts forever, those iron coins kept staining my pockets. If you use the idea of the coin's value representing the actual "value" of the material it is made from then in the mid 1800's an aluminum trillion dollar coin would have been feasible, there was about a pound (1/2 kg) of the pure substance on the planet. And, post apocalypse (zombie, economic, minor asteroid strike, mass solar ejection, whatever) gold may not have the "value" that some are depending on, where a basement full of freeze dried MRE's, or a warehouse of bottled water, would.
@LV_Pro wrote:
Let me ask a question, why would a $20 gold coin, for the purpose of discussion made from "$20 worth" of gold, be worth $20? [...]
Personal preference, nothing more. Really, I could ask what "$20" means. Money is just a medium of exchange and I'd prefer to exchange value for value.
It wasn't always that way. That's why I posted about the size of the trillion-dollar coin. If gold was money you could save, spend or make nice PCB contacts with it (among many other things).
@Intaris wrote:
[...]But the value of money (being a non-tradeble item in itself, I mean you can't DO ANYTHING with money except spend it or save it.
Imagine the problems if a California dollar was worth only half a Texas dollar.
Well, imagine if a Mexican peso was worth only about $0.08. In your example it would take 2x California dollars to buy what you could buy with Texan currency. Otherwise, arbitrage will settle the discrepancy as folks rush to capitalize on the difference in the markets.
In order for a common trading region (country) to function economically there must be a general consensus on worth.
Right, and people generally agree that gold is valuable.
Otherwise you just barter for everything and you accelerate armed conflict with groups trying to forcfully monopolise the local resources.
That's a pretty strong statement! Just for fun, consider "taxpayers" to be "the local resources" and re-apply your argument. Wait, you may be right...
