Quote from: Lexington on November 22, 2010, 02:53:40 PM

Quote from: creighto on November 22, 2010, 04:45:56 AM

Quote from: Lexington on November 22, 2010, 03:40:58 AM

Gold is no longer money and it should remain that way.

Gold has been money for nearly all of recorded human history, and remains so; despite the desires of governments. If that were not so, it wouldn't be worth much more than lead, and certainly less than many other heavy elements. Uranium, for example is much more dangerous and capital intensive to mine and refine than gold, yet has recently been described as being in a bubble rally for breaking $60 per pound. Gold's current spot price reflects it's position as an ideal, physical money. That has never not been so. The primary advantage that Bitcoin holds over gold as a trade currency is that 1) you can't transfer it over the Internet and 2) if you could it would still impose a transit overhead well beyond a transaction fee.

If you are attending the University of Kentucky as an Economics student and you have been taught that gold isn't money, you should consider transferring before you learn some more falsehoods that are difficult to overcome.

I use the word "money" for lack of a better term. Read my definition of it above. It is an internal calculation of value. It is not part of the material world.

Gold has been used as money in the past. However, this stopped for the common man after FDR and it stopped for international trade after Nixon. It hasn't been money since. We have been using fiat dollars to make our mental calculations.
Gold is an excellent wealth reserve(the best wealth reserve) but it is not money.
Also, I am not university trained. They teach crap economics in all universities.

If you think gold is money then find me somewhere that you can buy something directly with gold. Find somewhere that a person uses gold to calculate value. Find somewhere that gold settles international trade imballance. It doesn't currently exist.

You are confusing a currency with a money. They are related, but distinct concepts. Gold is an ideal money, but only a fair currency. Coins used in the past were all (ideally, not actually) minted to the same standard weight of gold, silver, or copper. This creates a defacto unit of currency, but physical coins are a poor currency because they both have mass and volume. Fiat currencies have done well in the industrial age because they are representations of a numerical unit. This is why Bitcoin is a currency, and not a money nor a commodity; as it is a pure unit without any physical representation required.

And I take offense at the statement that all Economics courses are crap in American higher education.