Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: "Backing" - what does this actually MEAN?
by
deisik
on 18/12/2013, 20:04:10 UTC
I can't accept your reasoning as convincing. We started with some abstract property of gold being purely subjective  (i.e. prettiness to the eye) which you called its direct use, and now you turn to saying that we are concerned with what is the value of one dollar, one ounce of gold or one bitcoin. Then you say that the system itself, not the actual coins, is extremely valuable, but can't I say absolutely the same about gold, i.e. gold "system" being highly valuable for its properties, not actual coins? And now you implicitly suppose (not pronouncing it since it would sound too false) that security, anonymity and whatnot of actual bitcoins can't be direct use value for their owners. I am using you logic here, and nothing beyond it, and you suddenly stop using it in respect to bitcoins...

How come really?

The system, and the actual money, are two different things.

Actually, I want you to address the following points. Firstly, if you call gold's prettiness direct use value, I'd like to know how it concerns with what is the value of one ounce of gold. Secondly, you say that it is the bitcoin system itself which is extremely valuable, but I was talking about properties that are related to individual bitcoins as well. If so, why we can't them consider as direct use value like we do in the case of gold's prettiness? If you disagree with that, please provide come convincing reasoning as to why they should be considered only on a system level, meaning they are inapplicable on a per coin basis. And thirdly, explain why then we can't consider gold properties in the same way as you propose we should do in the case of bitcoin properties?