This is a good debate,
i.e. thoughtful disagreement. Thanks, Phil_S:
Why do you assume that a replacement must exist before it [the dollar] collapses!?
Because its value is rooted in psychology. Right now people sell all types of assets (even gold) to buy dollars. Completely illogical, but that's a reality.
By that logic, every scam called out on the Scam Accusations forum has actual value as long as people believe in it.
Dollar will collapse when people will lose faith in it, when they'll rush to sell dollars to buy something else. That "something else" will become a new universally-recognized replacement.
Lots of worldwide value is locked in dollars right now. That value will not disappear. It will flow into "something else", into a replacement vessel.
Boldface on a faulty assumption. Wealth is not a zero-sum gamenot in either direction. No quasi law of conservation applies. Value
is both created and destroyed.
I have long predicted that the collapse of the dollar and the collapse of industry, technology, and society will be intertwined in a feedback loop. Massive amounts of real value
will disappear. Not flow to something else. Things of durable value will remain; but not many people will have them.
I must now revisit something here:
Right now people sell all types of assets (even gold) to buy dollars.
That is incomprehensibly stupid. It is also a very good way for the people who control dollars to extract the last bit of durable value from total idiots. Well, I dont have anything against that, in and of itself. Total idiots dont deserve to have things of durable value. The only unfortunate part is that there are massive side effects to people who are
not total idiots.
It's a pretty crazy situation. If the virus doesn't recede significantly over the summer, will we stay on global lockdown for 1 year+, while waiting for a vaccine?
A technocratic, industrialized,
globalized international economy based on massive centralization and long supply chains
cannot survive such a scenario as global lockdown for 1 year+.
That is why I accuse headless-chicken governments of destroying the world in a futile attempt to save it from a virus that is not being significantly slowed by all the lockdowns.