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So this happened last night...
Wife: You need to get to the dentist, we don't know what state your teeth are in.
Me: Arizona.
Son (whose teeth are in question): Solid.
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State of despair?
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant Anonymous
- The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine Winston Churchill, 1944
- Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference. Mark Twain
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The problem with cat filters is that it only takes 3 or 4 cats to clog them up and then you have to replace the damned thing.
If you can't laugh at yourself - ask me and I will do it for you.
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You haven't met my cat. He clogs filters by himself.
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Is the lawyer's name Schrodinger by any chance?
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Go to school and finish high school as one of the best in your class.
Attend University for at least four years.
Pass a pretty difficult bar exam.
Find a job, learn even more, get experience.
Climb your way up the ranks to become a lawyer.
Earn shitloads of money.
Can't turn off an ing filter that your 4-year old turned on.
That's not criticism, I simply acknowledge the struggle
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Haha! That's exactly what a cat would say!
I am not fooled!
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Higher education doesn't cover everything.
Sign in our lab:
OK, so you have a PHD. Don't touch anything.
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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Ha, ha, ha ... a good one , BTW what is a cat filter ...
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yep .. was a joke of mine but thanks anyway
I would use a word such as "avatar"
"my cat avatar" sounds neat
cheers
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Ha..
Now you get to laugh at both your joke and me.
Sounds like a win!
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No ... it is against my rules to joke about persons ... absolutely,
I prefer teaming-up... ,
Cheers, have a good day
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A lawyer kitten; that's a new one.
Think he's a law abiding kittizen?
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With all the current interest in cryptocurrency, it made me think (again) about its intrinsic value ... and it brought back memories of when I first encountered "strange" currency in my youth: 8,000+ lb. Yapense stone "coins".
They even had their own "block chain": word of mouth.
Quote: an example to support the thesis that the value of some form of money can be assigned purely through shared belief in said value.
Rai stones - Wikipedia
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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What's the exchange rate of yapese to DogeCoin[^]?
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Were it only shared belief rather than imposed belief.
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Gerry Schmitz wrote: With all the current interest in cryptocurrency, it made me think (again) about its intrinsic value .. Ah, my turn
Intrinsic, means the uses it has. Think wood, if you would; wood has some uses, and is always valuable; yes, there's supply and demand, but supply is plenty, and demand too. Its value is determined most by its uses.
Same goes for metals, ever since we went trough the bronze age. The stuff is usefull, creating demand. There was no demand before usage. Why bother with bronze if you're in the stone age?
The Spanish word for money is silver.
So, BitCoin. It's only plus is being rare and a lot of people piling into to it, afraid to miss out. Something like diseased Dutch Tulips (look it up).
It collapsed. It was rare, yes, and hence worth money in good times. But like art, in bad days, its use is determined by usage, and contrary to gold or silver, it has none.
Intrinsic value of BC is zero. It has no value, since it has no use outside trading. Gold and silver are money because they are valued like a resource equal to wood. We can do stuff with it. And the more uses, and the rarer it is, the higher the value.
Gold isn't money because it is money; it is a resource, rare, and with lots of uses; it does not chemically react with most other sh*t. And our bodies accept it as if it part of us (inflammation for anything else), which is why early dentists used it. It became money, because it easy everyone had a use for it, it easy to trade, and it easy to divide.
Silver same story; interacts with oxygen (it will "rust" and turn black), but it has more uses than say, copper. Silver kills bacteria for one. One of the best conductors too, outside gold. Hence, best USB cables have gold plated connectors; still a lot of silver in modern phones.
The most expensive resource we know, becomes money. All the rest is "fiat", paper promises. You know, promises like the government debt to ever repay those. Meaning, paying their debts (look up ours, or the one of the US) in resources. Imagine that debt in value of wood. There's not enough wood on this planet. In theory, all the great nations bankrupt in terms of wood. Or eggs. Or cheeseburgers.
BC is great, from a trader perspective; everyone wants one. But it has no intrinsic value outside being rare. As is art. It's rare. And has no value in a war, since all it has is trade-value no intrinsic (real) value.
Yes, studied the subject for some years, just like software. If it has no real world-use, it has no real value during a war. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't have, just means market prices don't apply. You may be forced to sell well below value; but during wars that also applies to gold. And wood.
..and iron. Coal. Anything that has any real use in the real world. So BC is a step up on art and "fine" wine.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Quote: Intrinsic, means the uses it has.
That's as far as I got.
(Intrinsic: naturally; essential.)
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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Which is all you need to know; during war, eggs are currency.
Art isn't.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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I hesitate to quibble, because if 100 people wrote a post about money, yours would be one of the best.
Gold doesn't actually have many uses, certainly not compared to silver. It is valued more for its beauty. Platinum has more uses than gold, and is also scarcer, yet its price has been less than gold for a while now.
It was Aristotle who first described the attributes that make for good money:
- Durable, which rules out things that rot or rust.
- Convenient, which rules out things that weigh too much compared to their value.
- Consistent, which rules out things like real estate.
- Divisible, which rules out things like artwork.
- Valuable, which rules out things like paper.
Value is ultimately subjective, not intrinsic. This explains why Yap stones were used as money. That culture valued them for some reason, maybe because they could only be moved by someone who could summon lots of workers.
Scarcity should be added to the list, to rule out money that can be conjured out of nothing, like the numbers in a bank account. We use the money that we do only because we're forced to by legal tender laws. Aristotle never anticipated a system that unethical.
If you evaluate BTC on the basis of all these attributes, it passes them all except having a history of being valuable. But that's the one attribute that is largely subjective, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
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Ahr, sorry; you came with a lot of statements, and had to reply to all. You took the time to write 'em, so I need to take the time to answer; you'd want nothing less from a junior programmer defending his code. You need not agree, instead, happy if you don't and explain why.
Greg Utas wrote: I hesitate to quibble, because if 100 people wrote a post about money, yours would be one of the best. Ehr, thanks. But do quibble; it makes this site the best in software. And I might learn if you do. And no, if I knew that much about money, I'd be rich. Positively not rich, so don't take my word on anything. And most bankers will defend fiat and I do too, more on that later in the post.
Greg Utas wrote: Gold doesn't actually have many uses You sure? Did the Spanish erect treasure ships for something without use? Read on
Greg Utas wrote: certainly not compared to silver Which does corrode. It's anti-bacterial, but the medieval Spanish didn't know. And 16:1 for silver vs gold in the ground. Not exactly the match we have today.
Greg Utas wrote: It is valued more for its beauty. Platinum has more uses than gold, and is also scarcer, yet its price has been less than gold for a while now. Gotta be honest, I know very little about platinum. Being scarce doesn't make value, use does. The masks of ancient Egyptians (sometime before the medieval Spanish) did not corrode, using a little bit of gold and hammering it paper-thin. And "chemically inert" has it's uses, as does the fact that it doesn't rust. We don't coat USB plugs in gold layer because it's pretty. It doesn't rust, it doesn't react with the poison called oxygen. (Yes, oxygen is a poison, and it's the reason we age and grow old and die)
Greg Utas wrote: It was Aristotle who first described the attributes that make for good money Yes, yes; no longer care if you right or wrong, you looking for the "why"! Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, that order, and Socrates demanded you question "everything". Even your own beliefs. Demanding arguments for all you know; otherwise, you cannot claim to know. And one must learn what money is first. After that, compound interest.
Greg Utas wrote: Durable, which rules out things that rot or rust. Which makes eggs or wood inconvenient, but during wars, tobacco will do fine. But in difficult times, we accept it. Want to know what currency is? Go to prison. You find that a lot is currency, not all exactly Aristoteles ideal. We make do with what we have.
Greg Utas wrote: Convenient, which rules out things that weigh too much compared to their value. YES! Copper is inconvenient, but has bloody lots of uses as all of us know; and cheap enough to be used in quantity. And was used as a currency in history. Copper was used a an (inconvenient) currency in history.
Greg Utas wrote: Consistent, which rules out things like real estate. And eggs. Each gram of the currency needs to be consistent, and both eggs and wood aren't. The worth of code is even harder to measure. How many lines of code for an egg?
Greg Utas wrote: Divisible, which rules out things like artwork. We could divide art, having a holding and dividing value over computers with multiple people much like BitCoin; it it had intrinsic value.
Greg Utas wrote: Valuable, which rules out things like paper. You mean the paper we pay with? That's legislation, not value. Or toilet paper? Their intrinsic worth is comparable, as the Germans can explain. No, wait, toilet paper has more demand under circumstances, so it's worth more in those cases. They couldn't afford it.
Greg Utas wrote: Value is ultimately subjective, not intrinsic. No; a 100 kilo of wood to a farmer, is worth a 100 kilo of wood. It's depending on supply and demand yes, but not subjectiveness; it has its uses, regardless of your ideas of what wood would be. The farmer buys on use, not on speculation. He pays what he thinks it's worth, and that was once the base of capitalism.
Greg Utas wrote: to rule out money that can be conjured out of nothing, like the numbers in a bank account. We use the money that we do only because we're forced to by legal tender laws. Aristotle never anticipated a system that unethical. He did.
We call it fiat. And that may sound wrong, to have "fake" money, it's not; it was one of the wonders that helped build our modern world. We could not have grown economically this far under a gold-standard. We grew faster, developed more, discovered more. Imagine space-research on a gold-standard; there would hardly be any. As a gold silver-bug, we need fiat to keep up. As a civilization we could not have grown this far without fiat. When more people grew on the planet, so did the monetary base of fiat. You may not feel like it, I certainly don't, but this one of the richest times mankind ever knew. Never before was there this much wealth for us. (Yes, yes, the 1%, but even with them, this explanation stands)
Greg Utas wrote: > Scarcity should be added to the list, to rule out money that can be conjured out of nothing, like the numbers in a bank account. We use the money that we do only because we're forced to by legal tender laws. Aristotle never anticipated a system that unethical. You already mentioned why; you said "valuable". The thing that makes copper more valuable than wood is scarcity, and so for gold versus copper. I can get you a lot of copper, but not much gold. That's why medievel currencies weighed a few grams of silver (a piece o' eight), instead of some kilo's of copper.
Greg Utas wrote: If you evaluate BTC on the basis of all these attributes, it passes them all except having a history of being valuable. But that's the one attribute that is largely subjective, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out. So you invested?
I'm seeing BC from a historical perspective; and it is not a resource. Traditionally, all non-fiat currencies were resources. And all fiat currencies to date failed. BC is not fiat, I agree, but it's not a resource either. It's something I don't know.
Here is what I do know; lot's of people investing in it, because prices going up. But few people realize where they can spend their currency. And during war, it may be worth just as much as art, or more than gold. I can't tell.
My friend bought @13k, panic sold @8k. Don't invest what you can't miss. It will not change our world, it'll be at best another currency. And currencies, besides what Aristoteles said, need be accepted. And I think he did mention that, under your heading of "valuable". Gold is valuable to all of us, because of it's uses. BC is not valuable to all of us, because of it's uses.
Also, this is not trading information; if I knew *anything* about currencies, I'd be rich. I'm definitely not.
--edit
Lots and lots of typos. My English suffered from not interacting here.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
modified 9-Feb-21 20:09pm.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: But do quibble; it makes this site the best in software. This has nothing to do with software. It's far more important.
Eddy Vluggen wrote: if I knew that much about money, I'd be rich Knowing economics isn't necessarily correlated with being rich, though it can help if you don't believe most of the crapola that passes for it these days.
Eddy--you don't mind if I call you Eddy, do you? It's so much less formal--wrote: Did the Spanish erect treasure ships for something without use? They sure did. Back then, gold didn't even have use in electronics or dentistry. It was valued almost entirely for its beauty.
Eddy wrote: And 16:1 for silver vs gold in the ground. Not exactly the match we have today. And only mined at 8:1. Some claim that the gold-to-silver ratio is out of whack at 65:1. Yet platinum is 10 times as scarce as gold. Scarcity isn't everything.
Eddy wote: Which makes eggs or wood inconvenient, but during wars, tobacco will do fine. And in prisons. Money has two roles: for exchange, and as a store of value. Perishable things don't work as stores of value but can be great for barter.
Eddy Baby wrote: We could divide art Try dividing the Mona Lisa, though we could float shares in it. But which shareholder gets to keep it on display?
Eddy Baby wrote: It's depending on supply and demand yes, but not subjectiveness It's all subjective: aggregate supply and demand are just the interplay of individual subjective valuations.
Angel Drawers wrote: And that may sound wrong, to have "fake" money, it's not; it was one of the wonders that helped build our modern world. We could not have grown economically this far under a gold-standard. We grew faster, developed more, discovered more. Here you go astray, but you're in the company of most contemporary "economists". The period of greatest expansion was the 19th century--the gold standard. During that time, prices (outside of wartime) fell by 1%-2% a year as economic expansion outpaced money supply growth. Yet economies boomed.
Needing more money to "lubricate" the economy is bollocks. More money adds nothing to an economy. It's just a big teeter-totter, with goods and services on one side and money on the other. Add money, and all that happens is that the price level goes up.
What we enjoy today is the result of technological progress, not fiat. And fiat is profoundly unethical. The US dollar, which has held up better than most, has lost almost 99% of its value since 1913 when the gold standard ended. Money should be a store of value, but conjuring more of it dilutes existing holders. It's similar to counterfeiting or a company printing share certificates and giving them to cronies, either of which would land regular people in prison.
The last remnants of the gold standard ended in 1971 when Nixon abrogated Bretton Woods. Since then, real wages for the average worker stopped increasing. The economy has become more financialized, with much of the wealth going to the 1%, many of them too-big-to-fail banksters.
One effect of monetary expansion is artifically low interest rates. Lower interest rates should mean that people are saving more and are willing to consume less today in return for more later. Businesses see this signal and expand to develop things with longer time horizons. But the signal can be fake, caused by central bank manipulation. If the money supply doesn't keep expanding, the signal gets revealed as a fraud that causes a recession due to malinvestment. This is one of the main causes of business cycles. We now even have negative interest rates on government debt. If this doesn't tell you that something is horribly wrong, I don't know what will.
The fiat system is perpetuated by sycophants for central banks and governments, who want the privilege to conjure money and direct it towards pet projects and special interests. Do you think anyone would accept this shite given a choice? That should tell you all that you need to know.
modified 9-Feb-21 22:18pm.
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