Originally Posted by
deafAncient
Actually, there is a solution for using gold in a western economy based on electronics. What you do, is do away with the national currencies and start pricing things in terms of ounces/grams (here, we use troy ounces) of gold/silver. A blouse might cost 1.3 ounces of silver (or grams, rather, for countries like India), or a particular computer might cost .75 ounces of gold. Because of these minute fractions, this could be handled with a card, something like a "gold card" that handles deposits of physical gold and silver into the account and disbursement into transactions electronically or withdrawal at the "warehouse." So, you go to your store and buy your goods for the week or next several days, and the cost is 2.35 ounces of silver or a very small fraction of gold (cash registers will be equipped with software capable of accessing the relative market values of gold/silver ratios and offering the cost of the purchase in both gold and silver, or maybe configure the register software to detect the metal to be bought with in the account magnetic strip or chip in the card. Some people have a lot of gold, some only a bit of gold, and some cannot afford but silver or even base metal.
Thing is, ideally, this would not be handled by a bank, but by a "warehouse," where a warehouse is set up to accept deposits of physical gold and silver for a small nominal fee for storage and is NOT ALLOWED to loan out the metals in storage for any purpose, only for safe keeping for the owners. This entails depositing only essayed metal bars or known coins authorized so as to maintain purity of the metals being deposited (can be nondestructively essayed on the spot for purity). In return, a gold card is issued to the customer for use against his metals. The interesting part is that the warehouse issues two kinds of cards; one for customers, and another for former customers. If there is a fractional amount left over in the account after all the metals have been returned to the customer down to the smallest fraction available, like the smallest coin of .5 grams used to reduce the difference down to .43 grams of gold left in the account after all gold/silver has been returned. The second card, for former customers, contains the remaining balance and is more like a pre-paid credit card, becoming useless and destroyed after the remaining balance has been used up in transaction(s). Like a gift card you use to put towards something, and then you pay the rest owed at the register with your own money.
Bookmarks