Seems like such an obvious thing to do, though in practice it won't mean much. Gold and silver just won't circulate with much velocity at all, so long as one can expect the dollar to depreciate more than the two metals.
For whatever reason, gold and silver have had a powerful effect on the human mind ever since we first began to mine metals and work them. Gold has long been associated with the Sun, the source of life, and silver with the Moon, the regulator of Time and the tides of life. For centuries, the value of silver has been pegged at about 1/13th that of gold -- and there are about 13 lunar months in a solar year. Why this is so has been a matter of intense debate among Jungians, libertarians, historians, numismatists, and countless other specialists for a long time, but that it is so, or, at least, has been up until around the mid- to late 20th century, is indisputable. People strongly tend to have a powerful emotional bond with gold, and one of lesser strength with silver, trusting them far more than paper or other, "base" metals as currency. That seems to be an instintive reaction so powerful and so deep that there's no way to eliminate it from people short of genengineering us into some very different form of organism.
I doubt it will come to much, Gresham's law being what it is. If you have both gold and paper money, you're probably going to take your paper money to the store to buy stuff and leave the gold at home for safe keeping.
Some will, some won't. Although, while for a while there may be a fad for using such coinage in those states accepting it, eventually people will get tired of that, put their gold and silver coins into safety deposit boxes or wherever, and go back to using paper money and plastic, simply because those are far easier to use.
Comments 4
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment