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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16544 Posts |
I have and they told me that you told them.
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
Who told anyone that gold has value? Nobody has to 'tell' anyone that anything has value. As long as it has value to enough people for any reason, even if it's arbitrary, then it has value to everyone. If I have a magic book that I get no use out of, it has value as long as there are people who want to buy it, or trade for it.
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16544 Posts |
Is it not an insult to the word reason that the reason you all think money is worth something is because you all think it is and is it any wonder that they treat you all like idiots when that's the way you all think?
Happy New Year
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-12-31 19:19, tommy wrote: Tell you what, Tommy...I play along with your rhetorical question and games, and I give you straight answers, so let's see you're up for returning the courtesy. I've read posts by you in other threads that suggested to me that you think that gold is worth something, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. So, if you have two straight answers for two straight questions, here you go - 1. Do you, in fact, think that gold is worth something? 2. If so, how is that any different? I agree that it's rather circular, but that doesn't really change the situation, does it? Surely, there are physical possessions that you own that you think have value (computer? car? house? clothes?); if money can be readily exchanged for those things, is it not an insult to logic to say that money doesn't have value? Happy New Year to you, too!
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16544 Posts |
The difference between gold and money is that they can print as much money as they like. Not that money needs even printing these days as they can create it digitally. It's a wonderful illusion money as those in control of its supply control everything. Only something of a limited supply can be mesured in terms of value against things. The value of money, is at this moment, based on compleate utter nonsense. How long is this piece of string you call money? How much are numbers worth they can print on it? Get real!
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
That's a difference, I agree, but IMO, it's not actually a relevant difference. I could draw a horrible picture and put it up on Ebay, and I wouldn't get anything for it, even if I swore never to draw another picture. The fact that it's in limited supply doesn't make it valuable. There are other natural resources that are in limited supply, and they don't have nearly the value of gold. Gold has it's value not primarily because its supply is fixed, but because for purely arbitrary reasons, people want it.
And people want money, too. So when you say "Get real!", I think you have to apply that theoretical ideal to the real world. We all know that money CAN BE measured in terms of value against things, and in fact, it is. Are you going to tell me that you wouldn't take $100,000 in U.S. dollars for your computer? Of course you would, and you'd know that you could go get a new computer tomorrow, and have a whole lot of money left over to buy other "things." I agree that your explanation is a good one for why money devalues, and why things in more fixed supply are good investments and hedges against that devaluation. And the value of money changes (as does the value of gold). But it's a theoretical college thought exercise to even debate whether money "can be" measured in terms of value against things, because we all know that it IS. We all trade money for things just about every day (well, almost all of us; maybe you buy your groceries with gold bullion, but I'm guessing not).
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
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Woland Special user 680 Posts |
We are coming back here to the basic concept of worth or value. I must concur with Lobowolf's formulations.
Our comrade, landmark, has asserted Karl Marx's conception of value, namely that the reason a manufactured product is more valuable than the raw materials that comprise it, is because of the labor required to effect that transformation. This is an erroneous concept that has served as the foundation for much pernicious nonsense and incalculable human suffering. tommy also seems to be promulgating an erroneous idea, that gold, for example, has an intrinsic real value, whereas money has only a consensual value. The fact of the matter is that value is set only by market forces. Nothing has value unless someone in the market wants it. Not even gold. The fact that gold prices go up and down should indicate that gold does not have a stable, intrinsic value. It is only valuable because a large number of people want it and are willing to pay for it. The value of a commodity or of a manufactured product has nothing to do with the labor that may or may not be required to produce it. The values of commodities and manufactured products reflect nothing but a desire in the market to obtain them. To Karl Marx, the fact that an automobile commands a higher price than a similar weight of raw steel, glass, rubber, and plastic must be because of the labor that the workers expend in producing it. Therefore, if the owner of the factory withholds from the workers any fraction of the price he receives, he is wrongfully taking it away from the workers. But the purchases of the automobile of course couldn't give a rat's *** about the labor that went into it, and the price they are willing to pay for it ultimately has nothing to do with how it is produced, where, and by whom. It is all well and good for a small cooperative of handicraft workers to vote themselves whatever wages they want, but their business will have to survive in the marketplace, and if they do not adjust their wages to accord with the market value of the goods they produce, they will soon be out of business altogether. Let alone the capital required to build their workshop, set up a distribution network, and support sales. A good example of the mischief that can be done by arbitrary wage and price controls is in the provision of medical care. Market forces have been eliminated, and instead, the Federal government has instituted a Byzantine schedule of payments based on a "resource based relative value scale" that attempts to determine how much the performance of an emergency appendectomy is worth, for example, when compared with a total hip replacement, the insertion of an IV catheter, or a psychiatrist's initial evaluation. If applied across the entire economy, the value of driving a garbage truck for one hour would be specifically compared with the value of waiting on tables in a restaurant for one hour, teaching French literature to undergraduates for one hour, and performing close-up magic in a small cabaret setting for one hour. It's obviously an impossible task. Far better to let the market set the value of things, and allow the millions of free and independent purchasing decisions that free individuals make every day, each one based on his or her own personal preferences and values, to determine the outcome. W. |
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RWhit Regular user 151 Posts |
He's still dead and she didn't go
itricks.com/news/2011/12/tenko-did-not-attend-kim-jong-ils-funeral/ |
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