Doomsday - For the Dollar?

**Kipruss** · 15 Oct 04,, 04:45

Bartering is fine in small quantities but the reason the world uses money as the medium of exchange is not everyone has something someone else wants at the time they want it. I'm pretty sure my supermarket doesn't need a couple of hours of my Accounting time and I'd really like to eat tonight. By the same token I wouldn't accept a set of Julie's golf clubs to do their small business tax returns

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**barrowaj** · 15 Oct 04,, 20:55

Originally Posted by Praxus

We should use actual gold as a medium of exchange or gold backed bills and the Government shouldn't be doing this.

Praxis' idea is a good one. The idea is that if we all used gold as a currency, no one countries' currency would slide in value versus another. However, the supply of gold is not fixed. People can just dig more out of the ground, and suddenly have money.

What we need instead is a system of energy credits. If currency was a measure of energy that can be used, it would represent a fixed producing power no matter where it were used. In countries that made more efficient use of their industries (ie, US, Japan) the energy credits could buy more. This would solve the problem of shifting currencies, and be better than gold or the barter system.