Sunday
Barter is great, as long as what you want to swap is what the person whose good you want desires, and as long as the goods are perceived as being of equivalent value. In other words, barter is usually completely unworkable.
It is cash that takes the friction out of exchanges and allows an easy transfer of goods – that facilitates the easy passage from the supply to the demand. There are three potential problems that can occur with cash:
1 It fails to hold a stable value (think debasement).
The paper ‘money’ that is currently forced upon the marketplace by government regulation has enough stability of value (so far) that it works. As long as you do not try to hoard it over the long term, it is useful for short-term trades. Those people who accumulate it in a bank account or under the mattress are accruing something that is losing its purchasing power every week.
2 It is not available
It is currently available to anyone who creates goods and/or services that are needed, wanted and affordable.
3 It is traceable.
Today, it is easy to use cash in a way that it is not traceable. When governments intrude into the marketplace, through legislation, taxation or general busy-bodying, then it becomes necessary for cash to be untraceable.
This is what we have today. Fiat money (AKA paper money and base metal coin) circulate reasonably effectively and is untraceable. Businesses that survive by avoiding as many of the regulations and taxes as possible can continue to trade.
C.B.D.C. stands for Central Bank Digital Currency. This is what is being widely and loudly touted as the way of the future. All paper money and junk coins are declared to be no longer legal tender and we all have to go digital.
This means that all transactions will be traceable. The government can stick its corrupt and dirty fingers into every aspect of every transaction that anyone makes.
As money was birthed in the free market, so the de-legitimization of fiat from circulation will force the concept of money back upon the free market.
It will be but the blink of an eye before silver, Gold’s wondrously effective surrogate, reappears in the marketplace. Backyard mints will open up overnight.
And yes, we will have returned to a Gold Standard.
The marketplace will not allow a situation of no cash. The lust for power and wealth and the means to buy votes was the cause of governments taking a monopoly on what was used as money. It will be the extreme extension of that greed and corruption, in the form of CBDCs, which will ensure that the marketplace removes that monopoly.