Trusting currency...

There is a popular belief that currencies are okay if people trust them. Really. Let's look at that. What does currency let you do? Currency is a measure of value. If inflation weakens a currency, it takes more currency to measure the same value. So where does the value come from? If you think about it, value comes from the ground: agriculture or mining. All else is derived from that. It takes labor to manage either i.e. planting, weeding, harvesting, packaging and transportation for agriculture and digging, processing ore, refining and maybe machining for mining products. All these steps are value added and the value comes from human effort, also known as labor. Currency allows you to trade labor value with someone else. Currency that is not redeemable in something like gold, silver or other commodity can only be redeemed by someone's labor. That makes unbacked currency a promise to pay (redeem) someday in the future. Historically, all such promises end up being broken. Someone who labors to get, refine and coin gold or silver (or other metals) is creating value by working to purify the metal and put it into a usable form. There is no promise to labor someday because the labor has already been done. Trust is not an issue. The coin can be weighed and tested for purity. In fact, historically, coins have been made and "reeding" (the small vertical cuts in the edge of the coin) was added because any filing of the edge would show up instantly alerting users that someone has tampered with the coin. Central bankers and governments hate gold and silver (or any other metsl backing for that matter) because the limited amount of backing prevents them from determining the currency's "elasticity" (ability to inflate secretly) allowing them to steal purchasing power from the population. Fiat (created by governmental edict) currency allows just that. If someone can secretly reduce the value of the currency you use, you are paying a secret tax. Precious metals prevent that additional tax, preserving the purchasing power of the people. Don't let the bad guys kid you, they hate gold and silver because they force governments and bankers to be honest. Trusting government more than gold or silver is truly folly.