Progress isn’t always…well…progress˳
Take what we use for our money, for example˳
Who, today, doesn’t employ a “symbolic” form of money, a credit or ATM card, several times a week (not to mention a day)? These digital transactions, though convenient, don’t actually represent the transfer of physical cash from one hand to another˳ Instead, and in reality, electronic digits are the only things that are getting transferred˳
And not from one hand to another, but from one computer to another˳
Consider this cautionary tale˳ A bank customer – let’s call him Dave – had accumulated 175,000 “bonus points” due to his bank credit card purchases˳ These points qualified Dave to buy, or in bank terms exchange, points for a variety of valuable goods (kind of like a frequent flyer program)˳ He was all set to go˳
At least until a controversy involving real money arose˳ Dave had wanted a top-of-the line gold watch valued at 200,000 points˳ He needed only 25,000 additional points – via more bank credit card purchases and/or cash deposits, deposits he promptly made – and that’s when the glitch surfaced˳
A deposit error involving the computer input of a single zero left Dave short of his watch˳ Fortunately Dave was able to produce his actual paper deposit receipt to expose the bank’s digital error˳ Anxious now to keep its customer happy, the bank quickly “rewarded” him with the missing 25,000 “reward points˳”
All it had to do to make things right was instruct an employee to make a few keystrokes and the additional 25,000 points magically appeared on Dave’s very next statement˳ One second he was short of the 25˳000 digits he had rightfully earned, the next they were in his account˳
All owing to a few keystrokes˳
Not long later, the bank “devalued” its point system, 10-to-1˳ What used to take 200,000 reward points now took just 20,000˳ Again, this complicated devaluation process quickly and quietly took place through the magic of some keystrokes˳ Could our swooning greenback be devalued just as fast one day?
The point here? Instead of good old-fashioned gold-backed dollars or gold coins deposited in a bank, person to person, our new digital money is added, subtracted and transferred by some anonymous someone tapping a few keys on a keyboard˳ And by a digital network doing its thing˳ If a computer said you had $2˳00 – or $200,000 – in your account, depending on the keystrokes made, that’s what you had˳ After all, the bank’s official computer said it was so˳
You see, digits, in themselves, have no inherent value˳ They’re something like electronic fairy dust˳ It literally takes nothing but milliseconds – not sweat – to add, subtract, copy or transfer them˳ Sadly, the same is mostly true of dollars: Consider that trillions of them have been produced by Washington in just the last few years˳ Sure, cash may be a little less convenient to produce than digits˳
But not by much˳
Here’s how you make a million dollars digitally: you tap the number 1 on a bank computer’s keyboard, type in a comma, type in three zeros, type another comma, then type three more zeros˳ Presto! Total elapsed time? Maybe a few seconds˳
Here’s how you make a million analog dollars: you work hard at a job that makes you $50,000, after taxes, a year, and then do that for 20 years˳
Notice the difference? Needless to say, digital money is a politician’s dream˳
Gold, on the other hand, is not reproducible˳ It’s a solid metal with a nice heft to it, and it won’t pass through a router no matter how clever a computer nerd is˳ You could call it real working class money˳ When you own an ounce of gold, you get to own it until you hand it to someone else˳ No one can add, subtract, copy or transfer your gold by tapping on a keyboard˳ No one has ever succeeded in rendering it worthless˳ And since gold is rare and can’t be printed on anyone’s printing press, there’s no danger of politicians diluting the precious metal as they can and do with the U˳S˳ dollar˳ And that’s why politicians hate it˳
Gold has been mankind’s hard money for thousands of years, easily outlasting countless paper currencies…and it’s certain to outlast today’s nerdy digital money, too˳
In today’s great recessionary fog, merely having keystroked digits represent the sum total of your life savings can be, to say the least, a bit unsettling˳ It might be a whole lot smarter for you to have a good percentage of your assets represented by hefty physical gold you actually get to hold in the palm of your hand rather than “electronic fairy dust˳”
Source by https://ezinearticles˳com/?The-Folly-of-Digital-Money,-the-Lasting-Value-of-Gold&id=4742773
