Background of A Commodity Standard
In order to understand the uniqueness behind the ANCAP proposal, one must understand the history of the monetary system in the United States, which currently operates under a fiat currency standard. In such a standard, the value of currency is set by the federal government. Not long ago, America’s monetary system was built on a commodity standard, where the value of currency depended on a fixed exchange rate between money and a single good or a basket of goods. For a significant portion of American history, the value of the dollar was linked to gold. The price of an ounce of gold was set at a specific dollar amount, and the remaining goods in the economy were set relative to the value of gold.
Read more about this topic: ANCAP (commodity Standard)
Famous quotes containing the words background of, background, commodity and/or standard:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There used to be a thing or a commodity we put great store by. It was called the People. Find out where the People have gone. I don’t mean the square-eyed toothpaste-and-hair-dye people or the new-car-or-bust people, or the success-and-coronary people. Maybe they never existed, but if there ever were the People, that’s the commodity the Declaration was talking about, and Mr. Lincoln.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
“The urge for Chinese food is always unpredictable: famous for no occasion, standard fare for no holiday, and the constant as to demand is either whim, the needy plebiscite of instantly famished drunks, or pregnancy.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)