self bump for fail

>mfw I still see this and the phrase "think tank" pops into my head every time.

"Joules" are not a unit of conversion that can deal with trading services or accounting for scarcity.

How many joules for a gram of gold?

Once you define that... yeah, you just have money again.

Better question: How is it not completely fucking obvious to every economist in the entire world that money should and eventually must be based off of energy?

This would solve so many fucking problems.

That would be like switching back to the gold standard. Basically we would peg our money supply to something, in your case energy. The gold standard didn't work because their was no incentive to equalize gold quantities and the supply of money, so equalizing money supply and say energy wouldn't work well either.

>>4624040
what's the story behind this

>>4624041
kilowatt hour.

How many kilowatt hours is a gram of gold worth?

I'm sure you could spend a few minutes googling and get a clear answer.

>>4624041
That wasn't the point. The OP was proposing rather than using currently with a value decided more or less arbitrarily, have currency be backed by units of energy.

It's an interesting idea; arguably energy is the only resource with universal value. Hard to imagine how it would work on earth.

>>4624052
But we already have that conversion.

You see my point?

>>4624054
ALL VALUE IS ARBITRARY. ALL OF IT.

Nothing has value until a human says "I want this". And it only has as much value as what he's willing to trade for it.

>>4624049

Sorry about shitty spelling. I meant "there" where there is a "their"

>>4624052
It would be worth whatever the market determined it was worth. Even if it takes 1kWh to produce 1 gram of gold, it would be worth much more than that.

Given it costs ~12 cents (CAD) per kWh, and a gram of gold is 52.33 CAD, it would cost you 433 kWh per gram of gold.

But how would the fluctuations in energy cost come into play?

>>4624056
Energy is useful to everyone.
Energy has value to everyone.

People say "energy as currency" because they don't understand money and think this sounds cool.

But actually carrying batteries or cans of gasoline around is hard, so I guess we'd have to come up with something easy to exchange that represents energy. Then we'd also need a way to decide how many goods and services energy credits are worth, probably through a market (or by centrally controlling prices, good luck with that pile of fail).

Then large institutions could trade and loan energy credits to each other to allow people to buy things they can't afford up front like cars, education, and houses, and then...

Oh wait, it's just money. We already have that. The only difference is that you're saying you want the government to stockpile energy in a back room somewhere, one joule for every energy credit. And that energy has to sit there and do nothing. Whoops.

>>4624051
According to some reverse image searching results the best bet on the source of the picture is a medical class, they're supposedly in a preservative in that picture, where all the brains individually came from no-one knows, but they are human brains.

Probably from willing donors who contribute their bodies for scientific study when they die.

>>4624071
Money is useful to everyone.
Money has value to everyone.

You see how this works? Because you won't be passing cans of gas back and forth to buy a T-shirt. You'll be passing around something that represents value - money. Are you just saying all money should be backed by an equal value of energy stockpiled somewhere? Because that just means all that energy gets hoarded and not used.

It's not at all better than the gold standard.

>>4624072
You're an idiot.

Currently money is based on nothing but faith in ones' government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

If you don't see how having a particular dollar represent a real, verifiable amount of energy is better than it representing an abstract amount of trust in your governments ability to...tell you that it's worth *something*, then you are a complete fool.

>>4624044

1/10

I only didn't give you a 0 because some people might actually believe you.

>>4624076
>Money is useful to everyone.
>Money has value to everyone.

Except it's not.
Except it doesn't.

>>4624092
Yes it does. If you argue otherwise you're objectively wrong.

>>4624088
Nah, you're the idiot. All money, anywhere is based on the trust that someone else will accept your money. You only want stuff to be hoarded in a back room because you don't understand what money means otherwise.

Currency represents value because we say it does. That doesn't change if you back your energy credits with cans of gas or bars of gold that sit and do nothing in a vault. Hoarding gold or energy and leaving it untouched doesn't give currency "more" value - it's just wasteful.

The only way to trade things with primary value is to actually haul them around with you and barter. Enjoy finding someone who wants your sheep in exchange for a sack of potatoes.

>>4624092
Lrn2 secondary and primary value. Besides, you WILL be trading things that represent value (money, energy credits, pick your label), whether that is directly backed by hoarded energy or not.

>>4624099
He's not wrong, definitely not objectively, simply because the value of money is entirely subjective.

>>4624107
So is the value of anything, ever.

Water is the most vital resource on the planet, besides oxygen perhaps. But they've both free or nearly free. Why? Because they're plentiful and easy to get. There is no objective value of anything - it all depends on what humans want, how badly, how much of it there is, how hard it is to get, etc.

Some things gain and lose value on a whim, because all value is just arbitrarily set by us. Fashion, entertainment, trinkets...

Even food. Sure, we will always assign value to food because we need it to live, but how much we assign and when depends on context and our personal taste and power to pay.

>>4624099
Money that represents nothing but itself is worthless beyond the group of people who agree that it is worth something.

You are saying this is objectively wrong.

Or are you saying instead that money that represents a finite quantity of energy is worthless to those who have no feasible means to claim the energy represented? If so, that's fine. But it does not follow that this makes the value of energy itself arbitrary.

>>4624117
This is also true of energy credits, because you sure as hell aren't going to be carrying cans of gasoline to the mall for trade. Again, look up what secondary and primary value are.

I think we should use water credits. And the government will have to hoard huge tanks of fresh water to reassure me that money isn't a scary thing that I don't understand.

>>4624118
(cont)
Actually, now that I try looking it up, those words are too generic to find a definition easily.

Something with primary value has value because of your actual use or enjoyment of it. The pie you're actively eating, or the chair you're sitting on.

Something with secondary value only is valuable because it helps you obtain or maintain things that do have primary value for you. Money has secondary value - you can't eat or wear it, but it can get you things to eat and wear.

And it doesn't matter what rituals or excuses you use to reassure yourself that money is agreed upon as having value - money itself always has secondary value, even if it's "backed" by energy, gold, water, whatever.

>>4624135
Oh, and again, nothing has value until you say it does. Not even pie or chairs.

As an econ major this thread is truly entertaining to watch. Most people have the right idea though.

>>4624030

da fuq am i looking at

>>4624153
Brains in a bathtub, of course.

>>4624155

brains of what animal and for what purpose?

>>4624164
1) Looks human to me but I have no idea and am not familiar with other mammalian brains
2) Beats me. They obviously weren't needed for much anymore, because they aren't being taken care of or used. Leftovers from dissections by med students?