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I've been trying to figure out something STABLE to measure gold and silver against. The euro is going to collapse first, which is going to make the dollar temporarily strong. During the termoil of the next several months or years, PM's will fluxuate vs. the dollar like crazy. I need some measure other than the dollar, euro, yen, yuan or anything fiat. Possibly I can measure silver vs. gold and vice versa, or PM vs. land, but land will be measured by FRN for some time. What is an accurate measure?

I've heard that in Jesus' day, a piece of silver (roughly the size of a modern american dime) was the pay for an average man's day of labor. This seems like a decent measure. Not necessarily the same at this point, but a good measuring stick, nonetheless.

What are some other good measures? A meal? A cord of firewood (nod to neilgin)? A loaf of bread? A gallon of clean water?

What do you say?

Time is money. That's a universal concept. In Japanese they say, 時は金なり (toki wa kane nari), which means exactly the same thing. So setting a value to a coin based on labor, i.e., the time a person commits to a job might be the best standard available in this fiat-debauched world. Wisdom straight from the Bible...whodathunkit?

Great post.

I like this:

http://www.kitco.com/kitco-gold-index.h ... mpaign=KGX

OneBiteAtATime wrote:I've been trying to figure out something STABLE to measure gold and silver against. The euro is going to collapse first, which is going to make the dollar temporarily strong. During the termoil of the next several months or years, PM's will fluxuate vs. the dollar like crazy. I need some measure other than the dollar, euro, yen, yuan or anything fiat. Possibly I can measure silver vs. gold and vice versa, or PM vs. land, but land will be measured by FRN for some time. What is an accurate measure?

I've heard that in Jesus' day, a piece of silver (roughly the size of a modern american dime) was the pay for an average man's day of labor. This seems like a decent measure. Not necessarily the same at this point, but a good measuring stick, nonetheless.

What are some other good measures? A meal? A cord of firewood (nod to neilgin)? A loaf of bread? A gallon of clean water?

What do you say?

thats a tough one, a very good "think". Racking my brain. thanks for the cordwood nod, but the reality is that a low % of Americans use firewood, what with the percentages of urban to rural flipped in 2011, from 1911. Thats a tough one. i do know this. a STANDARD has to be established, one without doubt, and the ONLY 'standard" i can think of are what i call the three hard money coins, the 90%'er's, silver, the 25% nickel "nickel", and the 95% copper penny. you have to establish a string relationship between the three, how many coppers to a nickel?, how many coppers to a 25% nickel? how many nickels to a 90% dime? establish that relationship and you worked towards an exchange rate. Just remember, there will there kinds of markets, the "approved market", subject to govt control, and they will not cotton to the three coin string, the grey market, and the black market. Black market could wind you up behind wire, grey mkt you'll have to pay bribes and be harrassed, and the approved mkt will be long lines and cards, with paper and scans and whatever "marks" TPTB deem to enact. But this second, its all theory, the BEST place i know to read of the "facts on the ground" is FerFAL's accounting of the Argentina collapse, go to the bottom of the link i give you and read Fer's long acct, http://ferfal.blogspot.com/search/label ... 20Collapse
Now Fer chose to stay in an urban area, and may God walk with him, he's a good man. My heartfelt plea to anyone wiling to listen is, if you are in an urban or SUB urban area, start looking to GET OUT NOW, if at ALL possible. Fer says rural is bad, but thats Argentina, a whole different country, terrain, social structure. You can look to Jimmy Rawles "American Redoubt", but as for me, i find that whole area....not my 'bag'. i digress though.......my advice would be to try and establish the relationship between these three coinage monetary units, and i cant figure that out precisely. there's a really bunch of sharp guys here, who probably could, which would be invaluable.

OneBite,
Quincy's a good place, right next to the River, all that grain and timber moving along, So. Ill, has nice coal deposits. the soil is good. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but you are positioned NICE. If you stack well, you can trade well. The River is a mighty asset to trade. i dont think folks will be going hungry in Quincy...the only thing you'd ever have to worry about is blue helmets.

and pray it never comes to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m6FvIKukyc

Check out this article on Zero Hedge. Some good thinking and good follow up comments about how to start over once the fiat dollar is officially declared defunct.

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/can-we-build-our-own-economy-ground

Hey guys, it kind of struck me that we are looking at this backward. Everyone in this thread seems to be looking for something stable to measure gold and silver against. But that's what the gold and silver are for. It's the PM/s that are the stable commodity to measure the other unstable papers against, beit the dollar, the euro the dow etc. Measuring against a time value (a days labor etc.) is interesting and has some merit. But don't waste your time worrying about paper measure vs. the PM's. Anything else is a wasting asset because of the constant inflation of fiat currencies. Take a look at a chart of gold vs. the dow. Sad and scary. Also, if 'they' ever wanted to revalue the dollar and make it a money with integrity by putting it on a gold standard, the best thing the economists could do would be, instead of labeling a currency as "One Dollar (the currency name) backed by 1/1900th ounce of Gold", relabel the new currency as straight Gold. In other words, have the new monetary unit as a 1/1000th ounce unit, a 1/100th ounce unit, a 1/10th etc. So when you pull a piece of paper out of your wallet, on the face of it and in each corner it says [certain portion of gold] instead of 'One dollar' etc. Then they are forced to keep that monetary unit at the listed amount of gold (can't be infalted).
Another Silverflake 2 cents worth (copper).

shinnosuke wrote:Check out this article on Zero Hedge. Some good thinking and good follow up comments about how to start over once the fiat dollar is officially declared defunct.

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/can-we-build-our-own-economy-ground

thats really good food for thought. "george washington" does have one of the better blogs on zero hedge...check out his 9/11 entry, neil

I'd trade a silver quarter for a restaurant quality Bacon Cheeseburger, Fries, and Ice tea.

silverflake wrote:Hey guys, it kind of struck me that we are looking at this backward. Everyone in this thread seems to be looking for something stable to measure gold and silver against. But that's what the gold and silver are for. It's the PM/s that are the stable commodity to measure the other unstable papers against, beit the dollar, the euro the dow etc. Measuring against a time value (a days labor etc.) is interesting and has some merit. But don't waste your time worrying about paper measure vs. the PM's. Anything else is a wasting asset because of the constant inflation of fiat currencies. Take a look at a chart of gold vs. the dow. Sad and scary. Also, if 'they' ever wanted to revalue the dollar and make it a money with integrity by putting it on a gold standard, the best thing the economists could do would be, instead of labeling a currency as "One Dollar (the currency name) backed by 1/1900th ounce of Gold", relabel the new currency as straight Gold. In other words, have the new monetary unit as a 1/1000th ounce unit, a 1/100th ounce unit, a 1/10th etc. So when you pull a piece of paper out of your wallet, on the face of it and in each corner it says [certain portion of gold] instead of 'One dollar' etc. Then they are forced to keep that monetary unit at the listed amount of gold (can't be infalted).
Another Silverflake 2 cents worth (copper).

I couldn't have said it better myself Silverflake. PMs should be what everything else is measured against including currency - that is if you want that currency as the intermediary tool of trade/payment of debt between the true money and the object of purchase/debt.

I'd suggest something like the Japanese measure of rice for one person for one year, whatever it was called.

But, I don't get paid in rice or gold, I get paid in faith money, and we are measuring the fall of faith money.

this is not something i worry about, but you are on the right track. I try to train myself to think of other things in ounces or grams of Pms, and the pms themselves i stop watching the prices in dollars and just watch the GSR.

as for the price of pm's in soemthign else, probably the best is in oil. if you look at the chart of how many barrels of oil an ounce of gold buys, its fairly steady over decades. lately, the ratio suggests oil will go up or gold will go down.

your original question presumes that pm's are moving and we need a better tool to measure them than the dollar. while i will agree with you that the dollar is a poor tool with which to measure, i am not so sure that pm's are moving. really, they are staying mostly constant and preferences for them are changing relative to fiat paper of different countries. most financial assets are either investments or necessities. so non-pm investments like stocks and bonds are declining as investment demand shifts to real assets. but gold is not really increasing much relative to food or oil.

this might come as a surprise to some but it shouldn't. gold and silver are simply money. they are not investemnts. there is no "return" per se. there is only a nominal return when measured with a moving measuring stick.

holding gold or silver is really dis-investment. you are out of stocks and into money. we are just conditioned to think of fiat dollars as money, and gold as somthing else, so thinking of gold as money or cash and not an investment is not natural.

silverflake wrote:Hey guys, it kind of struck me that we are looking at this backward. Everyone in this thread seems to be looking for something stable to measure gold and silver against. But that's what the gold and silver are for.

thats a really good point. When the baling wire comes apart, TPTB are fight like heck to maintain 'control'...fiat, or whatever, imo, the best usage of PM's is to secure a means to produce items for trade. to produce items for trade or consumption, we're still locked into liquid fossil fuels, right? MoGas, 87 oct to 93 octane, and Diesel 1 and 2....so what would the gallon of MoGas or Diesel trade to the tenth, or quarter of silver. a 90 dime is ALMOST equal to a gallon of 87 Oct, (you see, thats why i been talking about "rounding".a 90 dime is a .07 toz of silver, just for ease of trade, round it to a tenth, if agreed upon) so a 90 dime, at a tenth is $4, which is a gallon of 87 Oct...BUT i saw a recent picture of a gas station owner accepting 90 quarters for the gallon....which was trading about $6 the 90 quarter, so maybe everything pings off the gallon of MoGas/Diesel. ....but the gummit aint gonna like that, because they collect taxes off of every gallon.

it sure is going to be interesting.

Rodebaugh wrote:I'd trade a silver quarter for a restaurant quality Bacon Cheeseburger, Fries, and Ice tea.

or maybe trade an ASE for a 500 lb feeder ....oh wait, i'm jumping the gun, that would mean an ASE has 700 of 2011 paper dollars behind it..lol

Lemon Thrower wrote:this is not something i worry about, but you are on the right track. I try to train myself to think of other things in ounces or grams of Pms, and the pms themselves i stop watching the prices in dollars and just watch the GSR.

as for the price of pm's in soemthign else, probably the best is in oil.

holding gold or silver is really dis-investment. you are out of stocks and into money. we are just conditioned to think of fiat dollars as money, and gold as somthing else, so thinking of gold as money or cash and not an investment is not natural.

Lemon, didnt see your post, looks like we're on the same track. i never think of silver as an investment, so i guess my thinking is not "natural", which has been a charge hurled at me by both mens and wimmins all my life.....well, just one woman in particular, who if she had any sense, WOULD come HOME!!!....that red haired Irish woman, who's gonna put me in an early grave, God love her!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu42vZ1Blvc

Rodebaugh wrote:I'd trade a silver quarter for a restaurant quality Bacon Cheeseburger, Fries, and Ice tea.

Doc, seriously, how many Roosevelts would you want to do a thorough cleaning and fill a cavity...in the post-FRN world?

most people you encounter will think of gold or silver as an investment because its not everyday spending money.

its really like selling your investments and holding cash.

the 2 things which people don't think about are gresham's law and the legal tender law. i spend my FRN's because they are inferior to pm's and this is just what gresham's law recognizes. people accept FRN's only becuase of the legal tender law.

"Koku": The amount of rice one person eats per year. 330# or 150Kg. That's about as basic a measure as it gets.

Per Wiki: Gresham's law is an economic principle "which states that when government compulsorily overvalues one money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation."[1] It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good", but is more accurately stated: "Bad money drives out good if their exchange rate is set by law."

PMs are not set by law. Yet.

Mossy wrote:"Koku": The amount of rice one person eats per year. 330# or 150Kg. That's about as basic a measure as it gets.

Per Wiki: Gresham's law is an economic principle "which states that when government compulsorily overvalues one money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation."[1] It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good", but is more accurately stated: "Bad money drives out good if their exchange rate is set by law."

PMs are not set by law. Yet.

Dang it, Mossy. I'm the resident Japan expert on this site. You're not supposed to go and write pure wisdom like that.

Great catch. How did you know about koku?

Mossy wrote:"Koku": The amount of rice one person eats per year. 330# or 150Kg. That's about as basic a measure as it gets.

Per Wiki: Gresham's law is an economic principle "which states that when government compulsorily overvalues one money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation."[1] It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good", but is more accurately stated: "Bad money drives out good if their exchange rate is set by law."

PMs are not set by law. Yet.

Shin-san, Mossy, how many toz to a koku?....a 20 lb bag of the short grain rice i like costs, 17 to 21 the 25 lb bag, i rather have rice than wheat, (and i do! lol)...so thats 270 paper...now..so NOW thats a koku equals 6 ASES...okay far enough, i say a koku is TWO ASE's.

but the round eyes will never go for that, have to be wheat. flour goes bad quick, wheat berry's, a 50 lb, 5 gallon costs a titch more than an ASE in paper, $50.

neilgin1 wrote:

Mossy wrote:"Koku": The amount of rice one person eats per year. 330# or 150Kg. That's about as basic a measure as it gets.

Per Wiki: Gresham's law is an economic principle "which states that when government compulsorily overvalues one money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation."[1] It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good", but is more accurately stated: "Bad money drives out good if their exchange rate is set by law."

PMs are not set by law. Yet.

Shin-san, Mossy, how many toz to a koku?....a 20 lb bag of the short grain rice i like costs, 17 to 21 the 25 lb bag, i rather have rice than wheat, (and i do! lol)...so thats 270 paper...now..so NOW thats a koku equals 6 ASES...okay far enough, i say a koku is TWO ASE's.

but the round eyes will never go for that, have to be wheat. flour goes bad quick, wheat berry's, a 50 lb, 5 gallon costs a titch more than an ASE in paper, $50.

Japanese sticky rice is the best. When I lived in Tokyo in the mid-90's, Japan had a minor drought which hurt domestic production. The Japanese are so accustomed to their own delicious rice varieties that when they tried to import rice from Thailand, a lot of it got shunted to use as animal feed. They jus couldn't eat the foreign stuff. There were lines at the supermarket for domestic rice. A few scuffles, too.

I want to store a few koku, but Mrs. shinnosuke says taste and nutrition will be sacrificed...so I don't have permission, yet. May do something anyway and ask for forgiveness later.

OIL.

I just stumbled across "koku" while trying to research how much rice to store for one year. Being an uncultured round eye with no sense of smell and poor sense of taste, the type of rice makes little difference to me.

Can't see how nutrition can suffer from storage, white rice is mostly starch and the other nutrients come from the sauces, side dishes, etc used for flavoring anyhow. So far as I can tell.

shinnosuke wrote:Japanese sticky rice is the best.
I want to store a few koku, but Mrs. shinnosuke says taste and nutrition will be sacrificed...so I don't have permission, yet. May do something anyway and ask for forgiveness later.

You and me is on the SAME PAGE!!! what you think i got stashed in the root cellar, food grade buckets? F#####g granola?!? (excuse my backslidden ways) short grain sticky rice...and i ALWAYS had the SAME problem with my sons mother!!! "white rice has no nutrition"....so she serves up that hippy brown rice, with steamed broccoli...swell, oh yummy.

Shinn, you know when the Tsunami hit, Fukushima, etc.....in three days, i was at the Korean grocery store, and bought six LARGE tins of Kadoya Sesame Oil, becoz i dont know when, if ever you'd see them again, and if you did, who'd want 'em? bot 2/3 rds a koku of short grain rice, and packages and packages of sheets of nori, (thats the seaweed sheets around sushi, gaijin) all sorts of 'made in Japan' food stuffs, because we can never consume anything...ever again..thats says 'made in Japan'...never. think about it. no more unagi, no more gomaee. sad really.....stash what you WANT to stash, you're the man, think Japanese. neil

Mossy,
short grain rice is number one. Basmati...very nice w/curry. Long rice, no good, Uncle Ben rice. Brown rice, no good, dirty filthy hippy peasant rice, no good, feed to pig. sayonaro.