Comment by akhatri_aus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akhatri_aus | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not downvoting you, you do present an important point but I think history has accepted the fiat currency. A currency's stability isn't defined in terms of its convertibility into Gold. A currency naturally evolves with the economy.

The USD itself has existed for over 150 years. While I do understand your point it's markets at a whole that decide these things. The USD is very good at storing its value if you were to compare all the other currencies from the plethora of countries out there. Keep in mind there were other currencies also pegged to Gold & Silver.

In the late 1890s there was a dem politician, William Jennings Bryan who played a part in this. I guess its one of those things that caught on.

Edit: Didn't ready that you mentioned 3 decades is too, long. Actually it's too short, a currency's best test is how it stands inflation & recession - just they come around once a business cycle, which is excruciatingly long.

I didn't argue against fiat currency. I argued against FUD against China's currency based on stupid ideas. I do think that the difference between a gold-backed and fiat currency is a valid difference, but would never advocate for a gold backed currency because storing gold in vaults is stupid when we can use it for actually useful things instead. Knee-jerk internet-argument STEMlords jumped on the word fiat without actually understanding the context.

It's also possible that people understood your argument but downvoted you because your first comment's tone was frantic, angry, and inappropriate for HN.

This comment is a bit better, but still insults the people you hope to convince. These insults only harm your cause.

Sorry, what is FUD?

In all honestly we haven't seen China in a recession yet, so we don't know how they deal with it, we also don't know how they deal with inflation with a free floating exchange rate, and if their currency is stable with it. With the others, CHF, CAD, GBP, USD we've seen it all many times & know they can maintain their currencies value well & their government budget well.

You can't imagine being a central bank governor and risking a country's reserves on this just for the sake of glory. For what reason would you hold your country at so much risk & uncertainty?

It usually means Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

Seriously, what the hell is a STEMlord?

To my shame, I automatically read this as "sperglord". If you don't know, that's probably for the best.

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