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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Cloudsweeper99, post: 90638, member: 3011&quot;]Very interesting posts by Mike and Quick Dog.&nbsp; It&#039;s true that money used to be thought of as a weight, not a dollar amount.&nbsp; A &quot;dollar&quot; was originally 371.25 grams of fine silver.&nbsp; Now it is a Federal Reserve Note with a legal &quot;value&quot; but no intrinsic value.&nbsp; So the whole idea of thinking about the &quot;price of gold&quot; or silver is a relatively new concept in history.</p><p><br /></p><p>A second point is that there is no reason why the ratio of one commodity to another should be fixed.&nbsp; Gold, silver, copper and all other commodities fluctuate in relative value over time.&nbsp; It is only necessary for a society to pick one as the standard, but not try to fix a ratio between them.&nbsp; So the original attempt of the US government to choose the silver dollar as the monetary standard, but fix the ratio to gold as 15:1 was misguided.&nbsp; Gold coins should have been allowed to float in price relative to silver coins in the same manner that interenational currencies do today.</p><p><br /></p><p>The third point is that amazingly, there is less silver [above ground] in the world than gold, yet gold sells for a price much higher than silver.&nbsp; This can be proven by comparing the inventory levels of the readily available stocks of the metals around the world.&nbsp; Going from memory [a dangerous thing], I believe there are about 1 billion total ounces of silver vs. about 4 billion ounces of gold.&nbsp; This includes jewelry.&nbsp; There is probably more silver than gold jewelry around, but industrial companies can&#039;t really get their hands on it unless prices go much higher.&nbsp; I don&#039;t know how things go around your house, but if silver goes to $20 per ounce, my wife isn&#039;t going to give me her jewelry and tell me sell it for melt value. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Finally, I just thought of another historical curiosity.&nbsp; There was originally a lot of opposition to legal tender laws in the US.&nbsp; The argument went something like, &quot;If the money is good, why do we need legal tender laws to force us to take it.&nbsp; If the money is no good, why should we legally be required to accept it?</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s interesting stuff.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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