I was more focusing on the question of why anyone would set forward an intrinsically valuable monetary unit as a feature rather than as a bug after the history of repeated depressions and hyperinflations under the Gold Standard replaced, in the core industrial nations, by neither depression nor hyperinflation under sovereign fiat currency.

Libertarianism has nothing much to do with that: as a matter of empirical record, monetary systems based on media with independent value are miserable failures at delivering stability and reasonably sustained participation across the income ladder.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

There is a difference between an Energy Standard - which is a Unit of measure of Value - and a Unit of currency, which is what I prefer to think of as 'money's worth'.

A Value Standard cannot deflate, any more than a kilogramme or a metre - it is, by definition, an absolute.

A "Unit Measure of Value" implies that value is commensurate with a scalar, which is one of the empirical flaws of the utility maximizing theory of behavior ... since "Value" is a reification of the process of valuing.

You are of course free to make up existing words to mean anything you wish them to mean, but you cannot impute your definitions when someone is using a more common sense of the word. I mean standard of value in the more common sense of standard of value.

What matters for Energy units as a standard of value is the terms of trade of the energy harvest with all other produced goods and services, and part of the transition to a sustainable economy will be an increase in those terms of trade.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.