Running Out of Gold

Today, 80% of all known gold reserves had been mined. The world started to and is getting closer to running out of new gold, all while the global population tripled between 1800 and 1950 and then doubled again by 2000. If the number of people on the planet wasn't going up. The gold standard would work well. The amount of gold per person would go up a little bit at a time. The amount of money available would be stable, but to keep the supply of gold rising at the same rate as the population was growing, amount of dirt that was being moved to produce just a little more gold went through the roof. 500 years ago, about two tons of earth would give us an ounce of gold.

Today, as an average across all mines, it's about 120. The final move off the gold standard was forced by the laws of nature, replaced by these little pieces of paper that many of us take for granted as useful and backed by the full faith and credit of our government. I mean, it says so right here. This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private. But it also says something very similar on this one. It's implied on this one, and this one.

But these statements, while they all say the same basic thing, are not all equal. Yes. You can trade them all for many things, but when it comes to trading one for another or taking it out of the country, the rules for these three, let's call it controlling.