Perry Metzger writes:
As for "in my book, silicon is worth more than gold", I'll happily trade you 100 kilos of silicon for 100 kilos of gold any day you like. Assuming you aren't fibbing, you should take the trade, since the silicon is worth more to you.
Of course, you'd be a fool. Silicon is plentiful, and costs pennies the kilo. Gold is not plentiful -- the market value is around $10,000 the kilo.
I suspect what Peter Wayner was referring to was either pure silicon, which is indeed expensive (dollars per gram no longer in my memory bank, alas), or silicon that has been processed into SuperSPARCS, Pentia, and the like. Not raw-out-of-ground silicon (from beach sand and even rice hulls...no lie). A tiny sliver of silicon is much more valuable gram fro gram than gold is. Even a blank wafer of ultrapure silicon may be...I'd have to do some calculations and get some current prices. Be this as it may, electronic money depends on _reputation_, on the expectation that a depositor or payee will get what he thinks he will, whether in gold, in dollars, in francs, in Safeway discount coupons, or in Get Out of Jail Free cards. The stability of the final currency, inflation rates, etc., are orthogonal to the issues of expectation and reputation. That is, when one opens a bank account in dollars or rupees, one worries about the bank returning the dollars or rupees, not the "meta" (and important, but at a different level and time horizon) issues of the ultimate fate of the rupee. In any case, free banking means accounts can be denominated in whatever the market wants...chunks of silicon, gold coins, Xeroxed Slovenian currency, or whatever. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.