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Third world countries tend to be third world countries because the people there have absolutely retarded attitudes about the world and society. There's a happy medium between following the examples of western progressivism and those of societies where people live in caves and use goats as a medium of exchange.
On the other hand, goats have actual uses beyond 'Alice will give me useful stuff in exchange for this because Bob will give her useful stuff in exchange for it because Carol will give him useful stuff in exchange for it because Dave will give her useful stuff in exchange for it because....'; they'll clear out overgrown vegetation, fuel themselves in doing so, and are delicious!
(I still don't get how people can be like 'USD is only valuable because people think it is, but gold has real value.'; they both derive their value from that same endless loop.)
Perhaps the solution is dollars backed by a goat standard?
But somebody's going to have to clean up a lot of poop in Fort Knox.
New jobs created in the wake of AI displacement, as we're being assured! Employment options in the world of finance-cum-custodianship-cum environmental initiatives: goat poop cleaner-upper!
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The drawbacks outweigh the benefits. Goats are not fungible (no two goats are exactly alike), goats are not durable (they die after a decade or two), goats are cumbersome to move and transfer, etc. Money is simply a tool to make exchange easy; it is the goods and services of an economy that are valuable.
Apart from being a Schelling point (gold has been used around the world for thousands of years while the fiat dollar has only been around since 1971, 54 years ago) the big difference is that you can't fuck with the supply of gold the way you can with USD. Gold exists in limited quantities and more gold can only be mined from the Earth with great effort (equivalent to crypto's proof of work).
To some people this is gold's great advantage, the only way to enforce a modicum of discipline on governments, and all economies since we departed from the gold standard are a house of cards. To other people, this is gold's great weakness, and you cannot have a modern economy without fiat currency. I don't have the economic chops to have a firm opinion one way or the other. But I do recommend Extra History's excellent "History of Paper Money" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6).
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Context: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-sick-societies-by-robert-b/
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