Читать книгу The Prudent Investor's Guide to Owning Gold - Austin Ph.D Pryor - Страница 6

The first shortcoming of gold is obvious: having to get out a scale and weigh the correct amount of gold dust every time someone wants to buy a newspaper or a Big Mac is inconvenient. Fortunately, this problem is solved rather quickly when one of the town’s more entrepreneurial thinkers, a young fellow named Ben, steps forth with an offer to shape raw gold into various standard sizes and weights—in other words, to convert it into coins. For a modest service charge, of course.

On the front of each coin, Ben promises to stamp the exact amount of gold inside so people will know how much it was worth. Since Ben enjoys a reputation for honesty, many of the townspeople take him up on his proposal and begin bringing in their gold. (Still, you can’t be too careful, so at first everyone checks the coins to make sure they weigh what they were supposed to. When months go by without anyone catching Ben in a mistake, it becomes generally accepted around town that his coins can be trusted.) Ben’s mint becomes a thriving business.

But then there is gold’s second shortcoming. The villagers discover that some of the very qualities that make gold such an excellent choice as money also make it a favorite target for thieves! It is valuable, easily transported, easily divided, and, since everyone’s gold and coins look alike, they can’t be identified as stolen property.

Listening to the concerns of his customers, Ben comes up with another inspiration— he’ll add a special vault inside his mint so that people can store their gold in safety. He will issue receipts each time they put gold on deposit, and they can come by and claim their gold anytime they want. All for a modest service charge, of course.

It isn’t long before Ben’s “gold warehouse” business is up and running. And as more and more of the townspeople use Ben’s vault for keeping their gold safe, a curious thing begins to happen.

When negotiating a purchase, shoppers engage in this kind of conversation with storekeepers: “Say, do you have a gold storage account at Ben’s warehouse? You do? I thought you might since you take in a lot of gold here at your business. How about saving both of us a little time and trouble? Rather than me going over to the warehouse to pick up my gold, and then coming back here to give it to you, I’ll just sign this receipt over to you. Then the gold would legally be yours, and you wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of placing it in safekeeping—it’s already there.”

As this way of doing business catches on, people begin exchanging the receipts rather than the actual gold. The receipts are being accepted as a means of exchange because of what they represent. They aren’t really the money; they are simply substitutes for money. The gold is the real money; it is the commodity with the accepted value.

The paper receipts, in and of themselves, have no intrinsic worth. They take on value only because they can be exchanged for gold. If, through fraud, bankruptcy, or natural disaster, the gold in the warehouse were no longer available, the receipts would be worthless.

For the paper receipts to keep their value as money substitutes, three conditions have to prevail.

•Ben’s warehouse has to build widespread patronage throughout the village. A merchant would be less inclined to accept the receipt in exchange if he didn’t also have an account at Ben’s, or if he didn’t expect to be able to trade the receipt to someone else who had an account at Ben’s.

•Ben’s warehouse has to keep regular and convenient hours for business. The villagers needed confidence that the gold (i.e., the real money) is actually there, and that they can get it out anytime they want.

•Ben’s warehouse has to never let gold out of the warehouse without getting a corresponding receipt back. Otherwise, there would be more receipts in circulation than there is gold to back them up. Then, how could a receipt-holder know for sure that his gold is there?

Money substitutes will retain their value and enjoy widespread acceptance to the extent they are readily and assuredly convertible into real money. Since Ben pays careful attention to such details, his business is a successful one. Furthermore, the townspeople reap the benefits of an effective system of money. All is going well—and the best is yet to come: Ben is about to invent banking.