My best (stupid) guess is weapons. US gov has a ton of weapons. Already sells tons of weapons. Now the prices will always remain stable. Other countries would love to know that 30 million usd would always be able to buy an f15. Other countries declaring war will increase the value of the USD, as buying weapons from us government will decrease amount of money in circulation.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I’d base it off of love and compassion, and instantly watch the value sink to the negatives.

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        And then you ask yourself, is it possible to game the sociopath into working for humanity instead of against it?

  • spittingimage@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    American cheese. Your cheese would gain value over time, because the held amount would diminish in the form of grilled cheese sandwiches!

    Pretty sure that’s how that works.

  • BigMikeInAustin@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Tiny dicks.

    We already assume the shitty people have tiny dicks.

    If tiny-dick-syndrome person wants money, they need to tell everyone how tiny their dick is.

    If they want respect, they can waste their money on penis enlarging cream until they are poor with a tiny dick, or they could be a nice person.

    • ericbomb@lemmy.worldOP
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      8 months ago

      So the more money you have, the more freedom you have?..

      I think it already works like that.

      • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        No, the more freedom America has, the more value American currency has. Our currency would be backed by freedom and eagle sounds, not the other way around.

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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    8 months ago

    Maybe people. A country with lots of people should at least in theory be capable of achieving the most “stuff”. You already rent people for a limited amount of time when you employ them.

    • towerful@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      God, imagine a country going into irrevocable debt and having to actually export people.
      Also, currency would fluctuate wildly as people immigrate/emmigrate.
      Do you count tourists? Illegal immingrants? Legal, but not sovreign, citizens (or whatever the term is for someone working in a country on a visa)?
      What if people fudge their measurements?
      Does put a direct price on war, i guess.

    • neidu2@feddit.nl
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      8 months ago

      Seeing heads explode because of USD and StableCoins both being pegged to EACH OTHER… yeah, I can get behind that. I’ll bring popcorn for you too.

  • BrikoX@lemmy.zip
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    8 months ago

    Greed. The US dollar would catapult to the sky. Capitalism is the economic system based on greed. It has a built-in supply.

    • TipRing@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      That is a terrible choice. You want to back currency with something scarce. I propose backing it with goodwill towards the US.

      • BrikoX@lemmy.zip
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        8 months ago

        Currency needs to be backed by something other countries would want and actually hold. If nobody is holding a supply of it “backed” it would be pushing the currency value down.

    • BrikoX@lemmy.zip
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      8 months ago

      On a more serious note, it should be something no single country has a majority of control over, and it shouldn’t be a limited resource, like gold which was previously used.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    8 months ago

    If you want a non-fiat currency, you want the backing thing to:

    • Not be easily produced/obtained, and to have a fairly predictable cost of production/obtaining.

    • Be fairly-rare, so that it can be value-dense, to reduce storage and transportation costs.

    • Not degrade.

    • Be hard to counterfeit.

    • It would be nice if it were divisible.

    • Not have much by way of critical non-backing uses, so that its use here doesn’t distort that.

    Probably gold. It ticks pretty much all the boxes; there’s a reason that it was used in the past.

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The big problem for me was something Ben Bernanke said: the process of taking gold out of a hole in the ground (a mine) just to put it into a different hole in the ground (a vault) is a pretty terrible waste of resources. And you need to continue mining it in order to stave off deflation, which means you have to keep doing that forever; and eventually that’s just not going to work anymore. Mining gold is only going to become more expensive as time goes on.

      Not to mention, our economy is too big and moves too quickly for gold to be a moderating force to inflation anymore. The numbers are just too big and moving too fast; we need a more nimble lever, and right now interest rates are a pretty good one.

      All of that to say, there’s a reason every country has come off of the gold standard since the mid- to late-20th century.

      • 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de
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        8 months ago

        Sure taking gold out of a hole to put it in a different hole is a waste of resources but there’s kind of a driving force towards that because if the currency is actually useful then people aren’t going to use it as currency and if it’s easy to produce they’re going to counterfeit it

        Same with cryptocurrencies, they’re hard to produce and functionless, so a huge waste of resources, and frankly same with (high frequency) trading of stocks, as you don’t own them when the dividends are paid yet you put huge resources into them because other people want them because of their inherent value

        • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          But doing something just for the sake of finances…it doesn’t add anything to the world. The original question was “what do you pick?” and I don’t like the idea of picking an energy-intensive activity that doesn’t help the world in any way.

      • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        All of that to say, there’s a reason every country has come off of the gold standard since the mid- to late-20th century.

        Because controlled inflation is necessary for an economy to function and nothing but a fiat currency has the desired characteristics.

        Gold is still the best option if you insist on having the currency backed.

    • ericbomb@lemmy.worldOP
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      8 months ago

      I mean we would use gold in electronics a lot more if it wasn’t considered valuable. So it’s not perfect because it actually has a wonderful use outside of being valuable.

      Rather unlucky society picked gold and silver to he valuable with how useful they.

      • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        That’s what inflation is and why governments target a low but positive level of inflation with monetary policies. The fact that your dollar slowly loses value pushes you to reinvest it. Very few rich people are just sitting on piles of cash.