According to the orthodox theory of the origin of money, the most durable goods (often metals) were selected by the rich to be their means of preserving the wealth, by virtue of their non-perishability.
..
(One of the abominations in the current system is exactly the opposite - that the monetary unit is "perishable" due to inflation, which forces ordinary savers to the capital markets, to be fleeced by the banksters. In the gold, BTC or other hard monetary system, the act of saving can be accomplished by setting money aside - in the current fiat system it cannot.)
Gold has had very high rates of debasement and it is not consistent:
http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/35498http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/35465Some people estimate the above ground supply of gold is more than 10X higher than "official" estimates.
Again the point on rate of debasement is that if the economy is growing at 10%, then a 5% debasement means your savings is still increasing its purchasing power at 5% per annum. It is not fair nor incentivize maximum prosperity for the saver who sits on his money to get the same increasing in purchasing power as the investor who risks for a higher ROI. Thus some small level of debasement is desirable. Gold is about 1 - 2%. Fiat has run at 5%. I haven't decided yet what level to set, but 0% seems inherently wrong. Not even gold does 0%.
The reason a positive debasement rate impacts a saver (who sits on his money adding no productivity to the economy) disproportionately to an investor, is in the example below 5% is half of the saver's potential purchasing power gain of 10%. Whereas the investor increases his purchasing power by R + 5% versus R + 10%. If R = 20%, then the difference is 25% versus 30%, thus only 17% difference.
Debasement is actually a very good thing for as long as it is below the rate of productivity increase and it doesn't get distributed to a few central banking fat cats.
The debasement rate of gold is never 0%. That is a statement of fact.
The productivity increase in the economy is an orthogonal variable.
It is not BS that gold's too low debasement rate and later too high debasement rate can wreck havoc on economies that peg their legal tender to gold. In fact, the great gold rushes caused massive inflation and macro economic disruption. And in fact, when an economy is growing productivity very fast, then allowing savers to capture all of that gain in productivity for doing nothing but bury their gold value in the ground actually retards productivity growth, because the saver is not motivated.
That is not to say we have something better than gold, because legal tender with central banks and fractional reserve lending is a worse abomination, because it centralizes control and profit.
I am hoping we can do better with decentralized, unassailable crypto-currency, but in any case my point remains that 0% debasement is inane. Even gold doesn't do that.