“store of value” is something that people frequently invoke in that cadence. (Ie Not “value store”)

That’s just such a strange concept.

It’s like a battery, like you released chemical energy from combustion, used it to spin turbines and imbue some lead ions with more electrons

And at the same time, you have all this energy lost to heat that happens in the process of charging a battery.

Eventually over time, the battery loses its charge.

Radioactive materials have half lives.

Nothing gold can stay ponyboy

But the “store of value” people want to fight the concept. “We can charge batteries with value. We can make investments, they don’t have to lose value, we can store and save it”

How long can you save leftovers in the fridge? Do preservatives make Twinkies a store of value?

And we made it up. Value, that is.

The quantitative value concept is a legal construct through chartalism. But of course, gold can be weighed etc. but it’s demand nevertheless created through law.

But the value that we think of beyond money. That’s an entirely different concept. The things that are valuable that sustain life. The things we’d like to eat. The people we’d like to be with. The world we’d like to see. The life we’d like to live. This is different.

This is something more transient. More fleeting.

But this is the natural concept of value.

Old Coins aren’t “money” per se, they may have been money because of past regimes. Or maybe they were never anything beyond commemorative things. Something to help you...

...remember that you did something valuable to you at the time.

Memory. This is a concept of “storing value” or “saving”.

We have hard drives, we have a save button.

But memory also is as fleeting and imperfect as human life.

So there are these people that want something more from their “stores of value”. They want a promise of redemption. It makes them feel safe. It makes them feel secure. It’s not unlike Christianity and the promises of the afterlife. It’s all in the same vein.

Ben Franklin knew this. He wrote poor Richards almanac as sort of this self-help book written in the style of scripture with secularized proverbs like “a penny saved is a penny earned”.

But is it?

Why should money carry over past ones death? One must put booby traps to store ones wealth that one is buried with to make sure grave robbers don’t take the stores of value.

It’s all silly.

What matters is the here and now.

The system works not because there are *permanent* and *perfect* stores of value, it works because of there *aren’t* perfect stores of value. It works because there is an ongoing need to create, consume, destroy, rebuild, and reproduce.

It works because the economy is a going concern. Human life requires daily consumption.

And As such, Inflation is *important*.

People want to fight it. I ask those people “what have you done for the world lately?” You’ve sold your inherited gold to purchase the output of...

...potentially exploited labor who *feeds* you. You’ve exchanged your shiny metals to someone else who wishes to do the same in the future.

Now, I’m not opposed to saving money. I’m not opposed to money. But it works better when it doesn’t last because it drives us...

...to do things for one another.

And depending on the power relations, this can be good and it can be bad.