
Price revolution - zeristor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution
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araes
Could be taken as an interesting argument against ideas like the gold
standard, pegged on limited supply.

There was a notably huge spike in inflation in the US during the major period
of gold rushes in the US. 1850-1870, avg 3%, nearly 15-20% around 1860-65,
when Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, and California all hit gold.
Interestingly, followed by a huge crash.

Effectively just created a bubble that burst shortly after. When a
theoretically limited asset is found in huge quantities, it possibly creates a
vast, unstable surge in the money supply, that then just equalizes back to the
real value of underlying assets later.

~~~
SomewhatLikely
Not sure how you could disentangle the effects of the civil war on inflation
in that period.

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zeristor
I posted this with regard to the possibility of harvesting asteroids and the
dangers of huge amounts of precious metals being sold into the market.

I imagine futures contracts could ameliorate this to some extent.

~~~
21
Not really. Future contracts will also track the probability of asteroid
mining feasibility. The markets are always fully discounting whatever
information is available. The price of gold will crash before the first rocket
will take off.

Many centuries ago, speculators would sit in harbors and when they noticed a
ship on the horizon they would immediately start shorting on the market the
commodity supposed to be on that ship.

