You can buy other currencies with your own currency.

And the values of those commodities you're exchanging is generally analyzed and agreed upon.

Crypto is largely the same way.

Supply and Demand dictate economics.

Not anything else. not government, even.

Although government has the strings it can pull to manipulate it

If some nation-ending apocalyptic event were to occur tomorrow, like Hillary replacing Trump or something...

There would still be people who would accept USD. It would still have a certain value.

Almost inexplicably

But the core reason is, common currency is a proxy for goods in barter.

I work some on-demand jobs.

If I get a drive for a 30 dollar fare

load it on to my card, and buy 20 dollars of gas with it

Thinking of it as spending money is a basic way of looking at it.

I'm actually spending some fraction of a function of my car's fuel used for the fare, the wear and tear on the car, with the additional factor of my time to refuel that car.

And that is what I'm trading to that gas station for fuel.

Money's just the proxy for that.

When you're taxed, the IRS is taking a percentage of time from you, not money.

I had a really well paid job once and we would work sundays for the tax man. Why sundays? Coz my time was worth more. Your system seems predicated on an isolated system, were one days work is equal to anothers. That is not the case.

In my on-demand job

One fare might be worth more or less than another

If you're working on a Sunday where someone else might not, that is a supply/demand difference.

Frankly, either your work on Sunday was valued more due to a decreased supply or increased demand

Or your boss wasn't really thinking things through and just arbitrarily valued Sundays differently, which is perfectly acceptable within that model.

The key factor is that you agreed at any given point that your time and labor were worth that amount at that time.

hang on I think I've got you

When people start to horde their money the supply of money goes down. the value of the remaining money goes up.

people start to notice this and start to horde money knowing that tomorrow their money will be worth more.

Right, that's how the argument generally goes...

It was said earlier that that would just increase the price of goods coz labour would cost more.

I suppose I can see *sort of* a point on the other side of things now

In that having a currency with an unstable value makes things kind of wonky.

What if you are in the business of baking bread? You pay the boy to help[ you bake X loafs of bread but no one wants to by them coz they can buy two for the same money tomorrow.

You have already put in the investment.#

But your bread is organic and goes down in value as it ages

it doesn't keep.

We're talking about needs, here.

To make money your business is predicated on quick turn over

And if you had a currency that fluctuated THAT wildly, you've done something wrong. 😛

The time scale doesn't matter.

it's the pricaple of things losing value over time.