Smushing down this shiny gold bridge, I watch the contrast of creamy gooey cement push out the margins making the most perfect cake piping edge. 
As I was plopping this bridge into place. I couldn’t help to think, this person is receiving a bit of the world’s supply of gold to their mouth. A natural wonder material. It’s inert biocompatibility, one of the most shelf stable materials and durability all make me jealous when I see a mouth full of it.
Today’s episode is not to be about gold properties in the mouth. But it’s about the hardness of our money. The Gold Standard, established in 1717, standardized each country’s commitment to peg each of their currencies to a specified amount of gold. With only 3.3 olympic swimming pools worth of gold in the entire world, the difficulty in finding new gold makes this form of money very ‘hard’.
I need to talk to you seriously about the slippery slope I can see our great nation is setting on.
Ever since the pandemic, we have seen a continued cry for stimulus. Let’s just call a spade a spade. Our government and our people are addicted to the flush of cash in the system. 
Amount of stimulation passedIllustration Courtesy Of USAToday.com
I don’t have to tell you. You can already sense groceries, building materials and dental supplies have increased in price since the virus hit.
If you’re in the market to hire staff, you know a higher wage will need to be offered just to compete with other dental offices in your area. Market forces dictating what might be a fair wage in your area of course.
Studying the rise and fall of money, civilizations and governments, certain patterns appear.
‘The Island of Yap’
A tiny micronesian island in the middle of the Pacific. For millennia, the Yap people traded large limestone carved in donut shapes, called a Rai stone, as their currency. Limestone was rare to the island, and highly prized. It had to be imported from Palau, 200 miles away, via boat. The larger the Rai stone, the larger the value. The location of the stone didn’t matter. It did not need to be in your physical possession, (some of these stones were 12 feet tall and weighed 5 tons) as the Yap people would orally state to the village ownership of stones on an oral public ledger. There was said a stone so large capsized while being transported into the ocean. Because it was agreed upon that the stone existed, it could be traded amongst the villagers.
The Rai limestone was ‘hard’ money until it wasn’t.
In 1871, an Irish-American David Dean O’Keefe shipwrecked near Yap, and was helped by the Yapese. He became so keen on their coconut oil production, he insisted to the island leaders to accept trade with limestone he could import. As pressure from local coconut oil producers mounted, they would eventually get their way working with David. Introducing non-local Rai stones to the system.
It meant a dilution of value in Rai stones. It spelled the slow deterioration and disuse of the currency by the 20th century.
Whether introduction of Rai stones by an outsider, or the money printers within our government, we have to be careful when the hardness of our money begins deteriorating. Retiring dentists in the next few years will have the most pain to endure. Decades worth of work will see the value of their practice evaporate with two evils, inflation and taxes.
Prepare for the worse, hope for the best at this point. The warning shots have already been fired. Stay shiny and stable like gold my friend and let’s thrive on.
Lam