Archimedes fable
The story of Canadian counterfeit gold is a nice metrology fable, and a lesson in SKILL-ESTATE.

Ottawa jeweler Samuel Tang has his store close to an office of the Canadian Mint, and he simply walks to the Mint when he gets an order for custom gold jewelry. He spent $1600 for a card-sized wafer of gold, walked it back to his store, and handed it to his goldsmith. The goldsmith started to cut up the wafer and noticed that it didn't behave like gold. So he ran the classic acid test, and found it was only slightly gold, mostly tungsten.

Tang tried to inform the mint that it was counterfeit, but they wouldn't take it back and wouldn't acknowledge the problem, so he went public to CBC, which is also part of the government. After that, the mint decided to acknowledge the problem, which is undoubtedly far larger than just one wafer. Most purchasers of these cards are investors who wouldn't dare to cut or test the gold, because the PROVENANCE is what counts for them, not the METAL.

Lessons:

1. Bullypower always works.

2. Gold isn't any better or worse than other currencies when used as a currency. Bars and coins can be counterfeited just like bills or Bitcoins. The problem is as old as Archimedes. (See Eureka.)

3. Trust your own SENSES and your own PHYSICAL measurements, not the government's claims. A skill can't be counterfeited.

Gold is useful as a standard or ground point, partly because its purity is easy to test, mostly because it has always been used as a standard. Measurements are only useful when they are replicable by other people at other times. In this case the standard-ness of the standard is what we're really measuring, and the standard-ness of gold as a standard is well established and agreed.

= = = = =

Will the government pay Tang and his goldsmith for doing the VERIFICATION that should have been part of the government's job? No, of course not. The government will continue paying its own verifiers to falsify. Tang is lucky that he wasn't jailed for being a wiseass.

Labels: metametrology, Metrology, skill-estate

  ¶ 12:04 PM