10 ms·

Economic historian Niall Ferguson beautifully describes fractional reserves as one of the greatest innovations of humankind in Ascent of Money. The miseries fr

Economic historian Niall Ferguson beautifully describes fractional reserves as one of the greatest innovations of humankind in Ascent of Money. The miseries from bank runs and crashes are real, but even so, the total impact on human welfare from fractional reserves has been overwhelmingly positive. How do we know? There were holdouts in Europe originally, some central banks were slow to adopt fractional reserves. They were trounced by the economies of other European nations and their superior access to liquid capital. We've essentially done the laboratory tests here, it's one of the few areas where econ plays like a hard science. We know the answer here, and it's not 100% reserve requirements. It's a tragic topic to put to a referendum though, because I don't expect every random person to be an expert on the technical nuances of financial history. And this is a topic where intuitions are a pretty poor guide, one where I'd expect the wisdom of crowds to fail hard. PhantomGremlin's quote from George Bailey is a good example. Most people aren't bankers, and don't really understand how it works as a system, beyond their own account, so it's weird to ask them to make key decisions here.

Pyxl101 11y ago
To be fair, the proposal (if I've read it correctly) is not for all banks to have a 100% reserve requirements - but it's for commercial banks to have that requirement. The central bank can still create money on a fractional reserve basis. I agree that this seems like an unusually technical topic to subject to referendum.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  The Swiss hold referendums on most big issues, every year they have quite a few of them and this has been going on for about 150 years, direct democracy is quite big there as it seems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_federal_referendums https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_federal_referend...
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    It looks like a lot/most/all(?) of these, if categorized, would be "public moral position" questions. 2015 and 2014, at least. I wonder if bank reserve regulations really falls into that as well?
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      Federal law on radio and television Against mass immigration Financing and development of railway infrastructure JAS 39 Gripen (Swedish fighter jet) procurement Non-renewable energy tax Fixed book price agreement Foreign treaties Hospitality industry VAT initiative Gold reserves And my 2 favorites... Increase petrol station shop opening hours Music lessons Seems much more than just "public moral position" questions to me.
- colordrops 11y ago
  Funny that you call the details of a control mechanism used by moneyed elites, which is not particularly complicated, an "unusually technical topic". It's unfortunate if you are right.
- lxgr 11y ago
  > The central bank can still create money on a fractional reserve basis. The central bank does not even need to hold fractional reserves: As the entity creating base money, it can literally create that out of thin air. Of course, history has taught that unlimited money creation is usually a bad idea, so usually base money is now backed by public or private debt, but this idea is distinct from fractional reserve banking.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
someguydave 11y ago
"natural experiments" like this case of the apparent success of fractional reserve banking are not "laboratory tests". There are many other confounding variables that cannot be eliminated. See this Econtalk podcast on the topic: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/12/noah_smith_on_w.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/12/noah_smith_on_w.htm...
smokeyj 11y ago
> Most people aren't bankers, and don't really understand how it works as a system, beyond their own account, so it's weird to ask them to make key decisions here. That's a strange principle to hold, especially if it wouldn't apply to any other asset. People are generally free to own securities no matter how complicated their structure. But the fiat system seems to conveniently siphon lending power from account holders to account managers -- effectively centralizing economic planning to financial institutions by fiat. Saying "central banking is good" is like saying "government is good". It definitely can be, but it can also be murderously oppressive. The question is, how did this economic decision maker come to be -- and why are they in control of your money instead of you.
wazoox 11y ago
> It's a tragic topic to put to a referendum though How one can reach such conclusion is beyond me. People will discuss the question, and democratically decide. You'd be surprise the fierce debates that erupts among citizens when a serious question is on the table, and how everyone makes oneself enlightened before vote. This is what actual democracy is. This is how it should work everywhere for any serious issue. Designating a cherry-picked representative who carries exactly zero obligation to hold his promises is NOT democracy, but elective oligarchy. Almost all countries calling themselves democracies certainly don't deserve the name.
- atmosx 11y ago
  > How one can reach such conclusion is beyond me. Actually, if you don't trust democracy, labeling topics for a referendum as tragic or awful goes without saying.
  - reinhardt 11y ago
    I trust democracy to decide on complex financial issues as much as I trust it to design a chemical factory or offer medical advice: not at all.
- golergka 11y ago
  > everyone makes oneself enlightened Really.
- jeffdavis 11y ago
  "makes oneself enlightened before vote" How long does it take for someone to be competent to vote on monetary policy? It's ridiculous to expect a voter to spend that amount of time on every issue.
  - wazoox 11y ago
    It may take a long time, but the debate is 18 months long, more than enough for everybody to get on board on the issue. It's ridiculous to believe that citizens have no business in important matters. If you're not deciding, you're not acting, and your voice doesn't matter at all.
twobits 11y ago
It's totally unfair and undemocratic for some people to be able to print money and for the rest to not be able to. Gives the former huge advantage, and creates economic inequality.
- cheald 11y ago
  You can print money; if you hand a friend a piece of paper that says "I owe you $10" or "I owe you ten apples", you've printed money. The nominal economic value of that paper becomes the value of what it promises. Your friend could then trade that marker to one of his friends on its nominal value, as long as his friend trusts that you're good for it. You perhaps can't print currency, but you can create money in exactly the same fashion that banks do - any time you issue a debt marker, money is created.
  - rtpg 11y ago
    This is an interesting angle. The important thing to note is the "I owe you $10" piece of paper is worth roughly $10 when it comes from a trusted source. I think if I wrote that it might not be worth the full $10 in "publicly traded" circumstances. There's an interesting exercise in how bank-like you can become before you need to register as a financial institution.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      Though that trust is mostly based in how big a pile of money you have, and how stable it seems to be, even if you act nothing like a bank.
  - someguydave 11y ago
    The real difference is that you can't force the FDIC to 'insure' your 'debt marker', while a bank can. If there were no deposit insurance, depositors would actually have to worry about the soundness of their bank - and probably would demand 'full reserve' banking.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
mietek 11y ago
> There were holdouts in Europe originally, some central banks were slow to adopt fractional reserves. They were trounced by the economies of other European nations and their superior access to liquid capital. Which countries were these?
threatofrain 11y ago
"Hard science" and "laboratory test" means random selection with random assignment and controls for confounding. What are some quick keywords so I can Google for your claim? I'm not even asking for a citation. If I said something about causal learning, I could point to Patricia Cheng as a keyword to Google. If I said something about dual systems of cognition in economic behavior, I could point to Daniel Kahneman or Jonathan Evans. Point me in the direction where one can find this "hard science" with "laboratory tests", so that I may know these are not toy words you threw around.
- mziel 11y ago
  Not the OP, but there's no such thing as proper experimental setup in economics (because there can't be). That's why using economic/econometric modelling for causal inference is the holy grail of the field. Some approaches are: - structural models (google Pearl) - instrumental variables (google Angrist)
  - threatofrain 11y ago
    Thanks for the Judea Pearl reference.
  - pratyushag 11y ago
    Not an expert but wouldn't randomized controlled trials (part of many economics papers) count as proper experimental setup?
    - MrApathy 11y ago
      Yes, many economics papers are at the intersection of economics and psychology with a focus on human behavior. One of the broad assumptions of economics is that individuals are largely rational, but controlled experiments sometimes show that people don't always act in their best interest. But at a macro level, there are no controlled experiments. We can look toward "natural" experiments (e.g., wages and the labor rate of two border towns, where one is in a state that has raised minimum wage and the other has not), but there's nothing like the gold standard double blind randomized trial that you'd find in a drug study.
randomThoughts9 11y ago
>There were holdouts in Europe originally, some central banks were slow to adopt fractional reserves. They were trounced by the economies of other European nations and their superior access to liquid capital. This is in no way a proof. A good analogy, but not a perfect one, I agree, is looking at 2 companies where one of them has more capital and so it can undersell its competitor, using prices lower than its production prices. You might win the competition, but that's definitely not a a good system long term. And another thing that I think is very important to keep in mind is that we went through 2 world wars quite recently, each one performing a reset of the system. It is very hard to say that we are on the right track when the system needs to crash and burn every couple of generations.
aflyax 11y ago
>Economic historian Niall Ferguson beautifully describes fractional reserves as one of the greatest innovations of humankind in Ascent of Money. The miseries from bank runs and crashes are real, but even so, the total impact on human welfare from fractional reserves has been overwhelmingly positive. That doesn’t make any sense. Runs and crashes are an important part of the free market, keeping banks in reign. Fractional reserve banking would be impossible or very limited if runs and crashes were allowed to happen. This would result in non-inflationary currency, improved value of savings, and decreased volatility of the markets (extreme booms followed by extreme crashes and long periods of unemployment due to constant reallocation of resources in the society). All of this is prevented by central banks.
- irixusr 11y ago
  The central banks were created to bail out commercial banks who got greedy a la Merry Poppins
seivan 11y ago
I wish you would explain more in detail or link some more reading. I find this interesting. I've always seen this reckless lending/printing money as something unsustainable but obviously I don't know much about the subject, it's hard to find decent reading material for the average person to understand.
rdsubhas 11y ago
Uhh, the referendum talks about banning Private Banks from creating money. The Swiss National Bank will still have fractional reserves and will reserve the right to create physical and electronic money. So isn't that a good thing? > If successful, the sovereign money bill would give the Swiss National Bank a monopoly on physical and electronic money creation, "while the decision concerning how new money is introduced into the economy would reside with the government," says Vollgeld. > But over 90pc of money in circulation in Switzerland now exists in the form "electronic" cash created by private banks, rather than the central bank. EDIT: Formatting
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago
  > The Swiss National Bank will still have fractional reserves and will reserve the right to create physical and electronic money. So isn't that a good thing? For the banks? It depends on how quickly the central bank is going to loan them new money. For the bank's customers who want their easy loans? Best case scenario - nothing changes, worst case - loans are now harder to get because the central bank is shy about increasing the money supply.
blfr 11y ago
It's a tragic topic to put to a referendum though, because I don't expect every random person to be an expert on the technical nuances of financial history. That's true for nearly every subject. It's an argument against this referendum as much as it is against democracy in general. Even representative democracy. Most people are certainly not experts at hiring executives. Seemingly even those whose job it is to hire and fire.
maaku 11y ago
It's not a binary option. It's possible to be anti-fractional reserve while not requiring 100% reserves for everything. Mutual credit economies, for example, require no backing store, giving all the advantages of fractional reserve, with no systemic risk.
dlsx 11y ago
Say that to my face I'll have you know I am trained in black ops cyber warfare and I will hack you in to oblivion. I am an expert on technical nuances in financial history, and I will exclaim one truth: HACK THE PLANET
ejlo 11y ago
> The miseries from bank runs and crashes are real, but even so, the total impact on human welfare from fractional reserves has been overwhelmingly positive. It surely has been positive in the past but that does not mean it is positive now or in the future. We are entering a new era, where (economic) growth is no longer necessary for human development, due to automation and that an increasingly large percentage of innovation is in software. In a world of progress without growth, we cannot have an economic system that requires growth to function properly. Instead, we need economic stability.
- levosmetalo 11y ago
  So true. The real problem we are facing is not lack of growth, it's getting used to the situation that we'll never again achieve absolute employment, since the need of human labour is shrinking. Depending on our choices today we may end up in either Star Trek or Elysium kind of society in the future. I can only applaud Switzerland taking seriously this, as well as basic income initiative. If anyone is able to pull it through, it's them. The only pity is that the current discussion is made in German, so most of the anglosphere won't be able to read or contribute to the discussion directly, and would be left to low quality "journalism" as a source of information about the debate.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
eternalban 11y ago
Fractional reserve is really great. How about giving private individuals the right to print money? Or perhaps any organization? It is a great enabler.
amalag 11y ago
>total impact on human welfare from fractional reserves has been overwhelmingly positive. Measured in what, GDP? A relentless race to extract more and more resources from the earth and lay waste to countries in the process? Easy money only emboldens a race to the bottom for extraction of resources, not a holistic life for the world's population. Such banking only empowers a few.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>It's a tragic topic to put to a referendum though, because I don't expect every random person to be an expert on the technical nuances of financial history. Voters are not experts on matters of laws, morality, ethics, psychology, sociology, or criminology. If it is tragic for this to be put to referendum, then most every referendum is tragic.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  I wouldn't want 'experts' in psychology, sociology, criminology, or other -ology to be deciding anything for me.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Many feel the same way about financial experts.
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      As they should.

Pyxl101 11y ago

To be fair, the proposal (if I've read it correctly) is not for all banks to have a 100% reserve requirements - but it's for commercial banks to have that requirement. The central bank can still create money on a fractional reserve basis. I agree that this seems like an unusually technical topic to subject to referendum.

dogma1138 11y ago
The Swiss hold referendums on most big issues, every year they have quite a few of them and this has been going on for about 150 years, direct democracy is quite big there as it seems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_federal_referendums https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_federal_referend...
- mattlutze 11y ago
  It looks like a lot/most/all(?) of these, if categorized, would be "public moral position" questions. 2015 and 2014, at least. I wonder if bank reserve regulations really falls into that as well?
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    Federal law on radio and television Against mass immigration Financing and development of railway infrastructure JAS 39 Gripen (Swedish fighter jet) procurement Non-renewable energy tax Fixed book price agreement Foreign treaties Hospitality industry VAT initiative Gold reserves And my 2 favorites... Increase petrol station shop opening hours Music lessons Seems much more than just "public moral position" questions to me.
colordrops 11y ago
Funny that you call the details of a control mechanism used by moneyed elites, which is not particularly complicated, an "unusually technical topic". It's unfortunate if you are right.
lxgr 11y ago
> The central bank can still create money on a fractional reserve basis. The central bank does not even need to hold fractional reserves: As the entity creating base money, it can literally create that out of thin air. Of course, history has taught that unlimited money creation is usually a bad idea, so usually base money is now backed by public or private debt, but this idea is distinct from fractional reserve banking.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

someguydave 11y ago

"natural experiments" like this case of the apparent success of fractional reserve banking are not "laboratory tests". There are many other confounding variables that cannot be eliminated. See this Econtalk podcast on the topic: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/12/noah_smith_on_w.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/12/noah_smith_on_w.htm...

smokeyj 11y ago

> Most people aren't bankers, and don't really understand how it works as a system, beyond their own account, so it's weird to ask them to make key decisions here. That's a strange principle to hold, especially if it wouldn't apply to any other asset. People are generally free to own securities no matter how complicated their structure. But the fiat system seems to conveniently siphon lending power from account holders to account managers -- effectively centralizing economic planning to financial institutions by fiat. Saying "central banking is good" is like saying "government is good". It definitely can be, but it can also be murderously oppressive. The question is, how did this economic decision maker come to be -- and why are they in control of your money instead of you.

wazoox 11y ago

> It's a tragic topic to put to a referendum though How one can reach such conclusion is beyond me. People will discuss the question, and democratically decide. You'd be surprise the fierce debates that erupts among citizens when a serious question is on the table, and how everyone makes oneself enlightened before vote. This is what actual democracy is. This is how it should work everywhere for any serious issue. Designating a cherry-picked representative who carries exactly zero obligation to hold his promises is NOT democracy, but elective oligarchy. Almost all countries calling themselves democracies certainly don't deserve the name.

atmosx 11y ago
> How one can reach such conclusion is beyond me. Actually, if you don't trust democracy, labeling topics for a referendum as tragic or awful goes without saying.
- reinhardt 11y ago
  I trust democracy to decide on complex financial issues as much as I trust it to design a chemical factory or offer medical advice: not at all.
golergka 11y ago
> everyone makes oneself enlightened Really.
jeffdavis 11y ago
"makes oneself enlightened before vote" How long does it take for someone to be competent to vote on monetary policy? It's ridiculous to expect a voter to spend that amount of time on every issue.
- wazoox 11y ago
  It may take a long time, but the debate is 18 months long, more than enough for everybody to get on board on the issue. It's ridiculous to believe that citizens have no business in important matters. If you're not deciding, you're not acting, and your voice doesn't matter at all.

twobits 11y ago

It's totally unfair and undemocratic for some people to be able to print money and for the rest to not be able to. Gives the former huge advantage, and creates economic inequality.

cheald 11y ago
You can print money; if you hand a friend a piece of paper that says "I owe you $10" or "I owe you ten apples", you've printed money. The nominal economic value of that paper becomes the value of what it promises. Your friend could then trade that marker to one of his friends on its nominal value, as long as his friend trusts that you're good for it. You perhaps can't print currency, but you can create money in exactly the same fashion that banks do - any time you issue a debt marker, money is created.
- rtpg 11y ago
  This is an interesting angle. The important thing to note is the "I owe you $10" piece of paper is worth roughly $10 when it comes from a trusted source. I think if I wrote that it might not be worth the full $10 in "publicly traded" circumstances. There's an interesting exercise in how bank-like you can become before you need to register as a financial institution.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    Though that trust is mostly based in how big a pile of money you have, and how stable it seems to be, even if you act nothing like a bank.
- someguydave 11y ago
  The real difference is that you can't force the FDIC to 'insure' your 'debt marker', while a bank can. If there were no deposit insurance, depositors would actually have to worry about the soundness of their bank - and probably would demand 'full reserve' banking.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

mietek 11y ago

threatofrain 11y ago

"Hard science" and "laboratory test" means random selection with random assignment and controls for confounding. What are some quick keywords so I can Google for your claim? I'm not even asking for a citation. If I said something about causal learning, I could point to Patricia Cheng as a keyword to Google. If I said something about dual systems of cognition in economic behavior, I could point to Daniel Kahneman or Jonathan Evans. Point me in the direction where one can find this "hard science" with "laboratory tests", so that I may know these are not toy words you threw around.

mziel 11y ago
Not the OP, but there's no such thing as proper experimental setup in economics (because there can't be). That's why using economic/econometric modelling for causal inference is the holy grail of the field. Some approaches are: - structural models (google Pearl) - instrumental variables (google Angrist)
- threatofrain 11y ago
  Thanks for the Judea Pearl reference.
- pratyushag 11y ago
  Not an expert but wouldn't randomized controlled trials (part of many economics papers) count as proper experimental setup?
  - MrApathy 11y ago
    Yes, many economics papers are at the intersection of economics and psychology with a focus on human behavior. One of the broad assumptions of economics is that individuals are largely rational, but controlled experiments sometimes show that people don't always act in their best interest. But at a macro level, there are no controlled experiments. We can look toward "natural" experiments (e.g., wages and the labor rate of two border towns, where one is in a state that has raised minimum wage and the other has not), but there's nothing like the gold standard double blind randomized trial that you'd find in a drug study.

randomThoughts9 11y ago

>There were holdouts in Europe originally, some central banks were slow to adopt fractional reserves. They were trounced by the economies of other European nations and their superior access to liquid capital. This is in no way a proof. A good analogy, but not a perfect one, I agree, is looking at 2 companies where one of them has more capital and so it can undersell its competitor, using prices lower than its production prices. You might win the competition, but that's definitely not a a good system long term. And another thing that I think is very important to keep in mind is that we went through 2 world wars quite recently, each one performing a reset of the system. It is very hard to say that we are on the right track when the system needs to crash and burn every couple of generations.

aflyax 11y ago

>Economic historian Niall Ferguson beautifully describes fractional reserves as one of the greatest innovations of humankind in Ascent of Money. The miseries from bank runs and crashes are real, but even so, the total impact on human welfare from fractional reserves has been overwhelmingly positive. That doesn’t make any sense. Runs and crashes are an important part of the free market, keeping banks in reign. Fractional reserve banking would be impossible or very limited if runs and crashes were allowed to happen. This would result in non-inflationary currency, improved value of savings, and decreased volatility of the markets (extreme booms followed by extreme crashes and long periods of unemployment due to constant reallocation of resources in the society). All of this is prevented by central banks.

irixusr 11y ago
The central banks were created to bail out commercial banks who got greedy a la Merry Poppins

seivan 11y ago

I wish you would explain more in detail or link some more reading. I find this interesting. I've always seen this reckless lending/printing money as something unsustainable but obviously I don't know much about the subject, it's hard to find decent reading material for the average person to understand.

rdsubhas 11y ago

Uhh, the referendum talks about banning Private Banks from creating money. The Swiss National Bank will still have fractional reserves and will reserve the right to create physical and electronic money. So isn't that a good thing? > If successful, the sovereign money bill would give the Swiss National Bank a monopoly on physical and electronic money creation, "while the decision concerning how new money is introduced into the economy would reside with the government," says Vollgeld. > But over 90pc of money in circulation in Switzerland now exists in the form "electronic" cash created by private banks, rather than the central bank. EDIT: Formatting

stefantalpalaru 11y ago
> The Swiss National Bank will still have fractional reserves and will reserve the right to create physical and electronic money. So isn't that a good thing? For the banks? It depends on how quickly the central bank is going to loan them new money. For the bank's customers who want their easy loans? Best case scenario - nothing changes, worst case - loans are now harder to get because the central bank is shy about increasing the money supply.

blfr 11y ago

It's a tragic topic to put to a referendum though, because I don't expect every random person to be an expert on the technical nuances of financial history. That's true for nearly every subject. It's an argument against this referendum as much as it is against democracy in general. Even representative democracy. Most people are certainly not experts at hiring executives. Seemingly even those whose job it is to hire and fire.

maaku 11y ago

It's not a binary option. It's possible to be anti-fractional reserve while not requiring 100% reserves for everything. Mutual credit economies, for example, require no backing store, giving all the advantages of fractional reserve, with no systemic risk.

dlsx 11y ago

Say that to my face I'll have you know I am trained in black ops cyber warfare and I will hack you in to oblivion. I am an expert on technical nuances in financial history, and I will exclaim one truth: HACK THE PLANET

ejlo 11y ago

> The miseries from bank runs and crashes are real, but even so, the total impact on human welfare from fractional reserves has been overwhelmingly positive. It surely has been positive in the past but that does not mean it is positive now or in the future. We are entering a new era, where (economic) growth is no longer necessary for human development, due to automation and that an increasingly large percentage of innovation is in software. In a world of progress without growth, we cannot have an economic system that requires growth to function properly. Instead, we need economic stability.

levosmetalo 11y ago
So true. The real problem we are facing is not lack of growth, it's getting used to the situation that we'll never again achieve absolute employment, since the need of human labour is shrinking. Depending on our choices today we may end up in either Star Trek or Elysium kind of society in the future. I can only applaud Switzerland taking seriously this, as well as basic income initiative. If anyone is able to pull it through, it's them. The only pity is that the current discussion is made in German, so most of the anglosphere won't be able to read or contribute to the discussion directly, and would be left to low quality "journalism" as a source of information about the debate.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

eternalban 11y ago

Fractional reserve is really great. How about giving private individuals the right to print money? Or perhaps any organization? It is a great enabler.

amalag 11y ago

>total impact on human welfare from fractional reserves has been overwhelmingly positive. Measured in what, GDP? A relentless race to extract more and more resources from the earth and lay waste to countries in the process? Easy money only emboldens a race to the bottom for extraction of resources, not a holistic life for the world's population. Such banking only empowers a few.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>It's a tragic topic to put to a referendum though, because I don't expect every random person to be an expert on the technical nuances of financial history. Voters are not experts on matters of laws, morality, ethics, psychology, sociology, or criminology. If it is tragic for this to be put to referendum, then most every referendum is tragic.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
I wouldn't want 'experts' in psychology, sociology, criminology, or other -ology to be deciding anything for me.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Many feel the same way about financial experts.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    As they should.