6 ms·

Cash was never a good store of value. You could easily lose everything to fire or theft over night. And governments can create inflation to erode the value of c

Cash was never a good store of value. You could easily lose everything to fire or theft over night. And governments can create inflation to erode the value of cash pretty quickly if they really want to. There is no erosion of the idea of ownership. As someone who is renting in London I can assure you that quarterly inspections and thick, dirty carpets are an effective reminder of the fact that you are either an owner or something between a child and a criminal.

frik 11y ago
You missed the point. Sure, there is a risk of inflation, but you can act immediately for your own good if there a slight warnings on the horizon. You can't do anything if it's out of reach like in recent history as the banks closed all ATMs like they did in Cyprus and Greece. But I wrote about daily usage of money, and not be limited or tracked in any way, like you are with non-cash money. About ownership, you missed the point, London is a bad example, as it's very expensive own a house there - we know that. But outside of that bubble, a house on the country side is still affordable but new regulations and taxes may get a burden. As well as several products come with licenses and software which limits its usage making it virtually more like renting a service instead of owing the product and being able to do what you want with it - like the mentioned Windows 10 with its tracking/spying/hardware-dongle, John Deer tractors and Tesla S with its user account dongle which prevents third party service, after market and selling your own stuff, etc. Or electric cars where the car manufacturer owns the battery, and you can only rent it. Or autonomous cars that you may only lease and not be able to buy and own yourself in near future, as some CEOs mentioned.
- fauigerzigerk 11y ago
  >You missed the point. Sure, there is a risk of inflation, but you can act immediately for your own good if there a slight warnings on the horizon. [...] About ownership, you missed the point, London is a bad example, as it's very expensive own a house there I think you are missing the point, because you're not seeing the connection between these symptoms. Property in London is so expensive because our culture values ownership more than ever and because property is used as a store of value by those who already see the warning signs on the horizon (in various countries around the world). I do agree to some extent with your tracking concerns when it comes to electronic payments. But we have to realize that tracking is not an inherent flaw/feature of electronic payments. It is the result of laws and regulations created by the governments we elected. The point you are making about software licenses has very little to do with a shift away from ownership in my view. We never owned software, even when it was distributed on floppy disks. We never owned music even when it was distributed on vinyl. Tracking and onerous usage restrictions are a feature of the networked nature of modern software and of the distribution channels we use. Ownership rights that make these things possible have always been in place.
  - frik 11y ago
    You wrote about the housing bubble, I wrote about cash money. You wrote about theoretical licenses, I wrote about that you practically own something. Example: I buy a DVD, I can play the DVD as many times I want until it physically breaks. I some states it's also allowed by law to create a backup copy in case it breaks. And while you are allowed by law to do things, it's not possible with new paradigm like used in Win10, John Deer traktor or Tesla S car - so even if you are by law allowed to do things like sell your own stuff, you simply can't do that with such dongled stuff that also tracks you all the time as extra bonus. And it's not about electronic cash per se, it's about centralized systems. I am unsure about Bitcoin but it sounds at least better than a system controlled by the state. Anyway cash money is still the way to go. It's like electronic voting, at the moment there is no realistic way to build a system that is secure and also don't record who voted what and making it easier to mass-manipulate votings - that's why still many states disallow electronic voting or reverted back to voting on paper. Of course many lobbyists from voting machine manufacturers would say the opposite.
    - joeclark77 11y ago
      I'm skeptical even about (paper) cash. I'm thinking about learning to make my own silver coins.
SilasX 11y ago
Out of curiousity, why don't they allow inflation protected cash? It's certainly physically possible through some kind of bearer bond system.
- tim333 11y ago
  I'm not sure it's not allowed. I can make a bit of paper saying "I, Tim will pay the bearer on demand US$1 * the current CPI / 238" and sell it to you for a dollar. Some reasons why inflation free currencies don't work very well in practice are if there is a lot of debt in society and the economy turns down it can be useful to inflate the debt away a bit. Otherwise you get Greece. If they were still on the Drachma with debts in that they could just print a bunch more and have the economy back to normal. Instead they owe Euros which have about zero inflation and are basically bankrupt.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    Yeah, I know there are benefits to the government if it can expropriate people's liquidity; I'm wondering why there aren't mechanisms to fight that.
    - tim333 11y ago
      It's not really about benefits to the government - they can grab what they want as taxes. It's about bailing out the over indebted. Sure you could let them go bust and let the banks that lent to them go bust etc. like they used to in the gold standard days but the majority of people don't want to go back to that.
- hammock 11y ago
  Buy TIPS and use the bond certificates as cash

frik 11y ago

You missed the point. Sure, there is a risk of inflation, but you can act immediately for your own good if there a slight warnings on the horizon. You can't do anything if it's out of reach like in recent history as the banks closed all ATMs like they did in Cyprus and Greece. But I wrote about daily usage of money, and not be limited or tracked in any way, like you are with non-cash money. About ownership, you missed the point, London is a bad example, as it's very expensive own a house there - we know that. But outside of that bubble, a house on the country side is still affordable but new regulations and taxes may get a burden. As well as several products come with licenses and software which limits its usage making it virtually more like renting a service instead of owing the product and being able to do what you want with it - like the mentioned Windows 10 with its tracking/spying/hardware-dongle, John Deer tractors and Tesla S with its user account dongle which prevents third party service, after market and selling your own stuff, etc. Or electric cars where the car manufacturer owns the battery, and you can only rent it. Or autonomous cars that you may only lease and not be able to buy and own yourself in near future, as some CEOs mentioned.

fauigerzigerk 11y ago
>You missed the point. Sure, there is a risk of inflation, but you can act immediately for your own good if there a slight warnings on the horizon. [...] About ownership, you missed the point, London is a bad example, as it's very expensive own a house there I think you are missing the point, because you're not seeing the connection between these symptoms. Property in London is so expensive because our culture values ownership more than ever and because property is used as a store of value by those who already see the warning signs on the horizon (in various countries around the world). I do agree to some extent with your tracking concerns when it comes to electronic payments. But we have to realize that tracking is not an inherent flaw/feature of electronic payments. It is the result of laws and regulations created by the governments we elected. The point you are making about software licenses has very little to do with a shift away from ownership in my view. We never owned software, even when it was distributed on floppy disks. We never owned music even when it was distributed on vinyl. Tracking and onerous usage restrictions are a feature of the networked nature of modern software and of the distribution channels we use. Ownership rights that make these things possible have always been in place.
- frik 11y ago
  You wrote about the housing bubble, I wrote about cash money. You wrote about theoretical licenses, I wrote about that you practically own something. Example: I buy a DVD, I can play the DVD as many times I want until it physically breaks. I some states it's also allowed by law to create a backup copy in case it breaks. And while you are allowed by law to do things, it's not possible with new paradigm like used in Win10, John Deer traktor or Tesla S car - so even if you are by law allowed to do things like sell your own stuff, you simply can't do that with such dongled stuff that also tracks you all the time as extra bonus. And it's not about electronic cash per se, it's about centralized systems. I am unsure about Bitcoin but it sounds at least better than a system controlled by the state. Anyway cash money is still the way to go. It's like electronic voting, at the moment there is no realistic way to build a system that is secure and also don't record who voted what and making it easier to mass-manipulate votings - that's why still many states disallow electronic voting or reverted back to voting on paper. Of course many lobbyists from voting machine manufacturers would say the opposite.
  - joeclark77 11y ago
    I'm skeptical even about (paper) cash. I'm thinking about learning to make my own silver coins.

SilasX 11y ago

Out of curiousity, why don't they allow inflation protected cash? It's certainly physically possible through some kind of bearer bond system.

tim333 11y ago
I'm not sure it's not allowed. I can make a bit of paper saying "I, Tim will pay the bearer on demand US$1 * the current CPI / 238" and sell it to you for a dollar. Some reasons why inflation free currencies don't work very well in practice are if there is a lot of debt in society and the economy turns down it can be useful to inflate the debt away a bit. Otherwise you get Greece. If they were still on the Drachma with debts in that they could just print a bunch more and have the economy back to normal. Instead they owe Euros which have about zero inflation and are basically bankrupt.
- SilasX 11y ago
  Yeah, I know there are benefits to the government if it can expropriate people's liquidity; I'm wondering why there aren't mechanisms to fight that.
  - tim333 11y ago
    It's not really about benefits to the government - they can grab what they want as taxes. It's about bailing out the over indebted. Sure you could let them go bust and let the banks that lent to them go bust etc. like they used to in the gold standard days but the majority of people don't want to go back to that.
hammock 11y ago
Buy TIPS and use the bond certificates as cash