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no one has actually convinced me this is bad. when you save instead of spend shouldn't your stored potential increase instead of decrease? this makes sense to m

no one has actually convinced me this is bad. when you save instead of spend shouldn't your stored potential increase instead of decrease? this makes sense to me and would encourage frugality and a break from the consumerism race to the bottom. If you give someone your food it would make sense to get more food the farther you have to wait instead of less food the longer you wait. Of course the current corporate system does not want this they want you to spend all you have and be a debt slave. Think.

roenxi 9y ago
Very much agreeing with you in principle that punishing savers is a terrible idea. That being said, if bitcoin: * Isn't backed by government (participation is voluntary) * Is inherently delationary & encourages hoarding * Loses coins from the system due to accident (eg, people losing passwords) Then it follows that at some point we expect, say, plumbers to do actual work for someone who's contribution was that they were there buying bitcoin in 2015. It might be troublesome to get the plumbers buy-in to bitcoin specifically vs a new competitor where all participants are pulling their weight in the real world. Basically, deflation + a long memory makes a monetary system unattractive for people to buy into. EDIT: I'll point out that _so far_ bitcoin has been an inflationary currency from the point of view of number-of-coins created. That will change.
wmf 9y ago
If your entire economy has been based on consumer spending for decades and you decide to incentivize people to save instead of spend, you basically just destroyed your own economy. Maybe it's theoretically possible to restructure the economy first and then switch to hard money, but you haven't proposed how to do that. If you save money by investing it, it does increase. Only if you save money by hoarding it does it just sit there.
pedrocr 9y ago
>when you save instead of spend shouldn't your stored potential increase instead of decrease? It should and it does if you actually invest your savings in productive assets (stocks, bonds, land, etc). These days it's extremely convenient to do this in almost all modern societies. >Of course the current corporate system does not want this they want you to spend all you have and be a debt slave. Think. Misguided hyperbole. If you want to break that cycle you need to stop spending money and instead save by buying assets. An inflationary currency encourages that by making it costly to just sit on your money once you've decided not to spend it. A deflationary currency encourages hoarding currency, not investing it and thus making the whole economy poorer. If you're spending all your money as soon as you get it this is actually irrelevant and you don't hold it long enough for inflation to matter. Bitcoin is worse for your objective than current stable currencies like the euro and the dollar. Those have a predictable and low level of inflation that allow you to manage your day to day finances with a high level of predictability so you can then take any amount left and invest it in actual productive assets to over time build a return. Teaching people to use the standard financial tools already available would seem a much better contribution to society than trying to build a whole new financial system that doesn't seem to have any actual huge advantages.

roenxi 9y ago

Very much agreeing with you in principle that punishing savers is a terrible idea. That being said, if bitcoin: * Isn't backed by government (participation is voluntary) * Is inherently delationary & encourages hoarding * Loses coins from the system due to accident (eg, people losing passwords) Then it follows that at some point we expect, say, plumbers to do actual work for someone who's contribution was that they were there buying bitcoin in 2015. It might be troublesome to get the plumbers buy-in to bitcoin specifically vs a new competitor where all participants are pulling their weight in the real world. Basically, deflation + a long memory makes a monetary system unattractive for people to buy into. EDIT: I'll point out that _so far_ bitcoin has been an inflationary currency from the point of view of number-of-coins created. That will change.

wmf 9y ago

If your entire economy has been based on consumer spending for decades and you decide to incentivize people to save instead of spend, you basically just destroyed your own economy. Maybe it's theoretically possible to restructure the economy first and then switch to hard money, but you haven't proposed how to do that. If you save money by investing it, it does increase. Only if you save money by hoarding it does it just sit there.

pedrocr 9y ago

>when you save instead of spend shouldn't your stored potential increase instead of decrease? It should and it does if you actually invest your savings in productive assets (stocks, bonds, land, etc). These days it's extremely convenient to do this in almost all modern societies. >Of course the current corporate system does not want this they want you to spend all you have and be a debt slave. Think. Misguided hyperbole. If you want to break that cycle you need to stop spending money and instead save by buying assets. An inflationary currency encourages that by making it costly to just sit on your money once you've decided not to spend it. A deflationary currency encourages hoarding currency, not investing it and thus making the whole economy poorer. If you're spending all your money as soon as you get it this is actually irrelevant and you don't hold it long enough for inflation to matter. Bitcoin is worse for your objective than current stable currencies like the euro and the dollar. Those have a predictable and low level of inflation that allow you to manage your day to day finances with a high level of predictability so you can then take any amount left and invest it in actual productive assets to over time build a return. Teaching people to use the standard financial tools already available would seem a much better contribution to society than trying to build a whole new financial system that doesn't seem to have any actual huge advantages.