5 ms·

It depends on if we want our output of valuable stuff (not just consumer products, but homes, health care, education and research) to grow or not. If we want th

by pimmen 9y ago

It depends on if we want our output of valuable stuff (not just consumer products, but homes, health care, education and research) to grow or not. If we want them to grow, we need a growing money supply. If not, you won't spend your money on any of those things, and if you don't spend your money on it, the demand goes down and less of the stuff is produced. The reason you won't spend your money today is because you'll get more tomorrow, so why not buy it tomorrow? And why spend your money tomorrow when you'll get more stuff the day after tomorrow? And if most people aren't spending their money, you don't get any money either, because you only get money by someone else wanting what you produce (or wanting what your investment produces). Then you'll spend even less of your money, because now that you're strapped for cash, you really need to wait until the prices drop to maximize your purchase power. It's the main reason we have near zero interest rates across the West years after 2008; that crisis was deep and we need to drive up inflation to kick start the economy for real and make the growth more equal.

moduspol 9y ago
This is a strong argument and I feel like it makes sense. Doesn't it rely on the premise that "we" (as a society) are deciding what currency all of us will use? I think what you're saying is totally true, but as a single rational person, I'd rather store my savings in something that is not (by design) decreasing in value. People could always theoretically do this with gold, but it's not quite the same since gold has its own risks (like it being lost or stolen), ongoing costs (to protect it), and is trickier to trade. Bitcoin is still in its early phases and another cryptocurrency may surpass it at some point, but if we don't already, it's likely people will have increasingly easy access to currency that is algorithmically constrained (like Bitcoin). Won't people rationally flock to such currencies, and if that's the case, won't it be difficult to encourage spending / investment using a minorly inflationary currency?
- tonfa 9y ago
  > I'd rather store my savings in something that is not (by design) decreasing in value. That's why you don't want to store your wealth in "cash" for investing, you most likely want to lend capital to new ventures that needs it.
  - moduspol 9y ago
    Sure, and I almost certainly would. But isn't that side-stepping the issue? I could invest with a deflationary currency. I might not have 100% of it invested at every moment. When I do, the company could hold onto that for a while until they're able to make use of it. It benefits both of us (individually) for that money to not be decreasing in value, even if it works against us (as a society) in that we have decreased incentive to spend. The key question is that if normal rational people would choose a deflationary currency if given a choice, and that choice is becoming more and more realistic, at what point does the current strategy of "assume everyone uses the nation's main currency and do what's best for the whole economy" not work any more?
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > at what point does the current strategy of "assume everyone uses the nation's main currency and do what's best for the whole economy" not work any more? When the government stops using it as the basis for taxation, damages in civil cases irrespective of the specific nature of the assets at issue, and criminal fines. Because as long as those (especially the first two) are true, essentially everyone will use the natiobal currency substantially, both directly and indirectly, regardless of what other assets and currencies they use, and normal monetary policy measures will affect the broader economy in the normal manner unless the auxiliary currencies are actively managed to counteract national monetary policy.
      - moduspol 9y ago
        There are already companies that allow you to pay federal taxes with Bitcoin (by converting them to USD for you). There are already debit / credit cards that allow you to have your account funds in Bitcoin, but convert to USD for a merchant when you use them. I guess to me it doesn't seem fundamentally impossible that those things could be based in a national / fiat currency that is not the same currency a large number (or even majority) of people use.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > but as a single rational person, I'd rather store my savings in something that is not (by design) decreasing in value. That's one of the reasons currency decreases in value, it's a deliberate effort to get people to use just about anything else as a store of value. > Won't people rationally flock to such currencies Supply constraints combined with utility to drive demand (whether a supply constrained “currency” has the latter is another question) makes for a good store of value—investment—but that's orthogonal to utility as a currency.
  - FooHentai 9y ago
    That last point is really key I think - If people flock to a currency as a means of growing their holdings value then it's not really a currency, it's an investment vehicle. That argument has been levelled and Bitcoin, and I personally agree with it. It explains the adoption boom up to this point, and off the back of it it's possible to fairly confidently predict a bust when returns fail to materialize. Right now returns are based on adoption coupled with increasingly constrained supply.
    - siffinleex 9y ago
      It is both a currency and a means of investment, all currencies are, even inflationary fiat currencies, the people who get in first when interest rates are high can earn a lot of interest before the currency is eventually devalued by the controllers. In theory, when bitcoin reaches a saturation point of adoption, the value of bitcoin won't increase anymore (it can't if there is no more demand). At this stage deflation would technically have stopped and the currency is matured. This should lead to a much more stable economy than we have now, where people aren't encouraged through the use of cheap credit to make emotional purchases for things they don't need, sure the economy might not "grow" at the same rate but the growth would be a more precise representation of what people truly needed (instead of just being a big party). Maybe people would even lead more stable responsible lives.
smokeyj 9y ago
> And why spend your money tomorrow when you'll get more stuff the day after tomorrow? Right, we'll die of starvation because our money will be worth more in the future. Instead of paying rent we'll all sleep in cardboard boxes. Then the economy will grind to a halt and global warming will cease to be a threat. Thus resulting in the onset of another ice age. The reason you don't want another ice age is, it'll destabilize the snow-shoe equities market. It's all pretty self-explanatory. (This is how I imagine your typical economist reasons).
- FooHentai 9y ago
  I want to respond to your post but I sincerely can't tell what argument you're making here, too many layers of what I'm reading as sarcasm.
MR4D 9y ago
This isn’t quite correct. Technically I’d say it’s highly incomplete, and that incompleteness makes it wrong. For instance, a side effect is that only high productive investments will be made. That leads to high return on investment. Which leads to higher profitability. (Look up ROIC if you want a quick overview of the effect - it’s very well documented). What’s this leads to is a society which has a highly improving productivity, and therefore a highly improving quality of life. I’m not sure why some economists leave this effect out. It’s a very significant effect, and leads to a different set of outcomes when you include it in a model. Side note - using ROIC is a great filter for ranking companies to invest in. Over the longer term, companies with higher ROIC tend to significantly beat their competitors.

by pimmen 9y ago

moduspol 9y ago

This is a strong argument and I feel like it makes sense. Doesn't it rely on the premise that "we" (as a society) are deciding what currency all of us will use? I think what you're saying is totally true, but as a single rational person, I'd rather store my savings in something that is not (by design) decreasing in value. People could always theoretically do this with gold, but it's not quite the same since gold has its own risks (like it being lost or stolen), ongoing costs (to protect it), and is trickier to trade. Bitcoin is still in its early phases and another cryptocurrency may surpass it at some point, but if we don't already, it's likely people will have increasingly easy access to currency that is algorithmically constrained (like Bitcoin). Won't people rationally flock to such currencies, and if that's the case, won't it be difficult to encourage spending / investment using a minorly inflationary currency?

tonfa 9y ago
> I'd rather store my savings in something that is not (by design) decreasing in value. That's why you don't want to store your wealth in "cash" for investing, you most likely want to lend capital to new ventures that needs it.
- moduspol 9y ago
  Sure, and I almost certainly would. But isn't that side-stepping the issue? I could invest with a deflationary currency. I might not have 100% of it invested at every moment. When I do, the company could hold onto that for a while until they're able to make use of it. It benefits both of us (individually) for that money to not be decreasing in value, even if it works against us (as a society) in that we have decreased incentive to spend. The key question is that if normal rational people would choose a deflationary currency if given a choice, and that choice is becoming more and more realistic, at what point does the current strategy of "assume everyone uses the nation's main currency and do what's best for the whole economy" not work any more?
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > at what point does the current strategy of "assume everyone uses the nation's main currency and do what's best for the whole economy" not work any more? When the government stops using it as the basis for taxation, damages in civil cases irrespective of the specific nature of the assets at issue, and criminal fines. Because as long as those (especially the first two) are true, essentially everyone will use the natiobal currency substantially, both directly and indirectly, regardless of what other assets and currencies they use, and normal monetary policy measures will affect the broader economy in the normal manner unless the auxiliary currencies are actively managed to counteract national monetary policy.
    - moduspol 9y ago
      There are already companies that allow you to pay federal taxes with Bitcoin (by converting them to USD for you). There are already debit / credit cards that allow you to have your account funds in Bitcoin, but convert to USD for a merchant when you use them. I guess to me it doesn't seem fundamentally impossible that those things could be based in a national / fiat currency that is not the same currency a large number (or even majority) of people use.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
dragonwriter 9y ago
> but as a single rational person, I'd rather store my savings in something that is not (by design) decreasing in value. That's one of the reasons currency decreases in value, it's a deliberate effort to get people to use just about anything else as a store of value. > Won't people rationally flock to such currencies Supply constraints combined with utility to drive demand (whether a supply constrained “currency” has the latter is another question) makes for a good store of value—investment—but that's orthogonal to utility as a currency.
- FooHentai 9y ago
  That last point is really key I think - If people flock to a currency as a means of growing their holdings value then it's not really a currency, it's an investment vehicle. That argument has been levelled and Bitcoin, and I personally agree with it. It explains the adoption boom up to this point, and off the back of it it's possible to fairly confidently predict a bust when returns fail to materialize. Right now returns are based on adoption coupled with increasingly constrained supply.
  - siffinleex 9y ago
    It is both a currency and a means of investment, all currencies are, even inflationary fiat currencies, the people who get in first when interest rates are high can earn a lot of interest before the currency is eventually devalued by the controllers. In theory, when bitcoin reaches a saturation point of adoption, the value of bitcoin won't increase anymore (it can't if there is no more demand). At this stage deflation would technically have stopped and the currency is matured. This should lead to a much more stable economy than we have now, where people aren't encouraged through the use of cheap credit to make emotional purchases for things they don't need, sure the economy might not "grow" at the same rate but the growth would be a more precise representation of what people truly needed (instead of just being a big party). Maybe people would even lead more stable responsible lives.

smokeyj 9y ago

> And why spend your money tomorrow when you'll get more stuff the day after tomorrow? Right, we'll die of starvation because our money will be worth more in the future. Instead of paying rent we'll all sleep in cardboard boxes. Then the economy will grind to a halt and global warming will cease to be a threat. Thus resulting in the onset of another ice age. The reason you don't want another ice age is, it'll destabilize the snow-shoe equities market. It's all pretty self-explanatory. (This is how I imagine your typical economist reasons).

FooHentai 9y ago
I want to respond to your post but I sincerely can't tell what argument you're making here, too many layers of what I'm reading as sarcasm.

MR4D 9y ago

This isn’t quite correct. Technically I’d say it’s highly incomplete, and that incompleteness makes it wrong. For instance, a side effect is that only high productive investments will be made. That leads to high return on investment. Which leads to higher profitability. (Look up ROIC if you want a quick overview of the effect - it’s very well documented). What’s this leads to is a society which has a highly improving productivity, and therefore a highly improving quality of life. I’m not sure why some economists leave this effect out. It’s a very significant effect, and leads to a different set of outcomes when you include it in a model. Side note - using ROIC is a great filter for ranking companies to invest in. Over the longer term, companies with higher ROIC tend to significantly beat their competitors.