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The deflationary aspect is the number one reason I’ve never bought into a crypto currency. I have serious ethical and moral issues that prevent me. In addition

by afpx 9y ago

The deflationary aspect is the number one reason I’ve never bought into a crypto currency. I have serious ethical and moral issues that prevent me. In addition to hoarding, deflationary currencies (like gold) cause people to spend lots of money and effort trying to get other people to buy into them too. For me, it’s a very sad thing to watch unfold. It’s like when the ‘buy gold’ commercials started appearing on Fox News, and I saw my grandparents buying gold. If someone has to spend lots of time and money advertising how useful something is, it’s probably more useful to them than me.

y_u_no_rust 9y ago
Yeah, I love the idea of not being beholden to card processors/paypal-type services when making payments online.. it's strange to think that those companies almost control all online commerce I do really dislike a lot of the other themes common in the cryptocurreny communities though especially when it comes to claiming the federal reserve has a noose around their necks.. like the new noose will be any better than the old one I am glad bitcoin popularized the non fungible peer-to-peer ledger thing and bringing the values of decentralization back to popular conversation
islanderfun 9y ago
I'm very curious on your stance. Would be able to elaborate further?
- afpx 9y ago
  See my comment above.
etr-strike 9y ago
Yea, it’s better people just hoard houses to escape inflation.
tfha 9y ago
The two issues are separate. Isn't there a lot of sound finical advise telling people to put money into the stock market? But isn't the stock market widely a greater fool game these days? Companies don't pay dividends anymore, voting rights are being reduced, and many companies are far too large to send a chance at being acquired. It would be a terrible deal if 90% of the population wasn't accumulating stock via a 401K
- hossbeast 9y ago
  90% ? I would expect it to be much lower
dnautics 9y ago
I don't understand why that's an ethical dilemma. Do you not have a problem with disproportionately increasing the cost of living for the poor[0] or forcing the mddle class to subsidize big corporations [1] or creating an economy where corporate survival is tied to consumption, leading to innovations in "disposable product strategies"? [0] let's say you're spending 90% of your income on cost of living and there's 10% inflation. That's way worse than in you're spending 20% of your income on necessaries and there's 10% inflation. [1] in order to preserve wealth in an inflationary regime, the middle class is encouraged to put money into the stock market, which basically becomes a mechanism to socialize the costs of corporate r&d while the Lions share of the gains go elsewhere (the scraps are thrown back at the middle class, enough to keep them from seeing the inherent problem with the system)
- ultraluminous 9y ago
  What you did is point out a few real problems in our current economic reality of which inflation is one part. In no way does this say anything about how deflation solves any of them, or even leads to worse scenarios.. Think about the issues you mentioned - wage stagnation, unsustainable expectation of growth in corporate profits, systemic inequality etc. - Now ask yourself "how will removing monetary inflation and replacing it with monetary deflation affect these systemic issues, in which direction will it drive them, how and why?" If you still come out on the pro-deflation side, I'd be happy to hear your perspective.
  - dnautics 9y ago
    real wage stagnation is a social policy, not an emergent phenomenon. Politicians are concerned about unemployment numbers, and there is this bogeyman that "sticky wages" of lower classes gets in the way. The prescribed way around this is to decrease the real value of money and incrementally dislodge the liability of employing lower classes. Systemic inequality is generated, by deliberate inflationary policy[0], it is not a "universal constant of the universe". https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-inflation/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... "Even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis." [0] I do, for what it's worth, think that liberal economists aren't acting in bad faith, they're just clueless, mostly because if you're a liberal economist (or almost any economist, really) you've probably never been poor.

by afpx 9y ago

y_u_no_rust 9y ago

Yeah, I love the idea of not being beholden to card processors/paypal-type services when making payments online.. it's strange to think that those companies almost control all online commerce I do really dislike a lot of the other themes common in the cryptocurreny communities though especially when it comes to claiming the federal reserve has a noose around their necks.. like the new noose will be any better than the old one I am glad bitcoin popularized the non fungible peer-to-peer ledger thing and bringing the values of decentralization back to popular conversation

islanderfun 9y ago

I'm very curious on your stance. Would be able to elaborate further?

afpx 9y ago
See my comment above.

etr-strike 9y ago

Yea, it’s better people just hoard houses to escape inflation.

tfha 9y ago

The two issues are separate. Isn't there a lot of sound finical advise telling people to put money into the stock market? But isn't the stock market widely a greater fool game these days? Companies don't pay dividends anymore, voting rights are being reduced, and many companies are far too large to send a chance at being acquired. It would be a terrible deal if 90% of the population wasn't accumulating stock via a 401K

hossbeast 9y ago
90% ? I would expect it to be much lower

dnautics 9y ago

I don't understand why that's an ethical dilemma. Do you not have a problem with disproportionately increasing the cost of living for the poor[0] or forcing the mddle class to subsidize big corporations [1] or creating an economy where corporate survival is tied to consumption, leading to innovations in "disposable product strategies"? [0] let's say you're spending 90% of your income on cost of living and there's 10% inflation. That's way worse than in you're spending 20% of your income on necessaries and there's 10% inflation. [1] in order to preserve wealth in an inflationary regime, the middle class is encouraged to put money into the stock market, which basically becomes a mechanism to socialize the costs of corporate r&d while the Lions share of the gains go elsewhere (the scraps are thrown back at the middle class, enough to keep them from seeing the inherent problem with the system)

ultraluminous 9y ago
What you did is point out a few real problems in our current economic reality of which inflation is one part. In no way does this say anything about how deflation solves any of them, or even leads to worse scenarios.. Think about the issues you mentioned - wage stagnation, unsustainable expectation of growth in corporate profits, systemic inequality etc. - Now ask yourself "how will removing monetary inflation and replacing it with monetary deflation affect these systemic issues, in which direction will it drive them, how and why?" If you still come out on the pro-deflation side, I'd be happy to hear your perspective.
- dnautics 9y ago
  real wage stagnation is a social policy, not an emergent phenomenon. Politicians are concerned about unemployment numbers, and there is this bogeyman that "sticky wages" of lower classes gets in the way. The prescribed way around this is to decrease the real value of money and incrementally dislodge the liability of employing lower classes. Systemic inequality is generated, by deliberate inflationary policy[0], it is not a "universal constant of the universe". https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-inflation/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... "Even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis." [0] I do, for what it's worth, think that liberal economists aren't acting in bad faith, they're just clueless, mostly because if you're a liberal economist (or almost any economist, really) you've probably never been poor.