5 ms·

Fair enough, points taken. I appreciate your clarifications and our brief, but nice, discussion. :-) > And so if the good becomes cheaper to produce over time,

by ablekh 6y ago

Fair enough, points taken. I appreciate your clarifications and our brief, but nice, discussion. :-) > And so if the good becomes cheaper to produce over time, you'd want to inflate the cost of it to keep it level. I'm a bit confused about this part - why would you want to "keep it [the cost] level" between 1921 and 2021?

karpierz 6y ago
Money is a debt from society to its holder. You can exchange work or stuff for it, with the expectation that society will accept it at a later time for some stuff. So it's just a matter of deciding how the debt evolves over time. That part is specifically meant to contrast deflation with either stagflation or inflation. If you drop the nominal price over time, you're setting a Ponzi scheme. By virtue of selling something in the past and holding on to the token, you're entitled to more of it in the future, without any risk. And you're preventing the token from being spent by someone now who could use it. And likewise, I appreciate the line of questioning, it helps me reflect and think about this. The details are a bit fuzzy, and I'll need to think more about some goods that seem deflationary (computers for example)
- ablekh 6y ago
  Interesting insights, thank you for sharing. I will need to think it over as well (and maybe read up on economics) ...
- seibelj 6y ago
  > Money is a debt from society to its holder. I disagree. Money is a store of value that is separate from society - gold is an international currency accepted organically because of its useful and intrinsic properties, with thousands of years of history in a wide variety of cultures that had no link before trade began. There is no "debt" here. Society doesn't "owe" the holder of money anything, necessarily.
  - ablekh 6y ago
    I think your confusion stems from the imperfect wording in the original phrase. What @karpierz meant (and his/her subsequent sentence supports it) is a) that society in this context implies government and b) that money is a legal tender that, upon tendering (i.e., offering as payment), discharges any debts (e.g., loans, purchases, taxes). By the way, you're wrong in that money a) is only a store of value (it also functions as a medium of exchange and a unit of account) and b) is separate from society (in the modern world, in most countries, it is only government who has legal right to issue [primary] money).

by ablekh 6y ago

karpierz 6y ago

Money is a debt from society to its holder. You can exchange work or stuff for it, with the expectation that society will accept it at a later time for some stuff. So it's just a matter of deciding how the debt evolves over time. That part is specifically meant to contrast deflation with either stagflation or inflation. If you drop the nominal price over time, you're setting a Ponzi scheme. By virtue of selling something in the past and holding on to the token, you're entitled to more of it in the future, without any risk. And you're preventing the token from being spent by someone now who could use it. And likewise, I appreciate the line of questioning, it helps me reflect and think about this. The details are a bit fuzzy, and I'll need to think more about some goods that seem deflationary (computers for example)

ablekh 6y ago
Interesting insights, thank you for sharing. I will need to think it over as well (and maybe read up on economics) ...
seibelj 6y ago
> Money is a debt from society to its holder. I disagree. Money is a store of value that is separate from society - gold is an international currency accepted organically because of its useful and intrinsic properties, with thousands of years of history in a wide variety of cultures that had no link before trade began. There is no "debt" here. Society doesn't "owe" the holder of money anything, necessarily.
- ablekh 6y ago
  I think your confusion stems from the imperfect wording in the original phrase. What @karpierz meant (and his/her subsequent sentence supports it) is a) that society in this context implies government and b) that money is a legal tender that, upon tendering (i.e., offering as payment), discharges any debts (e.g., loans, purchases, taxes). By the way, you're wrong in that money a) is only a store of value (it also functions as a medium of exchange and a unit of account) and b) is separate from society (in the modern world, in most countries, it is only government who has legal right to issue [primary] money).