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>> Literally, people have been fleeced for tens of billions of dollars Fiat money printing has been fleecing me for over a decade. I've had to endure my salary

>> Literally, people have been fleeced for tens of billions of dollars Fiat money printing has been fleecing me for over a decade. I've had to endure my salary being held down while rent prices kept going up and I was forced to change companies many times in desperate attempts to get a raise. I even had to change countries, leave most of my family behind to just to try to keep up with inflation so that maybe one day I will be able to buy a simple house and not be enslaved to a landlord. I agree that most cryptos currently are garbage but it's not fair to call out crypto for fleecing people out of their hard earn money when global reserve banks are doing the same on a much larger scale. Please consider how hopeless many millennials feel right now being stuck having to choose between different pyramid schemes. As non-meritocratic as crypto space might seem, so far it's the only place where I was able to achieve any sort of success as a software developer. The fiat corporate ponzi is the least meritocratic ponzi of all.

endisneigh 5y ago
your comment makes absolutely no sense. rent prices going up has nothing to do (directly) with fiat. your lack of wage increases also is not a problem inherent to the use of fiat.
- cryptica 5y ago
  As reserve banks print more money, the money supply expands, this means more fiat chasing fewer goods. This is what makes house prices go up, which leads to increasing rent prices (real estate investors need the rental income to cover their mortgage repayments). Salaries, on the other hand, are negotiated up front and sometimes not re-negotiated for years... In the meantime, the currency is inflating (losing value, prices of everything going up). So by the end of the year, your salary buys you less than what you had negotiated at the start of the year. Some companies offer 2% salary increase per year; this is not enough to cover real inflation. By many accounts, the real inflation is much higher than that; the basket of goods to measure inflation has been manipulated over the years to make inflation seem smaller than it actually is. So even in those cases, employees are losing buying power over time. Besides, inflation is not a single number. Different items inflate at different rates. Money printing is creating wealth inequality which means that goods which appeal to wealthier individuals (such as real estate and other assets which provide financial independence) inflate faster than goods which appeal to the average person (which merely have survival utility).
- rank0 5y ago
  I believe his position is that irresponsible money printing is causing rampant inflation, which gets reflected into rent. Honestly, its not the worst logic in the world... The fear of inflation motivated me to purchase a property this year. My mortgage payment will stay the same for the life of the loan regardless of the value of USD. Hypothetically, wages should also raise with inflation but I suppose OP is saying that hasn't been his experience.
  - cryptica 5y ago
    The only way to get a raise is to change companies. Pretty much everyone in the software industry will agree on this. Also, the way employees are hired and the way salaries are negotiated is totally unfair. There is often no logic behind it other than pedigree/family connections.
    - rank0 5y ago
      > The only way to get a raise is to change companies. Pretty much everyone in the software industry will agree on this. I can certainly agree with you here. The only times I've received significant raises are when I leave, or threaten to leave. I'm getting pretty sick of hopping around every year or two...but hopping is the only time where I have any leverage.
- clipradiowallet 5y ago
  His comment makes perfect sense to me, you could summarize his comment as a real-life example of inflation. His dollars ability to be exchanged for goods/services is diminishing.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Low interest rates play a significant role in the recent rise of REITs and corporate landlords.
shadowgovt 5y ago
None of that is a consequence of fiat currency; it's mostly a consequence of under-regulated capitalism in an era of labor supply exceeding demand. England was backing the pound with gold in the era when Charles Dickens wrote of Ebenezer Scrooge underpaying Jacob Marley.
- cryptica 5y ago
  This is BS. Money printing and 'trickle down' distribution of the newly created money is subsidizing incumbents and making it impossible for competitors to compete with them. Anyone who has worked for a big corporations knows how ridiculously inefficient they are and seen that this has 0 effect on the bottom line. Imagine you open a coffee shop and then some billionaire opens a coffee shop next to yours. Imagine his coffee shop receives a $10 million government contract to provide coffee to the nearby FBI bureau for 1 year... On the other hand, you get no government contracts or subsidies of any kind... You cannot compete! Impossible! He can afford to sell his coffee at a loss to regular customers. On the other hand, you cannot! You cannot compete on price, so you go out of business. The same dynamics permeate pretty much every part of the economy. A similar story can be told without government contracts (which is entirely funded by newly printed money BTW). Big capital holders have access to cheaper credit and lower tax rates than everyone else; they have an unbeatable competitive edge. It's not merely hard to compete; it's impossible! They can make so much money from big institutions that they can operate their front businesses at a loss! That's why they get all the customers! Because they're subsidized by the money printers. Big corporations can setup shell companies to take out huge loans at 0% interest and then give each other huge phony contracts to get that freshly printed currency circulating between themselves. This creates huge revenue numbers on each other's balance sheets. If the shell companies go bankrupt, no big deal, just make new ones and repeat! That's what limited liability is for. Always use 'intangible assets' as collateral that way you always have the upper hand over the banks when repo time arrives and they collect your worthless intangibles... Just like the Fed did buying all these intangible toxic assets. All the companies and all the banks behind them are offloading their toxic intangibles onto the central banks which are paying for them by diluting the salaries of average workers through money printing. The worst part of this is that even if you manage to negotiate up your salary over the years, you will get pushed up into a higher tax bracket. This effect was described by Milton Friedman several decades ago. The system eviscerates workers in countless different ways. It's a kind of slavery which keeps getting worse over time.

endisneigh 5y ago

your comment makes absolutely no sense. rent prices going up has nothing to do (directly) with fiat. your lack of wage increases also is not a problem inherent to the use of fiat.

cryptica 5y ago
As reserve banks print more money, the money supply expands, this means more fiat chasing fewer goods. This is what makes house prices go up, which leads to increasing rent prices (real estate investors need the rental income to cover their mortgage repayments). Salaries, on the other hand, are negotiated up front and sometimes not re-negotiated for years... In the meantime, the currency is inflating (losing value, prices of everything going up). So by the end of the year, your salary buys you less than what you had negotiated at the start of the year. Some companies offer 2% salary increase per year; this is not enough to cover real inflation. By many accounts, the real inflation is much higher than that; the basket of goods to measure inflation has been manipulated over the years to make inflation seem smaller than it actually is. So even in those cases, employees are losing buying power over time. Besides, inflation is not a single number. Different items inflate at different rates. Money printing is creating wealth inequality which means that goods which appeal to wealthier individuals (such as real estate and other assets which provide financial independence) inflate faster than goods which appeal to the average person (which merely have survival utility).
rank0 5y ago
I believe his position is that irresponsible money printing is causing rampant inflation, which gets reflected into rent. Honestly, its not the worst logic in the world... The fear of inflation motivated me to purchase a property this year. My mortgage payment will stay the same for the life of the loan regardless of the value of USD. Hypothetically, wages should also raise with inflation but I suppose OP is saying that hasn't been his experience.
- cryptica 5y ago
  The only way to get a raise is to change companies. Pretty much everyone in the software industry will agree on this. Also, the way employees are hired and the way salaries are negotiated is totally unfair. There is often no logic behind it other than pedigree/family connections.
  - rank0 5y ago
    > The only way to get a raise is to change companies. Pretty much everyone in the software industry will agree on this. I can certainly agree with you here. The only times I've received significant raises are when I leave, or threaten to leave. I'm getting pretty sick of hopping around every year or two...but hopping is the only time where I have any leverage.
clipradiowallet 5y ago
His comment makes perfect sense to me, you could summarize his comment as a real-life example of inflation. His dollars ability to be exchanged for goods/services is diminishing.
cwkoss 5y ago
Low interest rates play a significant role in the recent rise of REITs and corporate landlords.

shadowgovt 5y ago

None of that is a consequence of fiat currency; it's mostly a consequence of under-regulated capitalism in an era of labor supply exceeding demand. England was backing the pound with gold in the era when Charles Dickens wrote of Ebenezer Scrooge underpaying Jacob Marley.

cryptica 5y ago
This is BS. Money printing and 'trickle down' distribution of the newly created money is subsidizing incumbents and making it impossible for competitors to compete with them. Anyone who has worked for a big corporations knows how ridiculously inefficient they are and seen that this has 0 effect on the bottom line. Imagine you open a coffee shop and then some billionaire opens a coffee shop next to yours. Imagine his coffee shop receives a $10 million government contract to provide coffee to the nearby FBI bureau for 1 year... On the other hand, you get no government contracts or subsidies of any kind... You cannot compete! Impossible! He can afford to sell his coffee at a loss to regular customers. On the other hand, you cannot! You cannot compete on price, so you go out of business. The same dynamics permeate pretty much every part of the economy. A similar story can be told without government contracts (which is entirely funded by newly printed money BTW). Big capital holders have access to cheaper credit and lower tax rates than everyone else; they have an unbeatable competitive edge. It's not merely hard to compete; it's impossible! They can make so much money from big institutions that they can operate their front businesses at a loss! That's why they get all the customers! Because they're subsidized by the money printers. Big corporations can setup shell companies to take out huge loans at 0% interest and then give each other huge phony contracts to get that freshly printed currency circulating between themselves. This creates huge revenue numbers on each other's balance sheets. If the shell companies go bankrupt, no big deal, just make new ones and repeat! That's what limited liability is for. Always use 'intangible assets' as collateral that way you always have the upper hand over the banks when repo time arrives and they collect your worthless intangibles... Just like the Fed did buying all these intangible toxic assets. All the companies and all the banks behind them are offloading their toxic intangibles onto the central banks which are paying for them by diluting the salaries of average workers through money printing. The worst part of this is that even if you manage to negotiate up your salary over the years, you will get pushed up into a higher tax bracket. This effect was described by Milton Friedman several decades ago. The system eviscerates workers in countless different ways. It's a kind of slavery which keeps getting worse over time.