4 ms·

I think the comment about the music is ridiculous, but the broader point about free money causing the gradual degradation of food, housing, standard of living,

I think the comment about the music is ridiculous, but the broader point about free money causing the gradual degradation of food, housing, standard of living, etc. is not without merit.

batrachos 5y ago
> free money causing the gradual degradation of food, housing, standard of living, etc. is not without merit. First, you have to establish that degradation has taken place. Considering that for most of civilizational history, the vast majority of people were wearing rags and eating grain porridge without spice or much salt and living in hovels, that doesn't seem obvious to me. Second, even if you do establish that, you have to specifically tie it to "fiat" currency and not some other factor. Those both seem like a tall order.
UncleMeat 5y ago
Degradation of food? Housing? Do you know what people ate when Bach was alive? Or in what conditions most people lived?
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  It doesn't matter. Facts don't matter if you have spent significant amount of your life savings into magic internet money. Any news is contructed into 'this is good for bitcoin'. Even history itself is malleable, everything can be blamed on fiat (even though Bitcoin itself is fiat).
- cdiddy2 5y ago
  Well we are approaching half of americans having a chronic disease and a large part of that is from what we eat along with lack of exercise. it does seem like we have a degradation of the nutrients in our food supply as well. https://www.fightchronicdisease.org/sites/default/files/docs/GrowingCrisisofChronicDiseaseintheUSfactsheet_81009.pdf https://www.fightchronicdisease.org/sites/default/files/docs... https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/vanishing-nutrients/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/vanishing-...
  - majormajor 5y ago
    "Times were better when we didn't have enough to eat, curse this surplus and our lack of self control!" Strange to see such paternalism about people making unhealthy dietary choices from a crowd I mostly associate with libertarian thinking.
    - cdiddy2 5y ago
      I don't think libertarians believe that government subsidy leading to monocropping is inline with their way of thinking.
      - majormajor 5y ago
        What's really being said here is "people need to make better nutrition choices." Or can you support a claim that highly processed super-tasty engineered and mass-produced food is purely a function of ag subsidies? And that there would be no market pressure to create such a thing in your world.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    There has never been a time in human history where a smaller percentage of the population faced starvation. Actual wars were fought over access to spices I can buy for three dollars at the supermarket. Small changes in per-unit micronutrient quantities are not the cause of modern obesity. If you do want to make some claim that worldwide nutrition was better at some point in the past, that point was definitely not when Bach was alive.
    - DonHopkins 5y ago
  - uoaei 5y ago
    Surely this is a problem of supply and not demand. If I go to Safeway and don't find something healthy, I will nevertheless buy something for the simple reason that I am hungry. Want healthier food in a society? Sell healthier food in a society. It's not the job of consumers, nor is there any reasonable communication channel, to dictate what is put on shelves. They can only provide feedback based on what is already there. If they have a limited selection, you will receive a censored signal, and you cannot judge the outcome based on counterfactuals of what they would have bought if something else was in the pool of offered products. Above describes the folly of "demand-based" economic thinking. If there was truly an infinite supply and infinite variety of products, it makes sense to consider demand-based perspectives as actually expressing consumer desires. But it doesn't do that -- it only expresses preferences among the finite selection available, and you can very quickly sink into a feedback loop that encourages unhealthy diets by conflating the two perspectives.
davidgerard 5y ago
This is ridiculously, hilariously false. If you don't think so, please detail the precise degradations, with numbers.
uoaei 5y ago
History does not have origin in French parlors, mon ami.
8note 5y ago
The factors leading to the dust bowl in the 1930s happened under the gold standard. The government is prioritizing the wrong things, which is leading to today's degradation of food, but lack of government intervention also results in the degradation of food. Housing quality and standard of living are at their best ever - if free money is causing that, thats not a terrible outcome
AniseAbyss 5y ago
My grandfather was born in a shack and he had to share clothes with his brother. The past wasn't a fairytale.

I think the comment about the music is ridiculous, but the broader point about free money causing the gradual degradation of food, housing, standard of living, etc. is not without merit.

batrachos 5y ago

> free money causing the gradual degradation of food, housing, standard of living, etc. is not without merit. First, you have to establish that degradation has taken place. Considering that for most of civilizational history, the vast majority of people were wearing rags and eating grain porridge without spice or much salt and living in hovels, that doesn't seem obvious to me. Second, even if you do establish that, you have to specifically tie it to "fiat" currency and not some other factor. Those both seem like a tall order.

UncleMeat 5y ago

Degradation of food? Housing? Do you know what people ate when Bach was alive? Or in what conditions most people lived?

cuteboy19 5y ago
It doesn't matter. Facts don't matter if you have spent significant amount of your life savings into magic internet money. Any news is contructed into 'this is good for bitcoin'. Even history itself is malleable, everything can be blamed on fiat (even though Bitcoin itself is fiat).
cdiddy2 5y ago
Well we are approaching half of americans having a chronic disease and a large part of that is from what we eat along with lack of exercise. it does seem like we have a degradation of the nutrients in our food supply as well. https://www.fightchronicdisease.org/sites/default/files/docs/GrowingCrisisofChronicDiseaseintheUSfactsheet_81009.pdf https://www.fightchronicdisease.org/sites/default/files/docs... https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/vanishing-nutrients/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/vanishing-...
- majormajor 5y ago
  "Times were better when we didn't have enough to eat, curse this surplus and our lack of self control!" Strange to see such paternalism about people making unhealthy dietary choices from a crowd I mostly associate with libertarian thinking.
  - cdiddy2 5y ago
    I don't think libertarians believe that government subsidy leading to monocropping is inline with their way of thinking.
    - majormajor 5y ago
      What's really being said here is "people need to make better nutrition choices." Or can you support a claim that highly processed super-tasty engineered and mass-produced food is purely a function of ag subsidies? And that there would be no market pressure to create such a thing in your world.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  There has never been a time in human history where a smaller percentage of the population faced starvation. Actual wars were fought over access to spices I can buy for three dollars at the supermarket. Small changes in per-unit micronutrient quantities are not the cause of modern obesity. If you do want to make some claim that worldwide nutrition was better at some point in the past, that point was definitely not when Bach was alive.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
- uoaei 5y ago
  Surely this is a problem of supply and not demand. If I go to Safeway and don't find something healthy, I will nevertheless buy something for the simple reason that I am hungry. Want healthier food in a society? Sell healthier food in a society. It's not the job of consumers, nor is there any reasonable communication channel, to dictate what is put on shelves. They can only provide feedback based on what is already there. If they have a limited selection, you will receive a censored signal, and you cannot judge the outcome based on counterfactuals of what they would have bought if something else was in the pool of offered products. Above describes the folly of "demand-based" economic thinking. If there was truly an infinite supply and infinite variety of products, it makes sense to consider demand-based perspectives as actually expressing consumer desires. But it doesn't do that -- it only expresses preferences among the finite selection available, and you can very quickly sink into a feedback loop that encourages unhealthy diets by conflating the two perspectives.

davidgerard 5y ago

This is ridiculously, hilariously false. If you don't think so, please detail the precise degradations, with numbers.

uoaei 5y ago

History does not have origin in French parlors, mon ami.

8note 5y ago

The factors leading to the dust bowl in the 1930s happened under the gold standard. The government is prioritizing the wrong things, which is leading to today's degradation of food, but lack of government intervention also results in the degradation of food. Housing quality and standard of living are at their best ever - if free money is causing that, thats not a terrible outcome

AniseAbyss 5y ago

My grandfather was born in a shack and he had to share clothes with his brother. The past wasn't a fairytale.