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Maybe the issue is just that we no longer have a store of wealth that isn't tied to a speculative asset? Fiat currency is a fantastic currency - even terrorists

Maybe the issue is just that we no longer have a store of wealth that isn't tied to a speculative asset? Fiat currency is a fantastic currency - even terrorists who hate America use dollars. But it's a terrible store of wealth because it loses at least 2% of its value by intention (this fluctuates - just going off the stated Federal Reserve targets). I think this is where things like houses becoming collateralized assets start coming into the picture. You can buy stocks or index funds, but those can lose value and they're definitely not guaranteed to increase in value. Houses are a pretty "hard" asset in physical reality and with inflation basically they go up in value while also providing utility. And to buy a house you need fiat currency so they're somewhat liquid in that sense. So what do you do? Buy gold? Maybe. Bitcoin is another option similar in some ways to gold (in function at least). Other cryptocurrencies are assets in my view more similar to a stock with products or platforms behind them. I'm just not sure what to do. If you make cash inflation neutral or deflationary that sounds ideal, but how do you do that? And would people be likely to take risk in such an environment? Do we need to? Is it bad that we are encouraging the use of fiat currency by threatening to devalue it over time? I'm not sure.

saalweachter 4y ago
> Maybe the issue is just that we no longer have a store of wealth that isn't tied to a speculative asset? You say speculative, I say productive. Is a non-productive store of value actually a thing which exists in nature? For most things, you can't store a thing itself: grain rots, chickens die, houses decay, iron rusts, water is fouled. If you want to have a thing in the future, you need a way to produce the thing: fields of grains, lineages of chickens, maintenance and construction of houses, refinement of iron, the purification of water. All investment in these future means of production is speculative; you have no guarantee the bet you made on how you will obtain a chicken in 20 years will play out.
- ericmay 4y ago
  > You say speculative, I say productive. Oh I totally agree! Stocks in companies are absolutely productive assets. Though they are still speculative. I guess the first thought that comes to mind is well, so what? Does it make sense for individuals to plow money into the stock market even at all-time highs? Should you basically have to perform an investor level due diligence for buying these productive assets? Sometimes I think we are duped by the liquidity in ways we wouldn't be if we were deciding whether or not to buy a farm or a movie theater. > Is a non-productive store of value actually a thing which exists in nature? Gold is probably the closest we've ever gotten. Besides that I'm not sure. But then that begs the question I was responding to regarding savings for "regular people". Is it impossible to save money without buying into the stock market? Idk.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    Gold is still a speculative asset! You're speculating what it will be worth in the future. Its current value varies a good bit compared to other goods and dollars.
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    Gold famously doesn't decay, but why should I expect prices to remain constant in terms of gold? If I sell you a chicken today for 80 milligrams of gold, why would you be obligated to sell me an equivalent chicken for 80 milligrams of gold in twenty years? Gold isn't a perfect store or value, it's just a perfect store of gold.
    - ericmay 4y ago
      Yea - I was just saying it's probably the closest we have ever gotten. The chicken example is interesting b/c what would you actually compare gold to? Say chickens were commonplace today and could be had for 80 milligrams of gold but then some disease wiped them out and only 10,000 could be grown and sold each year. Obviously they'd be worth more than 80 milligrams of gold - but as prices for other things perhaps come down and become more plentiful (or new products/services emerge) 80 milligrams of gold may buy something completely different at a great price. I mostly agree with you here. Keep in mind I was preliminary responding to someone else w.r.t stores of wealth. It may even be the case that storing wealth is nonsensical as a matter of physics (either natural physics or economic physics). Perhaps what we refer to as wealth storage is really just scarcity of a physical item, whether that be a house, a collector's edition widget, a car or piece of art, or in your example, a chicken. Maybe the goal in what we would call wealth preservation is to find assets that either do not decay over time, or that decay very, very slowly over time? One thing that comes to mind then is how fiat currency plays into this decay? What would it represent?
      - saalweachter 4y ago
        So the question is basically "How fast does credit decay?" Let's switch from goods to services and favors. Let's suppose you're in a real bind one day, and need some help -- painting your house, moving cross-country, who knows -- and I step up and help you as a favor, and spend a solid week of my time. How long do I have to redeem that favor and get a week's worth of time out of you? How does the intervening time affect the answer? If I disappear for twenty years and show up on your doorstep expecting the favor to be repaid in full, is that a reasonable expectation? What if we are close friends for those twenty years, trading favors back and forth? There aren't necessarily right or wrong answers to those questions, but that's basically the question inflation answers -- it's the price for not participating. You do a job, you get your currency, and then you can roll your currency into participating in the shared risk for maintaining our systems of production, or you can stand back, and see the credit for your past contributions decay over time. Sometimes it decays slowly, when everything is going fine. Sometimes it decays quickly; if things begin going badly and you're not invested in the outcomes improving, your credit for your past contributions declines faster.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  You can very well sell these goods and buy new ones maintaining a fixed amount and using it to back your currency. This would be my favourite currency.
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    So your proposal is, what, you have a warehouse of grain, and each day you sell your grain at price $X and buy new grain (N days more recently harvested) at the same price? Because you're trading nominally fungible commodities they're priced the same, but when you go back twenty years later you'd have an equivalent quantity of grain to withdrawal regardless of how the price fluctuated in between? The main problem is that you'd need to pay for storage over the 20 years in between, which would take the form of selling some Y% of your grain each year to pay the storage on the remaining percent, which is basically the same as inflation.
FabHK 4y ago
> it loses at least 2% of its value by intention How do you get "at least"? The target used to be "below, but close to 2%", but has been increased to around 2% (symmetrically). It has been less than 2.5% over the last 20 years (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL) including the recent spike, and has been 2.02% from Jan 2001 to Jan 2021, which I'd call precisely on target. Needless to say, if you parked your extra money in the stock or housing markets, you handily beat inflation. And if you don't have money to invest in the markets, then you don't care about inflation anyway (but rather real wage growth).
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  The indexes used to measure inflation are picked to stay under 2%. I kept track of my groceries and rent for 10 years up to last year and my perceived inflation was way higher than 2% (even allowing some margin of error). This year is being completely insane but it's hard for me to compare as I moved. Wages don't grow with inflation (the sad 1% yearly raise) unless you job hop. Stocks don't give you always the best window to withdraw your annualised 7-8% profit. If you'll need to buy a house or if you'll go to pension you may end up withdrawing at bad times. Houses have been mostly going up. Good to beat inflation, terrible for youngsters who need a place to live without paying someone else's mortgage.

saalweachter 4y ago

> Maybe the issue is just that we no longer have a store of wealth that isn't tied to a speculative asset? You say speculative, I say productive. Is a non-productive store of value actually a thing which exists in nature? For most things, you can't store a thing itself: grain rots, chickens die, houses decay, iron rusts, water is fouled. If you want to have a thing in the future, you need a way to produce the thing: fields of grains, lineages of chickens, maintenance and construction of houses, refinement of iron, the purification of water. All investment in these future means of production is speculative; you have no guarantee the bet you made on how you will obtain a chicken in 20 years will play out.

ericmay 4y ago
> You say speculative, I say productive. Oh I totally agree! Stocks in companies are absolutely productive assets. Though they are still speculative. I guess the first thought that comes to mind is well, so what? Does it make sense for individuals to plow money into the stock market even at all-time highs? Should you basically have to perform an investor level due diligence for buying these productive assets? Sometimes I think we are duped by the liquidity in ways we wouldn't be if we were deciding whether or not to buy a farm or a movie theater. > Is a non-productive store of value actually a thing which exists in nature? Gold is probably the closest we've ever gotten. Besides that I'm not sure. But then that begs the question I was responding to regarding savings for "regular people". Is it impossible to save money without buying into the stock market? Idk.
- vel0city 4y ago
  Gold is still a speculative asset! You're speculating what it will be worth in the future. Its current value varies a good bit compared to other goods and dollars.
- saalweachter 4y ago
  Gold famously doesn't decay, but why should I expect prices to remain constant in terms of gold? If I sell you a chicken today for 80 milligrams of gold, why would you be obligated to sell me an equivalent chicken for 80 milligrams of gold in twenty years? Gold isn't a perfect store or value, it's just a perfect store of gold.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    Yea - I was just saying it's probably the closest we have ever gotten. The chicken example is interesting b/c what would you actually compare gold to? Say chickens were commonplace today and could be had for 80 milligrams of gold but then some disease wiped them out and only 10,000 could be grown and sold each year. Obviously they'd be worth more than 80 milligrams of gold - but as prices for other things perhaps come down and become more plentiful (or new products/services emerge) 80 milligrams of gold may buy something completely different at a great price. I mostly agree with you here. Keep in mind I was preliminary responding to someone else w.r.t stores of wealth. It may even be the case that storing wealth is nonsensical as a matter of physics (either natural physics or economic physics). Perhaps what we refer to as wealth storage is really just scarcity of a physical item, whether that be a house, a collector's edition widget, a car or piece of art, or in your example, a chicken. Maybe the goal in what we would call wealth preservation is to find assets that either do not decay over time, or that decay very, very slowly over time? One thing that comes to mind then is how fiat currency plays into this decay? What would it represent?
    - saalweachter 4y ago
      So the question is basically "How fast does credit decay?" Let's switch from goods to services and favors. Let's suppose you're in a real bind one day, and need some help -- painting your house, moving cross-country, who knows -- and I step up and help you as a favor, and spend a solid week of my time. How long do I have to redeem that favor and get a week's worth of time out of you? How does the intervening time affect the answer? If I disappear for twenty years and show up on your doorstep expecting the favor to be repaid in full, is that a reasonable expectation? What if we are close friends for those twenty years, trading favors back and forth? There aren't necessarily right or wrong answers to those questions, but that's basically the question inflation answers -- it's the price for not participating. You do a job, you get your currency, and then you can roll your currency into participating in the shared risk for maintaining our systems of production, or you can stand back, and see the credit for your past contributions decay over time. Sometimes it decays slowly, when everything is going fine. Sometimes it decays quickly; if things begin going badly and you're not invested in the outcomes improving, your credit for your past contributions declines faster.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
You can very well sell these goods and buy new ones maintaining a fixed amount and using it to back your currency. This would be my favourite currency.
- saalweachter 4y ago
  So your proposal is, what, you have a warehouse of grain, and each day you sell your grain at price $X and buy new grain (N days more recently harvested) at the same price? Because you're trading nominally fungible commodities they're priced the same, but when you go back twenty years later you'd have an equivalent quantity of grain to withdrawal regardless of how the price fluctuated in between? The main problem is that you'd need to pay for storage over the 20 years in between, which would take the form of selling some Y% of your grain each year to pay the storage on the remaining percent, which is basically the same as inflation.

FabHK 4y ago

> it loses at least 2% of its value by intention How do you get "at least"? The target used to be "below, but close to 2%", but has been increased to around 2% (symmetrically). It has been less than 2.5% over the last 20 years (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL) including the recent spike, and has been 2.02% from Jan 2001 to Jan 2021, which I'd call precisely on target. Needless to say, if you parked your extra money in the stock or housing markets, you handily beat inflation. And if you don't have money to invest in the markets, then you don't care about inflation anyway (but rather real wage growth).

jokethrowaway 4y ago
The indexes used to measure inflation are picked to stay under 2%. I kept track of my groceries and rent for 10 years up to last year and my perceived inflation was way higher than 2% (even allowing some margin of error). This year is being completely insane but it's hard for me to compare as I moved. Wages don't grow with inflation (the sad 1% yearly raise) unless you job hop. Stocks don't give you always the best window to withdraw your annualised 7-8% profit. If you'll need to buy a house or if you'll go to pension you may end up withdrawing at bad times. Houses have been mostly going up. Good to beat inflation, terrible for youngsters who need a place to live without paying someone else's mortgage.