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> To the author that talked about writing yourself a bunch of IOUs and claiming it gives you wealth, that's essentially what the US Government does, but at a di
by axlee 4y ago
> To the author that talked about writing yourself a bunch of IOUs and claiming it gives you wealth, that's essentially what the US Government does, but at a different scale. They write debt denominated in their own currency.
This is such a bad take. Government-issued money in itself is not equivalent to private debt, and has never been. It is an academically heterodox and often politically charged view of what money really is.
- SilasX 4y agoThen why did you leave off the clear reason that easily refutes the misconception? Were you just depending on the status signals to carry your refutation? Seriously, I don’t get why people proclaim such confident views and then neglect to share their knowledge and insights. “Fake it till you make it”?
- abakker 4y agothe government backs its currency by having _different rights_ than private companies. E.g. the ability to levy taxes and field an army. We the citizens have given them those rights specifically so that they are the highest authority. This is why a currency that derives from them is better than a currency that derives from anonymous scammers on the internet.
- SilasX 4y agoDid you mean to reply to the grandparent of my comment, to which that would be responsive? I was asking why the parent of my comment “contributed” with an argument from “that’s a low status belief” rather than a comment more like yours.
- abakker 4y agoyep, but now it's flagged so I can't move it.
- derefr 4y agoWhere do promissory notes issued by individual private savings-and-loan banks (as most paper money was in the 1800s) fall on that spectrum?
- pram 4y agoThey weren’t “legal tender”
- brutusborn 4y agoIs the difference that you can use gov-issued money to pay taxes but not private debt? I.e. government money printing is different to crypto printing in that the gov IOUs are legally acceptable by the government. If so, they seem similar enough for the parent take to be accurate. The gov Bond has to be paid back eventually, so it's exactly like an IOU, even if the Fed can print money and buy shitloads of these bonds.