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The choice between fiat and gold (or gold/silver) is a false one. On a free market people would trade a wide variety of things, an important class of which are

by wissler 14y ago

The choice between fiat and gold (or gold/silver) is a false one. On a free market people would trade a wide variety of things, an important class of which are stocks and bonds, which indeed did function as money in the early United States, and would be even more practical today given that we have computers to facilitate conversion. A diverse, free market money system would put an end to global financial crises, which can only happen when everyone is using the same currency (or same small set of tightly coupled currencies) and therefore are all subject to the same general conditions: a centralized currency centralizes the crises as well. But what's even more important is that a free market money system is the only moral system -- people have a natural right to trade in whatever denominations they please.

bryanlarsen 14y ago
I don't think it necessarily follows that more independent currencies will decouple our global financial system. It wasn't that long ago that a crash of the Russian ruble caused a global financial crisis. The US dollar and the Russian rouble are about as decoupled as you get -- not very. It's the fact that everybody trades with everybody that makes crises global and widespread, and more currencies isn't going to change that one bit. If bitcoin became a widely used currency, crashes in its value would impact other currencies. All your proposal does is give the system a few more sources of instability, IMO.
- wissler 14y ago
  It's hard to tell what premise you are arguing for. Are you trying to claim that the system I outlined is not really less coupled? Or are you trying to claim that being less coupled does not really lead to less coupling? "All your proposal does is give the system a few more sources of instability, IMO." Actually no, the one with a few guys with their hands on the levers, and that is also politically controlled and influenced, is far less stable than one where you are free to choose what is a best form of hedging for you.
gte910h 14y ago
Markets are only efficient if P=NP. We do not seem to think that's the case. http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284 http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284
- wissler 14y ago
  We? Speak for yourself. Your standards of efficiency are not relevant.
  - deleted 14y ago
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  - gte910h 14y ago
    I was referring to P=NP there, and the "We" is the "computer science community", which I am a part of (Ex-applied researcher). And if you have an opinion about that, no one really cares unless you're a mathematician/computer science researcher who has positive/dispositive leads towards a conclusion, or a non-research person doing work, that can be used to push the research along one way or another towards an answer This isn't about standards or opinions. Is the paper correct showing P=NP is required for markets to be efficient? If yes, then "Markets are Efficient" is only true if P=NP. "Efficient" has a technical definition that's not one of opinion. That's like saying your opinion on whether this chemical solution has fluorine in it. No, it does or it doesn't. Now: The paper is the only real thing for you to attack in this conversation. It's math. "I prove that if markets are weak-form efficient, meaning current prices fully reflect all information available in past prices, then P = NP, meaning every computational problem whose solution can be verified in polynomial time can also be solved in polynomial time. " Here is the definition of weak-form efficient: "The weak-form EMH claims that prices on traded assets (e.g., stocks, bonds, or property) already reflect all past publicly available information." Why do I only list Weak-Form? Because the other forms have weak-form as a prerequisite And what if you want to "reject my opinion of efficiency here"? Then you're saying the free market is crap, because its prices aren't worth a damn because they don't take into account enough information.

by wissler 14y ago

bryanlarsen 14y ago

I don't think it necessarily follows that more independent currencies will decouple our global financial system. It wasn't that long ago that a crash of the Russian ruble caused a global financial crisis. The US dollar and the Russian rouble are about as decoupled as you get -- not very. It's the fact that everybody trades with everybody that makes crises global and widespread, and more currencies isn't going to change that one bit. If bitcoin became a widely used currency, crashes in its value would impact other currencies. All your proposal does is give the system a few more sources of instability, IMO.

wissler 14y ago
It's hard to tell what premise you are arguing for. Are you trying to claim that the system I outlined is not really less coupled? Or are you trying to claim that being less coupled does not really lead to less coupling? "All your proposal does is give the system a few more sources of instability, IMO." Actually no, the one with a few guys with their hands on the levers, and that is also politically controlled and influenced, is far less stable than one where you are free to choose what is a best form of hedging for you.

gte910h 14y ago

Markets are only efficient if P=NP. We do not seem to think that's the case. http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284 http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284

wissler 14y ago
We? Speak for yourself. Your standards of efficiency are not relevant.
- deleted 14y ago
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- gte910h 14y ago
  I was referring to P=NP there, and the "We" is the "computer science community", which I am a part of (Ex-applied researcher). And if you have an opinion about that, no one really cares unless you're a mathematician/computer science researcher who has positive/dispositive leads towards a conclusion, or a non-research person doing work, that can be used to push the research along one way or another towards an answer This isn't about standards or opinions. Is the paper correct showing P=NP is required for markets to be efficient? If yes, then "Markets are Efficient" is only true if P=NP. "Efficient" has a technical definition that's not one of opinion. That's like saying your opinion on whether this chemical solution has fluorine in it. No, it does or it doesn't. Now: The paper is the only real thing for you to attack in this conversation. It's math. "I prove that if markets are weak-form efficient, meaning current prices fully reflect all information available in past prices, then P = NP, meaning every computational problem whose solution can be verified in polynomial time can also be solved in polynomial time. " Here is the definition of weak-form efficient: "The weak-form EMH claims that prices on traded assets (e.g., stocks, bonds, or property) already reflect all past publicly available information." Why do I only list Weak-Form? Because the other forms have weak-form as a prerequisite And what if you want to "reject my opinion of efficiency here"? Then you're saying the free market is crap, because its prices aren't worth a damn because they don't take into account enough information.