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The only problem of money is inflation. The ability of one single entity to print money at will, stealing from everybody else without them noticing is one of th

by Kuyawa 12d ago

The only problem of money is inflation. The ability of one single entity to print money at will, stealing from everybody else without them noticing is one of the greatest con jobs in the history of mankind (and we all know who has the master printer in the world) Money is a beautiful instrument for trading and free markets, the only way for two entities to peacefully exchange goods. Inflate that money supply and you are silently stealing from the pockets of those who trust that instrument

deleted 12d ago
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smitty1e 12d ago
> The only problem of money is inflation. Counterfeiting enters the chat.
- conorcleary 12d ago
  and, already well established is share rehypothication.
mattclarkdotnet 12d ago
Inflation was a problem long before fiat money. It affected the Roman Empire whenever large amounts of gold were added to the money supply through conquests - in fact they understood this at some level because they usually kept it in the temple of Zeus, but in economic downturns they would raid this piggybank. Another historical example is hyperinflation in Spain caused by the huge influx of silver from their central and South American conquests.
vinyl7 12d ago
As much as I hate inflation...there is more to it than just printing money. Because money slowely loses value over time, it incentives investment over hoarding. Bitcoin is a perfect example if this because there is a fixed number of bitcoins. People invest and hold onto bitcoin itself rather than spending it, causing the "value" of a bitcoin to increase. It makes for a poor currency because everyone who bought a pizza for several bitcoins a few years ago is now kicking themselves because they essentially paid tens of thousands of dollars for a pizza...so who would want to spend their bitcoins on something today when it could be worth twice as much in a few months?
__MatrixMan__ 12d ago
There are many more problems than that. We treat it as a proxy for consent, and it fails horribly at that job. Given perfect information, I'd avoid feeding you if I knew your mining operation was poisoning my drinking water. Money hides that from me. I see one dollar the same as any other, accept yours in exchange for food, and go home to drink the poisoned water--an outcome I could've avoided if I mapped that dollar back to the event that created it: a loan in support of a venture that harms my community. The banks that create money have no incentive to ensure broadly favorable outcomes result from their decisions. Profit is sufficient for them. It's a status quo that we should be furious about, since we bear the brunt of the negative outcomes.
- akoboldfrying 12d ago
  Absence of money does not at all imply perfect information. The problem you describe would occur equally with an ordinary debt between two parties, or barter, or indeed any system that doesn't entail the (laborious, impractical, necessarily incomplete) gathering of perfect information.
  - __MatrixMan__ 12d ago
    Yes but money is perfectly situated to carry the missing information in this case. If it's legitimate, it was issued by a bank. Which bank? To whom? For what venture? The fact that it doesn't is by design. It deliberately obfuscates its origin to create fungibility. But in a climate of rampant corruption its not a suitable design choice (and maybe it never was) because now it's starting to look like all dollars are equally illegitimate. Continuing to use them appears to be encouraging outcomes that will hurt me. That's totally contrary to the point of money. The baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. The fix is to make it risky to hold currency that was issued in support of an antisocial endeavor. And the way to do that is to make the money carry extra information about the conditions of its issuance so that if the backed venture has harmful outcomes, holders of the associated dollars will have a hard time finding somebody to accept their money. If we want it to be a proxy for consent, it has to actually provide enough information for that consent to be rational.

by Kuyawa 12d ago

deleted 12d ago

[deleted]

smitty1e 12d ago

> The only problem of money is inflation. Counterfeiting enters the chat.

conorcleary 12d ago
and, already well established is share rehypothication.

mattclarkdotnet 12d ago

Inflation was a problem long before fiat money. It affected the Roman Empire whenever large amounts of gold were added to the money supply through conquests - in fact they understood this at some level because they usually kept it in the temple of Zeus, but in economic downturns they would raid this piggybank. Another historical example is hyperinflation in Spain caused by the huge influx of silver from their central and South American conquests.

vinyl7 12d ago

As much as I hate inflation...there is more to it than just printing money. Because money slowely loses value over time, it incentives investment over hoarding. Bitcoin is a perfect example if this because there is a fixed number of bitcoins. People invest and hold onto bitcoin itself rather than spending it, causing the "value" of a bitcoin to increase. It makes for a poor currency because everyone who bought a pizza for several bitcoins a few years ago is now kicking themselves because they essentially paid tens of thousands of dollars for a pizza...so who would want to spend their bitcoins on something today when it could be worth twice as much in a few months?

__MatrixMan__ 12d ago

There are many more problems than that. We treat it as a proxy for consent, and it fails horribly at that job. Given perfect information, I'd avoid feeding you if I knew your mining operation was poisoning my drinking water. Money hides that from me. I see one dollar the same as any other, accept yours in exchange for food, and go home to drink the poisoned water--an outcome I could've avoided if I mapped that dollar back to the event that created it: a loan in support of a venture that harms my community. The banks that create money have no incentive to ensure broadly favorable outcomes result from their decisions. Profit is sufficient for them. It's a status quo that we should be furious about, since we bear the brunt of the negative outcomes.

akoboldfrying 12d ago
Absence of money does not at all imply perfect information. The problem you describe would occur equally with an ordinary debt between two parties, or barter, or indeed any system that doesn't entail the (laborious, impractical, necessarily incomplete) gathering of perfect information.
- __MatrixMan__ 12d ago
  Yes but money is perfectly situated to carry the missing information in this case. If it's legitimate, it was issued by a bank. Which bank? To whom? For what venture? The fact that it doesn't is by design. It deliberately obfuscates its origin to create fungibility. But in a climate of rampant corruption its not a suitable design choice (and maybe it never was) because now it's starting to look like all dollars are equally illegitimate. Continuing to use them appears to be encouraging outcomes that will hurt me. That's totally contrary to the point of money. The baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. The fix is to make it risky to hold currency that was issued in support of an antisocial endeavor. And the way to do that is to make the money carry extra information about the conditions of its issuance so that if the backed venture has harmful outcomes, holders of the associated dollars will have a hard time finding somebody to accept their money. If we want it to be a proxy for consent, it has to actually provide enough information for that consent to be rational.