>I think an economy that builds on people buying loads of crap they don't need is at least comparatively bad. We certainly seem to have a problem with using mor

>I think an economy that builds on people buying loads of crap they don't need is at least comparatively bad. We certainly seem to have a problem with using more than we need from the planet. With productivity steadily rising in the developed countries it's gonna be tricky employing 6 billion people. as an example: if all the farmers were as productive as US farmers, we'd need to employ about 0.3% to feed the world. a lot of the "useless" products and services (think about the back office of your local government, which is printing documents, scanning them again and the typing them into a computer form) actually employs a large part of the population - have you thought about the implications if 90% of the population is not required to work? We need inflation, we need people who keep spending their money and hence we'll ultimately need some sort of devaluation. A possible scenario: inflation will be introduced by new cryptocurrencies, which broaden the monetary base. hence it's ultimately the consumers who will steer the rate of inflation (and the adoption of new crypto currencies) and that seems to me like the most democratic thing that ever happened to a currency.