There is a world of difference between gold and Bitcoins. Gold was always valuable in itself, before anybody used it as money, people wanted it just because the metal was fairly rare and easy to make jewellery from. It's not like gold was found and immediately people said: that's money. No, gold was a metal that was desired for thousands of years, then eventually it was used as money also for thousands of years. Gold was storing value for people before people started commonly using it as money, the metal proved itself to be capable of withstanding the test of time in business of storing value.
Bitcoins were intended to be money from the beginning, their entire existence is for one purpose: to be money. In that sense Bitcoins are a currency, and since they are not backed by anything (no gold behind Bitcoins), they are a FIAT currency. The difference is that they are not printed by government, but the scarcity argument is moot, every bit of Bitcoin is about as 'valuable' as any other bit. One Bitcoin is essentially 10Million coins, each one can take an arbitrary value. More importantly, competing electronic fiat currencies exist and there will be more and more of them as more people want to participate in this new electronic currency market.
To say that Bitcoins store value is premature AT BEST, I don't think Bitcoins will become less volatile with time, I think they will be more volatile with time, I don't think they store value, I think they are an interesting vehicle for speculation and many disciplined day traders can make a killing trading these, but there is no value outside of its direct purpose: be currency.
Some say that the protocol and the network are the value, but again, those are replicated across many other currencies and there will be more of them, there is nothing special about Bitcoin except for it being first, but being first also has disadvantages. With Bitcoin prices going up, every time the price goes up, the risk that one takes buying them is bigger than the day before. There was very little risk buying 1000 Bitcoins at a few dollars a few years back. Today to buy 1000 Bitcoins you need half a million or more dollars and given the speculative nature and volatility, very few people will buy 1000 Bitcoins, but they will buy a few or maybe fractions - coins of smaller denomination. Or maybe they'll buy other coins, that are perceived to be cheaper.
Basically declaring that Bitcoin is a store of value is extremely premature but also is most likely completely false.
So a former MS exec is now in charge of USA 'health insurance' system. I wonder, how much time before MS is hired to write a secondary system that will replace the original one (at a hefty price tag, of-course)?
Yeah, you are one of those. There are no 'worker rights', there are no 'women rights', there are no 'children rights', there are no 'gay rights', there are no 'disabled rights', there are no 'racial minority rights', there are only group privileges, which impose obligations upon somebody else to provide those privileges and that means that some groups of people exert legislative and thus lethal (as in bullets) power over other groups of people.
Unions are not interested in YOUR rights, they are interested in THEIR privileges, they want special status, special treatment, MONOPOLY on the supply of labour so they can extract undue profits from the economy, where the economy would rather see much more efficiency.
Inflation steals savings. Deflation does not steal anything, deflation increases value of your savings while simultaneously and as a side effect causing lowering of prices, which is a wonderful effect of increasing productivity. Capital gains taxes are paid on capital gains, which in case of a company, that would pay that to its owner means that that's money that was already taxed on the corporate level, but the end result is: the same owner first sees 35% tax and then 15% capital gains tax, so it's either a complete lack of understanding on the part of people who like to compare apples to hand grenades or it's wilful ignorance, designed to rile up the ignorant mob around a fake issue.
I would absolutely treat all types of income in exactly the same way, they all should be paying the exact same rate: 0%
That's the only acceptable income related tax rate, any rate higher than that implies you do not own yourself, you don't own your productive output, the gov't owns you and it simply decides how much of your own productive output you are allowed to keep and how much will be stolen from you on any given day.
Let's speculate! I think Satoshi Nakamoto is actually a space alien, who introduced the Bitcoin on this planet in order to run his personal intergalactic ponzi scam. Bitcoins are just a tip of the GAWAY group (Galaxy Way), next thing you know, you are peddling your kidneys in the back alleys in exchange for Bitcoins, which you are promptly exchanging for the next dose of Jupiter III Moonshine dust so you can snort it off the back of a three legged blue-skinned tentacle'd hooker with tits for ears. Of-course you have to sell sell sell, that's the GAWAY, and so you have to try and pull your relatives into it, friends, friends of relatives, relatives of friends, relatives of relatives of friends' friends. Either they'll all become part of GAWAY or you will find yourself without any of those categories of people around you.
Right, what it actually means is that if you hold Euros for a year or more and in that time period the Federal reserve in tandem with the USA Treasury and thus the Congress decide NOT to increase the national debt, then you may not see this 'capital gains' tax.
Capital gains tax in the age of gov't created inflation is simply theft via both: first the value of your currency is stolen, secondly, if you don't hold your currency and are smart enough to avoid the inflation tax, they want your money anyway, so it's 'capital gains' tax. Gov't is not supposed to own people, but that's what ended up happening.
It's the fucking NSA, man, they can't even intercept comments here without screwing up the site! Oh, I wonder just how many NSA man hours are wasted moderating every single one of my comments...
Seriously? Last time USA engaged in this type of activity (of-course coupled with Medicare introduction, SS expansion, business regulations expansion, basically creating and expanding all the worst parts of government), USA ended up DEFAULTING on its promise to the world to keep a gold reserve, USA defaulted on the gold dollar in 1971, all the current problems can be traced to that default and that default can be traced to government expansion of power. So you are saying: all that USA lacks is backbone. You ever stop and think, what exactly is the end goal? Is it to completely wipe out the economy? Well, you are pretty much there already.
China has no debt, China as a nation has a gigantic surplus and it has enough savings in the Treasury to negate a tiny external debt that exists for strategic reasons. Inside China there are debts to other Chinese and while it is problematic, the fact that some Chinese owe other Chinese something that cannot be repaid in the long run, this does not change the fact that China is a productive nation without international debt and it can afford an internal housing market crash for example without negative consequences to the economy. On the contrary, while the housing market crash in USA caused it a recession due to the fact that purchasing power of USA consumer is tied so much to their ability to refinance their mortgages, in China the housing market crash would only strengthen the economy, because their economy is not dependent on an asset bubble constantly inflating. In their case if the housing prices go down, it doesn't affect their ability to purchase consumer goods, it increases this ability, as the housing prices, rent will go down as well, so it's a boon. Falling prices opens up new markets, only the backwards Keynesians can't figure out that falling prices is a good thing for the consumers.
Anyway, good luck with your theories, they are not yours of-course, they are created for your consumption.
The Chinese have the money to do this, no debt, huge Treasury reserves, huge surpluses. If the response by/. here is: USA should do this again, then the very next question should be: with what money? Chinese already have come out about 2 weeks ago with the statement that they won't be buying any more US Treasuries.
Your comment makes no sense, without government there is no 'cut' that goes to it and there is no such concept as 'laundering' in the first place. What is not free is when government gets involved, otherwise it is in fact free, free as in individual freedom from government abuse (theft and murder).
Wrong, people make money, not governments. People should expect freedoms, not regulations when they make money and transfer it among themselves. The only reason government uses violence to regulate money is because gov't is Mafia and it wants its cut.
1. Savings is where investments come from, if you want a stagnating or a shrinking economy, you should be reducing the savings pool, which by the way is exactly what has been happening since 1971, when the US took the world off the gold standard by defaulting on the gold dollar.
2. The money that is 'sloshing around' is not coming from savings, it's coming from the Federal reserve and all of the inflation that it is creating, (which is what is destroying real savings by making it impossible to earn interest).
3. Companies are not sitting on billions or anything like that, most companies don't sit on cash, they see the inflation and use the money to buy back their own stock or they buy government bonds (not US gov't bonds) or other currencies, like the UK pound or Swiss Franc for example.
4. There is no such thing as 'demand side economics', legitimate demand can only exist where there is legitimate production. 2 sides are trading because they expect something in return for their productive output that is not just inflated currency or their own money, stolen from them in taxes that went to other side as subsidies. Money is a store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account, that means that money is really claim on future consumption. Exactly what future consumption can you claim from anybody that lives off of subsidies and doesn't have to produce for living?
5. The rich are not "self proclaimed job creators", they are actual job creators, and the proof is in the pudding, by pushing for more collectivism, your society has pushed away the savings and investments to other nations, that are now much more productive and that's where 'the rich' are actually creating jobs.
6. You do not have capital. You are mixed up, confused, ignorant of the reality, there is no capital. Capital is savings, savings come from over-production and under-consumption. USA has been running 500 BILLION USD / year trade deficits, what under-consumption, where is this over-production? There is no capital, what you mistake for capital is inflation - fake money that is pumped into the system by gov't printing bonds and by the Fed creating fake currency out of their ass and this ends up bidding up prices ON EXISTING ASSETS, on existing houses, on existing pieces of art, on existing commodities, on anything that exists already, but where is this productivity? There is no productivity. Productive nations do not run trade deficits for decades, they can actually feed themselves by paying for the stuff they import with real exports. That's not the reality of America. The reality of America is that very few if any jobs are actually created, there is complete lack of savings, nobody wants to create new jobs there and it's for a good reason. Collectivism - too much gov't, too many regulations, too much taxation, too much inflation, too much of all of it and absolutely no individual freedoms anymore. Why would anybody want to actually risk their own savings and invest in that nonsensical regime? I wouldn't.
Maybe. I know a lot of creative people who would never just sit and watch TV, that's an anecdote to counter yours.
- so what? For all I care you can find moving boulders up and down your street to be a fun exercise in self-determination, I wouldn't pay you anything for it, though maybe I could hire you and pay you if you moved the boulders that I needed moving.
Perhaps there are enough people who love to create, and these would be given incentives.
- people who love to create do it without having the state to steal on their behalf already.
The wage for simple tasks like cleaning would go up, as the supply of workers went down.
- so not only would the productive people be stolen from to subsidise the unproductive, now they would have to pay more for the jobs that without the taxes wouldn't be as expensive.
But that's exactly it, all that gov't can do is stealing and redistributing, which pushes costs and prices up. Gov't can't lower costs, even if it can lower cost of some specific thing somewhere, all it means that many other costs are going up to subsidise that one particular lower price (with questionable outcomes as well).
Many would consider this to be fair.
- I am sure anybody who is getting paid in that system for doing nothing considers it extremely unfair if all of a sudden the money flow would stop as those, who would be forced to pay for them, would have to take over the system and fix the INJUSTICE of being force to subsidise the leeches.
For a while people could do menial tasks and be compensated well for it, until it finally would be cheaper to design advanced robots.
- one thing is certain, as prices are pushed up by gov't via taxes, regulations, inflation, more and more robots will be created, because capital and labour are always in competition and if there is an unnatural price support for one, then the other will step in and try and fix the problem.
'basic income' doesn't exist now as welfare. It's not meant to be a permanent solution, and people like I don't consider it ethical to use it as such.
- of-course it does, that's all it is. 'Basic income' is welfare, it's theft and redistribution. Generations of people live on it.
If I was given basic income I would probably work on open source projects and develop hardware for a while.
- if I was given basic income, I would spend my time on a beach.
I don't agree. One shouldn't force people to donate a lot to others, as in communism.
- one shouldn't be stolen from regardless of the amount, fixed that for you.
Freedom and property rights are important. However, when giving away the basics is almost free, then people indeed should be given it for free
- so how about not using gov't violence to achieve this goal, you have in your mind? If it is true, that things are so 'free' to make, leave it to the free market to distribute all these things at lowest prices.
How do you think things are PRODUCED, WRAPPED, SHIPPED, DISTRIBUTED if not because there are tons of people doing the work, who wouldn't be doing it if they had money coming to them for free? What you see as "free production" is a consequence of FREE MARKET EFFICIENCY that can allocate resources in the most efficient manner given the current market realities.
You are proposing changing the market realities and are convinced that for some reason things would still be "free". Nothing is free and there is nothing more expensive than something that gov't wants to redistribute as 'free'.
There's no dogma to support that, but it seems fair, doesn't it?
- of-course it's dogma. What is your excuse for stealing if not dogma? You think things are free - that's just plain ignorance.
You are delusional, vast majority of people will choose never to move a finger to do anything useful for strangers with 'basic income', which already exists (and it shouldn't) as welfare. People shouldn't be just given free anything simply for the great feat of being born if this means any degree of collectivist intervention. Inflation, which you are a proponent of (based on your comment) is just theft, even worse than theft via other taxes, it hurts those without assets most.
As to work without profit - it is called a hobby. A business has to be profitable to be sustainable and to serve large number of customers.
From TFA "the robots are not taking away any human's work yet..." What a bunch of nonsense, of-course they do, that is why these labour saving devices are there, to reduce costs, to make the system more reliable and scalable, that is the entire point and that is what people want - cheaper, faster, better service and free market capitalism driven by the profit motive, the most economically viable and thus the most moral motive is delivering. Imagine if gov't was doing this... It would be 1000 times as expensive, it would not innovate all while nobody would be allowed to compete with it and it would be paid for by taxing people that wouldn't even want it. But hey, at least it would 'provide jobs' with all the gov't perks at the expense of the rest of the economy./. wouldn't have a story on that though, nothing to bash in the collectivist hivemind.
Let me tell you what I think of people who have "calling of national service", they are power hungry, control freak beehive drones, which is not a contradiction of terms, this actually complements itself. The people that want to do any gov't activity are the very last ones that should be allowed anywhere near it. Gov't is a system disease, like cancer, hiv and leprosy combined. Its willing agents are the poison that is kills the host.
of-course the only real we have today to cover our energy needs while destroying the environment the least is by using nuclear energy.
Of-course the governments of the world stand in the way of the free market experimenting with nuclear energy, AFAIC that's the reason I don't have a flying car yet, it's because we are not yet powering cars with tiny nuclear reactors and that will not change until we get gov't out of energy business (and if you want progress in any field that is useful, get government out of it).
Eventually most jobs become useless, as the cost of producing manufacturing tools approach 0, it is possible to buy more and more manufacturing tools for any particular individual, so while the 'basic income' is complete nonsense and obviously a murderous, oppressive, armed robbery, the free market capitalism IS going to provide something like that through NORMAL market operations.
If you can buy a machine that does 20% of the work you do on a daily basis and you have to pay 2 years of your salary for it, would you buy it and if not, why not? Would you save the income you collect over time to buy more advanced versions of the machine? Say a machine is built that can do 50% of your daily activities, would you yourself buy the machine?
If you can buy a machine that provides you with some basic necessities and you have spend 10 years of your income on it, would you buy it? What if eventually the same machine only costs 5 years of your income? 6 months?
Do you get the point? It looks like you are asking for armed robbery, theft, murder, why can't you actually not be that violent and understand that the end result is the same, but your goals are immoral and also economically stupid?
In America, you have Ferengi style capitalism and call it "freedom".
- capitalism does not equal free market capitalism, which is the most proven system of capital management to produce the best outcomes in terms of wealth generation and raising overall standard of living for everybody in known human history.
capitalism, but with a social conscience, because we understand that in the long run, our way of doing things leads to more freedom for a greater number of people
- I think you are confusing the concept of being free with a concept of being subsidised or getting free stuff on the backs of the productive minority of the population.
Voters are idiots, they keep electing people that promise more bread and circuses and corruption rather than people that promise to maintain rule of law and Constitutionality of the government. Voters deserve exactly the outcomes that they are getting.
Worse, the author doesn't understand what money is in the first place. Money is a claim on future consumption, it's a store of value, unit of account and means of exchange. But money is actually meaningless without ability to use it to buy something, so what is important to consider is whether there will be any productive output in the future that somebody with money can claim a portion of.
Given this, it is clear that any private issuer to emit money or currency that is backed by money. It is not government, that allows money to have value, it is private enterprise that produces something that gives money any meaning at all. Government cannot ever issue money, all money is supposed to be backed by productive output and productive output is not what governments do.
Government can issue currency, either it is backed by real money (gold) or it is not (fiat). Real money does not come into existence by the desire of either government or any private entity, that's why Bitcoin is 'doomed to failure', because it is not actually backed by any productive capacity. It is doomed to failure for the exact reasons that any fiat currency is doomed to failure and it doesn't matter who issues fiat, a government or a Bitcoin miner.
Now, I am not implying that Bitcoins will go down in price to 0 and not rise back up, I am not making any claim on the future price of Bitcoins. For all I know it is absolutely possible that 1BTC will = 1,000,000,000 USD in 2 years time, I don't know.
What I do know is that Bitcoin is a fiat currency that has no backing by any real money and it is indistinguishable from any other future (or current) version of electronic fiat currency and it is a tool of speculation. You will probably grow your savings if you buy Bitcoin even today and sell it at some future date.
If you fail to sell it at the right moment in time, you will probably lose your savings. That much is certain - eventually it will crash and not come up again, but when that will be I believe nobody can predict.
What I can say about this 'economist' though is that he does not know what money is, he does not know what currency is, he does not know what gives money or currency value and he is wrong about money being a 'tool of the state', that's a completely nonsensical statement. Money existed long before any states existed and it will exist long after any one of those states is gone.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't say.
There is a world of difference between gold and Bitcoins. Gold was always valuable in itself, before anybody used it as money, people wanted it just because the metal was fairly rare and easy to make jewellery from. It's not like gold was found and immediately people said: that's money. No, gold was a metal that was desired for thousands of years, then eventually it was used as money also for thousands of years. Gold was storing value for people before people started commonly using it as money, the metal proved itself to be capable of withstanding the test of time in business of storing value.
Bitcoins were intended to be money from the beginning, their entire existence is for one purpose: to be money. In that sense Bitcoins are a currency, and since they are not backed by anything (no gold behind Bitcoins), they are a FIAT currency. The difference is that they are not printed by government, but the scarcity argument is moot, every bit of Bitcoin is about as 'valuable' as any other bit. One Bitcoin is essentially 10Million coins, each one can take an arbitrary value. More importantly, competing electronic fiat currencies exist and there will be more and more of them as more people want to participate in this new electronic currency market.
To say that Bitcoins store value is premature AT BEST, I don't think Bitcoins will become less volatile with time, I think they will be more volatile with time, I don't think they store value, I think they are an interesting vehicle for speculation and many disciplined day traders can make a killing trading these, but there is no value outside of its direct purpose: be currency.
Some say that the protocol and the network are the value, but again, those are replicated across many other currencies and there will be more of them, there is nothing special about Bitcoin except for it being first, but being first also has disadvantages. With Bitcoin prices going up, every time the price goes up, the risk that one takes buying them is bigger than the day before. There was very little risk buying 1000 Bitcoins at a few dollars a few years back. Today to buy 1000 Bitcoins you need half a million or more dollars and given the speculative nature and volatility, very few people will buy 1000 Bitcoins, but they will buy a few or maybe fractions - coins of smaller denomination. Or maybe they'll buy other coins, that are perceived to be cheaper.
Basically declaring that Bitcoin is a store of value is extremely premature but also is most likely completely false.
So a former MS exec is now in charge of USA 'health insurance' system. I wonder, how much time before MS is hired to write a secondary system that will replace the original one (at a hefty price tag, of-course)?
Yeah, you are one of those. There are no 'worker rights', there are no 'women rights', there are no 'children rights', there are no 'gay rights', there are no 'disabled rights', there are no 'racial minority rights', there are only group privileges, which impose obligations upon somebody else to provide those privileges and that means that some groups of people exert legislative and thus lethal (as in bullets) power over other groups of people.
Unions are not interested in YOUR rights, they are interested in THEIR privileges, they want special status, special treatment, MONOPOLY on the supply of labour so they can extract undue profits from the economy, where the economy would rather see much more efficiency.
Inflation steals savings. Deflation does not steal anything, deflation increases value of your savings while simultaneously and as a side effect causing lowering of prices, which is a wonderful effect of increasing productivity. Capital gains taxes are paid on capital gains, which in case of a company, that would pay that to its owner means that that's money that was already taxed on the corporate level, but the end result is: the same owner first sees 35% tax and then 15% capital gains tax, so it's either a complete lack of understanding on the part of people who like to compare apples to hand grenades or it's wilful ignorance, designed to rile up the ignorant mob around a fake issue.
But since you asked: "what is your point", I will make it clear what my point is, and I already made it a number of times - income related taxes are illegal and immoral, and they are collected illegally.
I would absolutely treat all types of income in exactly the same way, they all should be paying the exact same rate: 0%
That's the only acceptable income related tax rate, any rate higher than that implies you do not own yourself, you don't own your productive output, the gov't owns you and it simply decides how much of your own productive output you are allowed to keep and how much will be stolen from you on any given day.
Let's speculate! I think Satoshi Nakamoto is actually a space alien, who introduced the Bitcoin on this planet in order to run his personal intergalactic ponzi scam. Bitcoins are just a tip of the GAWAY group (Galaxy Way), next thing you know, you are peddling your kidneys in the back alleys in exchange for Bitcoins, which you are promptly exchanging for the next dose of Jupiter III Moonshine dust so you can snort it off the back of a three legged blue-skinned tentacle'd hooker with tits for ears. Of-course you have to sell sell sell, that's the GAWAY, and so you have to try and pull your relatives into it, friends, friends of relatives, relatives of friends, relatives of relatives of friends' friends. Either they'll all become part of GAWAY or you will find yourself without any of those categories of people around you.
Right, what it actually means is that if you hold Euros for a year or more and in that time period the Federal reserve in tandem with the USA Treasury and thus the Congress decide NOT to increase the national debt, then you may not see this 'capital gains' tax.
Capital gains tax in the age of gov't created inflation is simply theft via both: first the value of your currency is stolen, secondly, if you don't hold your currency and are smart enough to avoid the inflation tax, they want your money anyway, so it's 'capital gains' tax. Gov't is not supposed to own people, but that's what ended up happening.
It's the fucking NSA, man, they can't even intercept comments here without screwing up the site! Oh, I wonder just how many NSA man hours are wasted moderating every single one of my comments...
Seriously? Last time USA engaged in this type of activity (of-course coupled with Medicare introduction, SS expansion, business regulations expansion, basically creating and expanding all the worst parts of government), USA ended up DEFAULTING on its promise to the world to keep a gold reserve, USA defaulted on the gold dollar in 1971, all the current problems can be traced to that default and that default can be traced to government expansion of power. So you are saying: all that USA lacks is backbone. You ever stop and think, what exactly is the end goal? Is it to completely wipe out the economy? Well, you are pretty much there already.
China has no debt, China as a nation has a gigantic surplus and it has enough savings in the Treasury to negate a tiny external debt that exists for strategic reasons. Inside China there are debts to other Chinese and while it is problematic, the fact that some Chinese owe other Chinese something that cannot be repaid in the long run, this does not change the fact that China is a productive nation without international debt and it can afford an internal housing market crash for example without negative consequences to the economy. On the contrary, while the housing market crash in USA caused it a recession due to the fact that purchasing power of USA consumer is tied so much to their ability to refinance their mortgages, in China the housing market crash would only strengthen the economy, because their economy is not dependent on an asset bubble constantly inflating. In their case if the housing prices go down, it doesn't affect their ability to purchase consumer goods, it increases this ability, as the housing prices, rent will go down as well, so it's a boon. Falling prices opens up new markets, only the backwards Keynesians can't figure out that falling prices is a good thing for the consumers.
Anyway, good luck with your theories, they are not yours of-course, they are created for your consumption.
The Chinese have the money to do this, no debt, huge Treasury reserves, huge surpluses. If the response by /. here is: USA should do this again, then the very next question should be: with what money? Chinese already have come out about 2 weeks ago with the statement that they won't be buying any more US Treasuries.
Your comment makes no sense, without government there is no 'cut' that goes to it and there is no such concept as 'laundering' in the first place. What is not free is when government gets involved, otherwise it is in fact free, free as in individual freedom from government abuse (theft and murder).
Wrong, people make money, not governments. People should expect freedoms, not regulations when they make money and transfer it among themselves. The only reason government uses violence to regulate money is because gov't is Mafia and it wants its cut.
1. Savings is where investments come from, if you want a stagnating or a shrinking economy, you should be reducing the savings pool, which by the way is exactly what has been happening since 1971, when the US took the world off the gold standard by defaulting on the gold dollar.
2. The money that is 'sloshing around' is not coming from savings, it's coming from the Federal reserve and all of the inflation that it is creating, (which is what is destroying real savings by making it impossible to earn interest).
3. Companies are not sitting on billions or anything like that, most companies don't sit on cash, they see the inflation and use the money to buy back their own stock or they buy government bonds (not US gov't bonds) or other currencies, like the UK pound or Swiss Franc for example.
4. There is no such thing as 'demand side economics', legitimate demand can only exist where there is legitimate production. 2 sides are trading because they expect something in return for their productive output that is not just inflated currency or their own money, stolen from them in taxes that went to other side as subsidies. Money is a store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account, that means that money is really claim on future consumption. Exactly what future consumption can you claim from anybody that lives off of subsidies and doesn't have to produce for living?
5. The rich are not "self proclaimed job creators", they are actual job creators, and the proof is in the pudding, by pushing for more collectivism, your society has pushed away the savings and investments to other nations, that are now much more productive and that's where 'the rich' are actually creating jobs.
6. You do not have capital. You are mixed up, confused, ignorant of the reality, there is no capital. Capital is savings, savings come from over-production and under-consumption. USA has been running 500 BILLION USD / year trade deficits, what under-consumption, where is this over-production? There is no capital, what you mistake for capital is inflation - fake money that is pumped into the system by gov't printing bonds and by the Fed creating fake currency out of their ass and this ends up bidding up prices ON EXISTING ASSETS, on existing houses, on existing pieces of art, on existing commodities, on anything that exists already, but where is this productivity? There is no productivity. Productive nations do not run trade deficits for decades, they can actually feed themselves by paying for the stuff they import with real exports. That's not the reality of America. The reality of America is that very few if any jobs are actually created, there is complete lack of savings, nobody wants to create new jobs there and it's for a good reason. Collectivism - too much gov't, too many regulations, too much taxation, too much inflation, too much of all of it and absolutely no individual freedoms anymore. Why would anybody want to actually risk their own savings and invest in that nonsensical regime? I wouldn't.
Maybe. I know a lot of creative people who would never just sit and watch TV, that's an anecdote to counter yours.
- so what? For all I care you can find moving boulders up and down your street to be a fun exercise in self-determination, I wouldn't pay you anything for it, though maybe I could hire you and pay you if you moved the boulders that I needed moving.
Perhaps there are enough people who love to create, and these would be given incentives.
- people who love to create do it without having the state to steal on their behalf already.
The wage for simple tasks like cleaning would go up, as the supply of workers went down.
- so not only would the productive people be stolen from to subsidise the unproductive, now they would have to pay more for the jobs that without the taxes wouldn't be as expensive.
But that's exactly it, all that gov't can do is stealing and redistributing, which pushes costs and prices up. Gov't can't lower costs, even if it can lower cost of some specific thing somewhere, all it means that many other costs are going up to subsidise that one particular lower price (with questionable outcomes as well).
Many would consider this to be fair.
- I am sure anybody who is getting paid in that system for doing nothing considers it extremely unfair if all of a sudden the money flow would stop as those, who would be forced to pay for them, would have to take over the system and fix the INJUSTICE of being force to subsidise the leeches.
For a while people could do menial tasks and be compensated well for it, until it finally would be cheaper to design advanced robots.
- one thing is certain, as prices are pushed up by gov't via taxes, regulations, inflation, more and more robots will be created, because capital and labour are always in competition and if there is an unnatural price support for one, then the other will step in and try and fix the problem.
'basic income' doesn't exist now as welfare. It's not meant to be a permanent solution, and people like I don't consider it ethical to use it as such.
- of-course it does, that's all it is. 'Basic income' is welfare, it's theft and redistribution. Generations of people live on it.
If I was given basic income I would probably work on open source projects and develop hardware for a while.
- if I was given basic income, I would spend my time on a beach.
I don't agree. One shouldn't force people to donate a lot to others, as in communism.
- one shouldn't be stolen from regardless of the amount, fixed that for you.
Freedom and property rights are important. However, when giving away the basics is almost free, then people indeed should be given it for free
- so how about not using gov't violence to achieve this goal, you have in your mind? If it is true, that things are so 'free' to make, leave it to the free market to distribute all these things at lowest prices.
How do you think things are PRODUCED, WRAPPED, SHIPPED, DISTRIBUTED if not because there are tons of people doing the work, who wouldn't be doing it if they had money coming to them for free? What you see as "free production" is a consequence of FREE MARKET EFFICIENCY that can allocate resources in the most efficient manner given the current market realities.
You are proposing changing the market realities and are convinced that for some reason things would still be "free". Nothing is free and there is nothing more expensive than something that gov't wants to redistribute as 'free'.
There's no dogma to support that, but it seems fair, doesn't it?
- of-course it's dogma. What is your excuse for stealing if not dogma? You think things are free - that's just plain ignorance.
You are delusional, vast majority of people will choose never to move a finger to do anything useful for strangers with 'basic income', which already exists (and it shouldn't) as welfare. People shouldn't be just given free anything simply for the great feat of being born if this means any degree of collectivist intervention. Inflation, which you are a proponent of (based on your comment) is just theft, even worse than theft via other taxes, it hurts those without assets most.
As to work without profit - it is called a hobby. A business has to be profitable to be sustainable and to serve large number of customers.
From TFA "the robots are not taking away any human's work yet..." What a bunch of nonsense, of-course they do, that is why these labour saving devices are there, to reduce costs, to make the system more reliable and scalable, that is the entire point and that is what people want - cheaper, faster, better service and free market capitalism driven by the profit motive, the most economically viable and thus the most moral motive is delivering. Imagine if gov't was doing this... It would be 1000 times as expensive, it would not innovate all while nobody would be allowed to compete with it and it would be paid for by taxing people that wouldn't even want it. But hey, at least it would 'provide jobs' with all the gov't perks at the expense of the rest of the economy. /. wouldn't have a story on that though, nothing to bash in the collectivist hivemind.
Let me tell you what I think of people who have "calling of national service", they are power hungry, control freak beehive drones, which is not a contradiction of terms, this actually complements itself. The people that want to do any gov't activity are the very last ones that should be allowed anywhere near it. Gov't is a system disease, like cancer, hiv and leprosy combined. Its willing agents are the poison that is kills the host.
of-course the only real we have today to cover our energy needs while destroying the environment the least is by using nuclear energy.
Of-course the governments of the world stand in the way of the free market experimenting with nuclear energy, AFAIC that's the reason I don't have a flying car yet, it's because we are not yet powering cars with tiny nuclear reactors and that will not change until we get gov't out of energy business (and if you want progress in any field that is useful, get government out of it).
On the other hand, what has the West done to Iran anyway?
Only deposed democratically elected Iranian government in order to give Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, otherwise known as BP, cheaper access to Iranian oil, but that's ancient history too, isn't it?
Useless people are useless, and the problem is?
Eventually most jobs become useless, as the cost of producing manufacturing tools approach 0, it is possible to buy more and more manufacturing tools for any particular individual, so while the 'basic income' is complete nonsense and obviously a murderous, oppressive, armed robbery, the free market capitalism IS going to provide something like that through NORMAL market operations.
If you can buy a machine that does 20% of the work you do on a daily basis and you have to pay 2 years of your salary for it, would you buy it and if not, why not? Would you save the income you collect over time to buy more advanced versions of the machine? Say a machine is built that can do 50% of your daily activities, would you yourself buy the machine?
If you can buy a machine that provides you with some basic necessities and you have spend 10 years of your income on it, would you buy it? What if eventually the same machine only costs 5 years of your income? 6 months?
Do you get the point? It looks like you are asking for armed robbery, theft, murder, why can't you actually not be that violent and understand that the end result is the same, but your goals are immoral and also economically stupid?
In America, you have Ferengi style capitalism and call it "freedom".
- capitalism does not equal free market capitalism, which is the most proven system of capital management to produce the best outcomes in terms of wealth generation and raising overall standard of living for everybody in known human history.
capitalism, but with a social conscience, because we understand that in the long run, our way of doing things leads to more freedom for a greater number of people
- I think you are confusing the concept of being free with a concept of being subsidised or getting free stuff on the backs of the productive minority of the population.
Welfare state is this and it needs to stop.
Voters are idiots, they keep electing people that promise more bread and circuses and corruption rather than people that promise to maintain rule of law and Constitutionality of the government. Voters deserve exactly the outcomes that they are getting.
Worse, the author doesn't understand what money is in the first place. Money is a claim on future consumption, it's a store of value, unit of account and means of exchange. But money is actually meaningless without ability to use it to buy something, so what is important to consider is whether there will be any productive output in the future that somebody with money can claim a portion of.
Given this, it is clear that any private issuer to emit money or currency that is backed by money. It is not government, that allows money to have value, it is private enterprise that produces something that gives money any meaning at all. Government cannot ever issue money, all money is supposed to be backed by productive output and productive output is not what governments do.
Government can issue currency, either it is backed by real money (gold) or it is not (fiat). Real money does not come into existence by the desire of either government or any private entity, that's why Bitcoin is 'doomed to failure', because it is not actually backed by any productive capacity. It is doomed to failure for the exact reasons that any fiat currency is doomed to failure and it doesn't matter who issues fiat, a government or a Bitcoin miner.
Now, I am not implying that Bitcoins will go down in price to 0 and not rise back up, I am not making any claim on the future price of Bitcoins. For all I know it is absolutely possible that 1BTC will = 1,000,000,000 USD in 2 years time, I don't know.
What I do know is that Bitcoin is a fiat currency that has no backing by any real money and it is indistinguishable from any other future (or current) version of electronic fiat currency and it is a tool of speculation. You will probably grow your savings if you buy Bitcoin even today and sell it at some future date.
If you fail to sell it at the right moment in time, you will probably lose your savings. That much is certain - eventually it will crash and not come up again, but when that will be I believe nobody can predict.
What I can say about this 'economist' though is that he does not know what money is, he does not know what currency is, he does not know what gives money or currency value and he is wrong about money being a 'tool of the state', that's a completely nonsensical statement. Money existed long before any states existed and it will exist long after any one of those states is gone.