Far too many employers would rather turn technical people into bullshit artists capable of selling their broken crap instead of just allowing them to fix it and letting it sell itself.
This sad state of affairs has a basis in the deep economic fallacies that underpin nearly the entire global economy. There is no money to be made in selling products that work. Warfare increases the GDP, etc...
To me? Should I redefine it to fit your sensibilities?
You should use the actual definition that makes sense, not the propaganda version you heard on CNBC.
You are the one who thinks that rising prices are theft, this is getting comical
I said I think that inflation is theft. I'm not nearly dumb enough to believe that inflation is just a fancy word for "rising prices." It's a fancy word for money printing.
Deflation is when the market price of goods and services traded exceeds the amount of money available to the market and causes the price of the goods and services to drop.
Right, so, to you, deflation equals "falling prices." That's clear. Prices should always stay the same, somehow.
I'm guessing you also have some magical formula that accounts for the fact that different people like to purchase different things at different times, and that the quality and quantity of goods and services changes over time. And once you plug all the variables regarding the amount of goods and services versus the amount of money "available" to the market in to your magical formula, it spits out an answer as to whether the economy is currently undergoing "deflation" or "inflation" as you have defined them. Then a central planner can look at this determination and make a decision to print more money or not. Perhaps you can tell by my sarcasm that I'm less than impressed with this idea. Mostly because it's been done before, over and over, to the complete destruction of every economy involved.
Regardless of the actual mechanism, though, the fact that you're opposed to "deflation" as you define it means you're against falling prices, falling cost of living, and a general rise in living standards. In your ideal economy, everything stays constant. Well, constant within the abilities of the central planners, at least.
But not everything, actually. As you've pointed out, progress tends to happen regardless. So, in your ideal economy, the one thing that is constantly changing is the money supply. In order to offset technological improvement and increases in productivity, the money supply must constantly increase, in order to keep prices the same. As you've said, you strongly prefer that prices always stay the same or rise, correct? So therefore you can't allow technological improvement to create a rising quality of life; that would decrease prices. You must constantly print more money in order to prevent this.
Yet, even in your ideal economy, you have to admit, the money printed is not equally distributed, or even fairly distributed to those who, as you put it, "work to grow the market." It is distributed to bankers and politicians, who waste the money on pointless wars killing hundreds of thousands or unhinged gambling with large swaths of the real economy, wasting trillions in scarce resources betting with this free money. How do you reconcile this with all of your breathless protestations about the injustice of the wrong people (responsible savers) being unfairly rewarded, when every newly-printed dollar is handed directly to too-big-to-fail banks in order to subsidize consequence-free gambling and literal economic destruction?
As I think I've made abundantly clear, this economic "philosophy" is little more than a string of various long-since-thoroughly-debunked tautologies, such as the broken-window fallacy and the labor theory of value, wrapped up with a complete ignorance of the information problem. Though, I have to admit it takes a certain amount of gall to argue that "deflation is theft" with a straight face. It's the first time I've seen that at least.
Beyond that, I'm not going to wade into your ridiculous concerns about the "money supply," as though there weren't enough pennies available to support whatever trade you'd like to engage in. Dollars are not perfectly divisible, but no one is "choking" the money supply and preventing you from trading. That's simply ludicrous.
Okay, I'm not going to bother reading your "story" until you can answer a simple, straightforward question. It's obvious that you don't have any consistent concept of either deflation or inflation. You need to sort that out before building an elaborate theory based on it.
So no, burning money will not cause deflation.
Even if it were, say, a billion dollars? No deflation? What, in your opinion, does cause deflation? How about technical progress, or productivity improvements? Does that cause deflation?
Just remember that when the money deflates your work to grow the market has rewarded people sitting on said money.
I don't actually believe that theft is involved on either side of the inflation/deflation coin
So, you're upset that your "work" rewards other people, but you don't consider that "theft?" Why are you upset then? Do you consider counterfeiting "theft?"
deflation pumps wealth from those producing it to those who sit on their money in a fucking growing economy.
You know, I have to ask. Do you get paid to spew this Orwellian bullshit?
There is absolutely no such thing as a "growing economy." There is an economy that is more interdependent and more risky and failure-prone, and there is an economy that is more stable and less interdependent and less risky.
I, for one, am perfectly capable of determining the amount of risk I am willing to take with my money, without central bankers fraudulently printing and manipulating interest rates in order to subsidize the reckless criminals on Wall Street and artificially increase risk by "growing the economy."
And since all currencies in the entire history of the world have been inflationary, including Bitcoin, there is absolutely no chance of your ridiculously misguided fearmongering about "deflation" ever coming to pass, even if they were even remotely grounded in reality.
Money is part of a larger market dynamic
Yes, it's part of the dynamic of the traitorous banksters in the Federal Reserve using fraudulent counterfeit money to suck up all valuable capital while telling us that we are just as well-off today because one dollar will buy the same amount of pink slime as it would ground beef a few years ago.
By definition, a monetary system with neither inflation nor deflation (ie. stable monetary base) is neutral with regards to how people store their wealth. The value of the money rises or falls in relation to other means of productive value.
Monetary systems with inflation subsidize investment whether it is productive or not.
Okay then, if that's your worldview, let's take a look at it.
It's clear that you feel you deserve to be compensated for your "work to grow the market," (whatever that is). And, apparently, deflation prevents this. Therefore deflation is bad. Is that the gist?
So let's say I burn a $100 bill; that would be deflation. You agree on that much, I assume? And that's bad, in your view, since that $100 could have been spent on you and whatever "work" you do instead. Is that right?
So your philosophy basically boils down to "you deserve compensation for your work regardless of whether it has value." And "any money that is not spent rewarding you for your work is in fact causing you harm."
Am I interpreting you correctly? Or perhaps is there some subtle nuance that you have so far failed to mention. Is it not deflation, per se, that you are opposed to?
That's called inflation. I know it's confusing, since the talking heads on TV tell you that deflation is bad and that inflation is good. That's their job.
Just remember that when the money supply inflates due to money printing, your money is worth less.
First of all, Bitcoinica is not Bitcoin. It is a broker of Bitcoin futures contracts. And one that is unaudited, poorly-backed, unregulated, and run by a 17 year old Singaporean student.
So, those who were paying any attention at all know that using Bitcoinica was always a highly risky proposition. Making such a thing work flawlessly was never guaranteed to even be possible, let alone without bumps along the way, even though Zhou Tong did a relatively stellar job in my opinion, all things considered.
But lastly, those who were paying close attention should have seen that Zhou Tong made a fatal error after the Rackspace hack, in courting regulation and accepting VC money. It seems like this was done in order to save face and achieve a degree of approval for what was, clearly, a marginalized (yet successful) business model. I'm not privy to the details, so perhaps there was no real choice. But the downfall of Bitcoinica was only a matter of time once that happened. And I said so at the time.
the Constitution gives Congress the power to "coin money"
This is not a monopoly power. The Constitution itself spells out at least two exceptions, of which there are countless others.
It is clear currently that the U.S. government will act to protect the Federal Reserve's monopoly over the currency that is used in the U.S. when it feels that it is threatened (see the case against "Liberty Dollars").
Yes but it is also clear that the US government will torture and spy upon and murder innocent people. None of those are in its "charter" either. So this argument is irrelevant.
And "charter" means "contract." It doesn't mean "tradition." "Traditionally," central banks have enjoyed monetary monopolies as long as they refrain from debasing the currency. That tradition has been thrown out the window.
The creator of Bitcoin specifically included a newspaper headline in the genesis block in order to advertise the fact that he did not start mining Bitcoins before the code was publicly released. Everyone had the opportunity to start mining at the exact same time.
He mined the first 1.5 million or so Bitcoins, and as anyone can easily verify, has not spent the vast majority of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Far too many employers would rather turn technical people into bullshit artists capable of selling their broken crap instead of just allowing them to fix it and letting it sell itself.
This sad state of affairs has a basis in the deep economic fallacies that underpin nearly the entire global economy. There is no money to be made in selling products that work. Warfare increases the GDP, etc...
I would say it is the converse. It penalizes nonproductive uses of wealth, causing people to invest time/effort into finding productive uses for it.
Forced investment is a nonproductive use of wealth.
To me? Should I redefine it to fit your sensibilities?
You should use the actual definition that makes sense, not the propaganda version you heard on CNBC.
You are the one who thinks that rising prices are theft, this is getting comical
I said I think that inflation is theft. I'm not nearly dumb enough to believe that inflation is just a fancy word for "rising prices." It's a fancy word for money printing.
I'm done.
Of course you're done. You lost.
Deflation is when the market price of goods and services traded exceeds the amount of money available to the market and causes the price of the goods and services to drop.
Right, so, to you, deflation equals "falling prices." That's clear. Prices should always stay the same, somehow.
I'm guessing you also have some magical formula that accounts for the fact that different people like to purchase different things at different times, and that the quality and quantity of goods and services changes over time. And once you plug all the variables regarding the amount of goods and services versus the amount of money "available" to the market in to your magical formula, it spits out an answer as to whether the economy is currently undergoing "deflation" or "inflation" as you have defined them. Then a central planner can look at this determination and make a decision to print more money or not. Perhaps you can tell by my sarcasm that I'm less than impressed with this idea. Mostly because it's been done before, over and over, to the complete destruction of every economy involved.
Regardless of the actual mechanism, though, the fact that you're opposed to "deflation" as you define it means you're against falling prices, falling cost of living, and a general rise in living standards. In your ideal economy, everything stays constant. Well, constant within the abilities of the central planners, at least.
But not everything, actually. As you've pointed out, progress tends to happen regardless. So, in your ideal economy, the one thing that is constantly changing is the money supply. In order to offset technological improvement and increases in productivity, the money supply must constantly increase, in order to keep prices the same. As you've said, you strongly prefer that prices always stay the same or rise, correct? So therefore you can't allow technological improvement to create a rising quality of life; that would decrease prices. You must constantly print more money in order to prevent this.
Yet, even in your ideal economy, you have to admit, the money printed is not equally distributed, or even fairly distributed to those who, as you put it, "work to grow the market." It is distributed to bankers and politicians, who waste the money on pointless wars killing hundreds of thousands or unhinged gambling with large swaths of the real economy, wasting trillions in scarce resources betting with this free money. How do you reconcile this with all of your breathless protestations about the injustice of the wrong people (responsible savers) being unfairly rewarded, when every newly-printed dollar is handed directly to too-big-to-fail banks in order to subsidize consequence-free gambling and literal economic destruction?
As I think I've made abundantly clear, this economic "philosophy" is little more than a string of various long-since-thoroughly-debunked tautologies, such as the broken-window fallacy and the labor theory of value, wrapped up with a complete ignorance of the information problem. Though, I have to admit it takes a certain amount of gall to argue that "deflation is theft" with a straight face. It's the first time I've seen that at least.
Beyond that, I'm not going to wade into your ridiculous concerns about the "money supply," as though there weren't enough pennies available to support whatever trade you'd like to engage in. Dollars are not perfectly divisible, but no one is "choking" the money supply and preventing you from trading. That's simply ludicrous.
Okay, I'm not going to bother reading your "story" until you can answer a simple, straightforward question. It's obvious that you don't have any consistent concept of either deflation or inflation. You need to sort that out before building an elaborate theory based on it.
So no, burning money will not cause deflation.
Even if it were, say, a billion dollars? No deflation? What, in your opinion, does cause deflation? How about technical progress, or productivity improvements? Does that cause deflation?
Just remember that when the money deflates your work to grow the market has rewarded people sitting on said money.
I don't actually believe that theft is involved on either side of the inflation/deflation coin
So, you're upset that your "work" rewards other people, but you don't consider that "theft?" Why are you upset then? Do you consider counterfeiting "theft?"
deflation pumps wealth from those producing it to those who sit on their money in a fucking growing economy.
You know, I have to ask. Do you get paid to spew this Orwellian bullshit?
There is absolutely no such thing as a "growing economy." There is an economy that is more interdependent and more risky and failure-prone, and there is an economy that is more stable and less interdependent and less risky.
I, for one, am perfectly capable of determining the amount of risk I am willing to take with my money, without central bankers fraudulently printing and manipulating interest rates in order to subsidize the reckless criminals on Wall Street and artificially increase risk by "growing the economy."
And since all currencies in the entire history of the world have been inflationary, including Bitcoin, there is absolutely no chance of your ridiculously misguided fearmongering about "deflation" ever coming to pass, even if they were even remotely grounded in reality.
Money is part of a larger market dynamic
Yes, it's part of the dynamic of the traitorous banksters in the Federal Reserve using fraudulent counterfeit money to suck up all valuable capital while telling us that we are just as well-off today because one dollar will buy the same amount of pink slime as it would ground beef a few years ago.
arguably you're actually doing some work for the money
I can't see how what you're describing is any different from rentierism
And what you're describing is labor theory of value.
I cut out that other crap because it's irrelevant to your fundamental misconception.
Believing that it's even possible for Q to always increase is simply conceit bordering on delusion.
If it makes you feel better, you aren't alone at least. It's apparently mass delusion...
By definition, a monetary system with neither inflation nor deflation (ie. stable monetary base) is neutral with regards to how people store their wealth. The value of the money rises or falls in relation to other means of productive value.
Monetary systems with inflation subsidize investment whether it is productive or not.
What asset do you think they secure?
Okay then, if that's your worldview, let's take a look at it.
It's clear that you feel you deserve to be compensated for your "work to grow the market," (whatever that is). And, apparently, deflation prevents this. Therefore deflation is bad. Is that the gist?
So let's say I burn a $100 bill; that would be deflation. You agree on that much, I assume? And that's bad, in your view, since that $100 could have been spent on you and whatever "work" you do instead. Is that right?
So your philosophy basically boils down to "you deserve compensation for your work regardless of whether it has value." And "any money that is not spent rewarding you for your work is in fact causing you harm."
Am I interpreting you correctly? Or perhaps is there some subtle nuance that you have so far failed to mention. Is it not deflation, per se, that you are opposed to?
Q consistently increases
False assumption spotted.
MF Global was a commodity brokerage.
Madoff was the chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange.
Bitcoinica was a brokerage and currency exchange, not a bank. There is absolutely no reason for banks with Bitcoin.
That's called inflation. I know it's confusing, since the talking heads on TV tell you that deflation is bad and that inflation is good. That's their job.
Just remember that when the money supply inflates due to money printing, your money is worth less.
Money stolen from individuals in the MF Global and Madoff scams have not been returned.
JP Morgan Chase lost $2 billion dollars last month betting on derivatives.
Why? The hype dying down just makes the value more stable.
First of all, Bitcoinica is not Bitcoin. It is a broker of Bitcoin futures contracts. And one that is unaudited, poorly-backed, unregulated, and run by a 17 year old Singaporean student.
So, those who were paying any attention at all know that using Bitcoinica was always a highly risky proposition. Making such a thing work flawlessly was never guaranteed to even be possible, let alone without bumps along the way, even though Zhou Tong did a relatively stellar job in my opinion, all things considered.
But lastly, those who were paying close attention should have seen that Zhou Tong made a fatal error after the Rackspace hack, in courting regulation and accepting VC money. It seems like this was done in order to save face and achieve a degree of approval for what was, clearly, a marginalized (yet successful) business model. I'm not privy to the details, so perhaps there was no real choice. But the downfall of Bitcoinica was only a matter of time once that happened. And I said so at the time.
Including class warfare...
Smurf that then.
the Constitution gives Congress the power to "coin money"
This is not a monopoly power. The Constitution itself spells out at least two exceptions, of which there are countless others.
It is clear currently that the U.S. government will act to protect the Federal Reserve's monopoly over the currency that is used in the U.S. when it feels that it is threatened (see the case against "Liberty Dollars").
Yes but it is also clear that the US government will torture and spy upon and murder innocent people. None of those are in its "charter" either. So this argument is irrelevant.
And "charter" means "contract." It doesn't mean "tradition." "Traditionally," central banks have enjoyed monetary monopolies as long as they refrain from debasing the currency. That tradition has been thrown out the window.
Banks waste several orders of magnitude more energy than Bitcoin mining.
And all fiat currencies are, like Bitcoin, backed by nothing.
Half the total Bitcoins haven't even been mined yet. What are you talking about?
the charters of those 'central authorities' - as the sole provider of national currencies and sole arbiters of the creation of money
In the US, at least, no such charter exists.
The creator of Bitcoin specifically included a newspaper headline in the genesis block in order to advertise the fact that he did not start mining Bitcoins before the code was publicly released. Everyone had the opportunity to start mining at the exact same time.
He mined the first 1.5 million or so Bitcoins, and as anyone can easily verify, has not spent the vast majority of them.