The Invention of Money • Hacker News Board

Re: The Invention of Money

#51

Post by wazoox » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

heymijo wrote: post #45

throw0101a wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... is missing the word 'usury' which was largely agreed to be evil by early religions and societies that experienced its effects... It should be noted that the reasons we borrow money today is different than why it was done in the past. In the past, the "average" person was usually a farmer, and if they needed to borrow money, it was probably because their crops had failed and they needed to money to buy food to f…

I was curious about the markets you described--mortgage and payday. You're right about mortgages being a huge market($10.3 trillion in mortgage debt). [0] Payday loans: > In fact, U.S. consumers borrow almost $90 billion every year in short-term, small-dollar loans that typically range from $300 to $5,000, according to a 2018 report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). [1] > “Right now, 80 percen…

Such usury loans are absolutely illegal in civilised countries, for instance [almost] everywhere in Europe. Just saying.

(edit: not in the UK, which is rapidly sailing away).

Re: The Invention of Money

#52

Post by kiliantics » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

electriclove wrote: post #47

The Money as Debt videos by Paul Grignon are a fantastic watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nBPN-MKefA&list=PLmpODdsfpr...

Except that they are not based on real facts. A much better explanation of how money is related to debt, which actually relies on established facts from the historical record, is "Debt: The First 5000 Years" by David Graeber.

Re: The Invention of Money

#53

Post by wazoox » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

et2o wrote: post #17

gattilorenz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See footnote 83: https://books.google.com/books?id=iN9Tdfdap5MC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA... It would seem there is no consensus. Clearly some scholars think he went there.

Great reference, thanks. Possibly he went there but also fabricated and exaggerated.

Plus the book was actually laid down two decades later, by recounting memories to a jail mate who took note of it. Plus there were actually several retellings and rewritings of the book, so much that we're not even sure of the language it was first written in (French? Franco-Italian? Some Italian dialect?) So exaggeration, misremembering and lies are not only probable, but almost certain.

Re: The Invention of Money

#54

Post by kiliantics » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

runeks wrote: post #30

nosianu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is gold more real than debt? To me debt is far superior. Debt means you have a commitment from a human (directly or indirectly, if the debt is owed by an organization). Gold has no inherent value at all apart from some minor uses of relatively small amounts in the economy. Except by agreement, which debt also has. An example for debt-based I once read somewhere was a kid writing an IOU for garden work. As long as…

You can’t separate debt from money because debt is money owed. And there’s clearly a difference between having something and being owed something.

money is also "money owed" -- you don't know today that the money you have in your account will be able to buy the same amount of stuff tomorrow, it's also a completely faith-based system

Re: The Invention of Money

#55

Post by vageli » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #51

heymijo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious about the markets you described--mortgage and payday. You're right about mortgages being a huge market($10.3 trillion in mortgage debt). [0] Payday loans: > In fact, U.S. consumers borrow almost $90 billion every year in short-term, small-dollar loans that typically range from $300 to $5,000, according to a 2018 report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). [1] > “Right now, 80 percen…

Such usury loans are absolutely illegal in civilised countries, for instance [almost] everywhere in Europe. Just saying. (edit: not in the UK, which is rapidly sailing away).

> Such usury loans are absolutely illegal in civilised countries, for instance everywhere in Europe. Just saying.

This is proved untrue with minimal searching online. Here's one example: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/just-when-you-thought-...

Also search "payday loan $EU_COUNTRY" to see some pretty insane rates (>1000%).

Re: The Invention of Money

#56

Post by kartan » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

kenneth wrote: post #39

If you liked this story, I also highly recommend the YouTube Extra History miniseries on the South Sea Bubble, which is a very similar contemporary scheme in the U.K. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1kndKWJKB8

Another video, this is about Marco Polo writings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UiIpiV0P0M

And it mentions also the invention of Money.

Re: The Invention of Money

#57

Post by kiliantics » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #26

digitalengineer wrote: post #4

So if gold is the only real money (and everything else is just debt)... What does gold’s year-long rally this year tell us?

Faith is the only real money. The only thing money measures is optimism about the future - both micro ("I am optimistic that you can repay this loan") macro ("I am optimistic this country's military spending and worker-hostile environment guarantees my investment will be protected"), corporate ("I am optimistic about the contents of this earnings call"), and specific ("I have more faith in this asset class than in ot…

> The tangible items that aren't primarily faith-based are land and housing, so they do well as reliable investments. But even they're not faith-free, because they will still lose value in an area if no one believes it has a future.

They depend on faith even more in that "owning" property only works when everyone agrees with the system of private property that granted you this ownership in the first place. This is usually backed by a government with some kind of armed police to maintain property rights by force if necessary. Without such a faith-based system -- or some other way of defending it by force -- your claim to any acres of land is not worth much.

Re: The Invention of Money

#58

Post by navigatesol » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

misja wrote: post #22

digitalengineer wrote: post #4

So if gold is the only real money (and everything else is just debt)... What does gold’s year-long rally this year tell us?

The value of gold is inversely correlated with the trust in government bonds. The reason is clear when reading the article; gold is the only real money so the higher the chances of defaults on bonds, the more attractive it becomes to swap paper money for gold. The current gold rally tells us that there is a lot of global political and economical uncertainty. Think of the Brexit, the Iran troubles and the global trade…

>All these issues could cost big money for governments so it makes their bonds less attractive.

If bonds are unattractive, why are yields at near-all-time lows?

Gold is appealing when real rates of interest are low, as it maintains purchasing power over time.

Re: The Invention of Money

#59

Post by navigatesol » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

digitalengineer wrote: post #21

et2o wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense is gold the real money? Gold doesn't back most currencies any longer. Money is the real money.

Then why would it make sense for a country like say China to build up massive (largest ever) hoarse of good? https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gold-reserves

>Then why would it make sense for a country like say China to build up massive (largest ever) hoarse of good?

Why would it make sense for the people/countries that China is buying gold from to sell it, if it's "real money"?

Re: The Invention of Money

#60

Post by epistasis » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #48

contingencies wrote: post #18

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is my preferred introduction. Critically this New Yorker account is missing the word 'usury' which was largely agreed to be evil by early religions and societies that experienced its effects...

I read that book and mostly enjoyed it than I got to the last chapter and found it was riddled with errors I could easily spot like the in following sentence: Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages. Reading arou…

That's a shocking amount of inaccuracy to pack into a single sentence!