Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sad that free markets are viewed as an "extreme" position.
When people buy apples it is considered absolutely normal that apples go bad and spoil over time. If your unit of measurement is a golden apple that never rots, then it is only natural that the return on a spoiling apple is negative. The moment people talk and think about money, they consider the mere concept of a negative return as some kind of monstrosity going against nature itself, despite the fact that money is…
If you don't eat it, yes.
>then it is only natural that the return on a spoiling apple is negative.
my return on the regular apple is 95 kcal. If I sell it, my return is what I sold it for. Why would I compare it to a golden apple that never spoils?
>The moment people talk and think about money, they consider the mere concept of a negative return as some kind of monstrosity going against nature itself
Can you point to some economists who hold this poition?
>despite the fact that money is a claim on labor and labor spoils just like an apple
Money can be a claim on labor. It can also be a claim on something else, but aside from that, it seems like you are comparing the negative return from the apple comapred to the golden apple to labor which gives an absolute negative return.
>The saver expects a reward for idleness
(I assume by "saver" you mean investor) Do you mean "expect" from a moral or economic perspective? either way it isn't true. An investor does not nessesarily expect a return on his investment. Either way what the saver expects does not matter.
>while the laborer without a job is getting punished by his enforced idleness.
If the saver instead was in some way obligated to reward the laborer despite providing a negative return then it would reduce the efficency of the total output. The number of laborers rewarded for providing a negative return would increase until there would be a total negative return. whether or not the laborer has no job depends on the ability of the laborer to provide a function that he is paid for. His idleness is forced by not returning any value. Even if he was rewarded for providing a negative return he would still be idle in an economic sense.
>Money without negative return obligates men to become golden statues that never age, a world view that is obviously in dissonance with nature and reality.
Fortunatly money itself can bring a negative return, both by faulty investment and by the devaluation of the money itself comlared to other assets (including other money)
>Whenever the economy isn't growing, people will prefer an asset that bears a 0% return at no risk over any real investment.
False, even when the economy isn't geowing, there is still money to be made by investment at an idividual level
>In other words, there is no such thing as a free market without a monetary reform that allows negative interest rates or simply allows money to expire, the same way people age
This conclusion does not follow your statements above. But money can already expire only not idividual notes but the entire value shrinks such that some of it has expired. For example, if the economy has 1,000 eggs and 1,000 jars of milk, and 1,000,000 dollars and 10 eggs spoil then the value of the 1,000,000 dollars has shrunk by 10 eggs worth.
>Here is another problem, eternal private landownership has the same problem
can you site any examples of land that has been held privatley from the time it was first held until now?
>At a zero interest rate its value is infinite
it isn't infinite because that land takes an infinite amount of time to return an infinite value which is not possible. (compared to investing many other ventures it produces a negative return. Like the apple case except it does not expire).
>What's worth more? Money that works according to supply or demand or land that doesn't? Of course people are going to pick land
Real estate acounts for a large percentage of GDP in the US. But money is a liquid asset, land is not. Banks do not to forclose on houses from the first moment they can because then they have to sell them. But if they wait until the borrower gives them money they don't need to sell anything.
>If landownership was eternal, then owning all of the land on the planet is equivalent to turning everyone else into illegal aliens that merely have been granted permission to exist on the planet and whose permission can be withdrawn at any time.
Can you expound on this point?
>In the face of these two forces there cannot be something like a free market. It would always be a coercive market in one form or another.
There can never be a completly free market but there can be something like a free market.
>It would always be a coercive market in one form or another.
coercive in the sense that people will do things they don't want to such as working.