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What if money expired?

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Re: What if money expired?

#61

Post by grogenaut »

mikewarot wrote: post #39
Throwfi44 wrote: post #14

Money do expire! There is inflation... I would like similar system for land ownership and buildings. Property taxes at level of 5%. In China land can not be owned, but only leased for 70 years.

I carry around a piece of hard currency (1901 Silver Dollar) to remind me of what real money is like... it's always been worth about 4 retail gallons of gasoline. I expect that trend to continue for at least another decade. Soft money, tends towards zero, as you said.

How do you get a gas station attendant to give you $16 worth of gas on the spot for a $1 coin. No intermediaries.

Re: What if money expired?

#62

Post by goodpoint »

zmgsabst wrote: post #41
znpy wrote: post #35

Who would this hurt, anyway? Rich people keep their “money” in the form of socks, bonds and properties anyway.

I always think things like this are amusing: Poor people “failing” the Marshmallow Test is taken as not having impulse control — but I’d argue studies fail to account for different life experience in people taking your “marshmallow” away, no matter what they promise. This is stealing marshmallows on an industrial scale.

Absolutely spot on. When someone is used to an unsafe environment, eating the marshmallow immediately is a perfectly rational behavior.

Re: What if money expired?

#63

Post by analog31 »

garrickvanburen wrote: post #12
rlnorthcutt wrote: post #2

An interesting look at theories around "perishable" money. A very interesting concept. Most resources in the world have a lifespan - even an iron bar will eventually rust. However, a dollar is as perpetual as the system itself. On top of that, the entire economic system is designed to reward those who take more and give less - that is how you become rich, and being rich is the highest ideal. However, if money had a l…

Grain is quite stable under the right conditions (dry, cool), which is one of the reasons there can be a futures market for it and sales can happen over the winter and even the spring following a harvest. It wouldn’t surprise me if the origin of currency began with grain.

... and possibly with futures. A clay tablet promising delivery of grain.

Re: What if money expired?

#64

Post by stickfigure »

genman wrote: post #38
Throwfi44 wrote: post #14

Money do expire! There is inflation... I would like similar system for land ownership and buildings. Property taxes at level of 5%. In China land can not be owned, but only leased for 70 years.

Actually no. Expiration of money and inflation can exist simultaneously. Expiration of money is an end of life cycle event of individual bills - it affects certain lump sum of money that will become void in corpore. The nominal value of the money will remain the same. Inflation is continuous devaluation of nominal value of all the money regardless of individual bills. If we discuss expiration of money then we should…

These seem easy to game, and would just generate a (pure dead-weight) industry of money persistence optimization. Alternatively, people would ditch their and buy instead.

The whole thing sounds incredibly dumb.

Re: What if money expired?

#67

Post by ruiisnwn »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #33

The article is just making stuff up here: > Total U.S. bank deposits are around $17 trillion. Meanwhile, total wealth in this country, including nonmonetary assets, is around $149 trillion, more than 63 times the total available cash. The gaps between these numbers are like dark matter in the universe — we don’t have a way to empirically account for it, and yet without it our understanding of the universe, or the eco…

[dead]

Re: What if money expired?

#68

Post by ysofunny »

thicknavyrain wrote: post #21
Throwfi44 wrote: post #14

Money do expire! There is inflation... I would like similar system for land ownership and buildings. Property taxes at level of 5%. In China land can not be owned, but only leased for 70 years.

It's remarkable how many problems seemingly come back to Land Value Taxation.

maybe the only real technical problem is "whose is that?"

Re: What if money expired?

#69

Post by latchkey »

abe_m wrote: post #4
numtel wrote: post #3

Uh, our money does already expire. It's called inflation.

It is interesting how closely the proposals of Gesell are to current US Fed policy of 2% inflation. The main difference seems to be the current system runs on the Cantillion effect, where those in favoured positions (close to where the money is created) benefit from the inflation, while those farthest away bear the cost. In effect, it is the rich who are able to borrow direct from Central Banks and Government Treasur…

2% is an entirely made up number though.

"The 2 percent target widely adopted by central banks today originated from New Zealand, and surprisingly it came not from any academic study, but rather from an offhand comment during a television interview."

https://www.cfr.org/blog/history-and-future-federal-reserves...

Re: What if money expired?

#70

Post by stickfigure »

rlnorthcutt wrote: post #5
numtel wrote: post #3

Uh, our money does already expire. It's called inflation.

There is a difference between inflation, which affects the entire monetary system, and money expiration which affects individual units of currency. In the first case, there is no incentive to use the money any faster, and as long as inflation isn't too high, there could be incentives to hoard/save it. In the second case, each unit has an expiration, and like the game of hot potato, you want it out of your hands quick…

It won't change the way people think about money, but it will certainly change the way they think about your money. That is, they'll stop using it and start using someone else's money (bitcoin, Euros, whatever) that doesn't expire.
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