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The Demoralization is just Beginning

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Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#61

Post by gjsman-1000 »

paxys wrote: post #48
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“there is more to an economy than manufacturing” Not really, no. If China cut off the US, for any reason, who gets hurt more? Who has a bigger house of cards to collapse? Who will have a harder time rebuilding? If the next leader is bolder than Xi, and is of the same kind that once killed tens of millions of people, losing an arm and a leg to behead an enemy might be a viable strategy.

> Not really, no. If China cut off the US, for any reason, who gets hurt more? China gets hurt more. They are an export economy. US will face some temporary pain, sure, but other countries build stuff as well. Meanwhile what does China do with all the materials piling up, millions out of jobs and a half a trillion dollar hole in their economy?

China’s current government quite literally killed 30 million people under the cultural revolution and Great Leap Forward, and until 2015, killed all children past the first.

China is not motivated by what makes economic sense. The party openly says this - the very fact corporations exist is a concession to not having achieved pure communism yet. The party openly hates the fact they need an economy, after having failed for the first few decades to operate without one.

All it takes, quite literally, is one hardcore communist after Xi who isn’t afraid of a second cultural revolution. Maybe a chance to fix all their consumption, housing, and youth issues once and for all in one painful societal restructuring? The very economic and social issues we point to as why they would never do it, I fear, might actually become reasons they will do it.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#62

Post by lxgr »

roenxi wrote: post #52
lxgr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, 50 years later, they appear to have lost the title of the world's major superpower. And how is that causally related to the abandonment of the gold standard? Is the CNY somehow backed by gold, or the RUR?

The part I don't like is it confuses the situation to make it harder to tell if goods and services are getting cheaper or more expensive in real terms. But I don't know if I'd say it was causal. I'm more just pointing out that there isn't much evidence that the gold standard failed and there isn't a reason to think that all the economists reject it. They're more probably neutral to it.

The gold standard didn't fail: Fiat money just completely obliterated it with its success.

Being able to issue fiat money is a feature of high trust governments and societies, not a bug, and people yearning back to needing a gold standard scare me, because that inevitably implies dismantling that trust to get there.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#64

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

zzzeek wrote: post #51
ryandamm wrote: post #11

I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. -there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not. -gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy. -these ideas only sound self consistent withou…

seemed like a good article until he went into "back the dollar on gold" and revealed he was a total crackpot, sad

For me it was “Socialism Bad”

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#65

Post by jazzyjackson »

lxgr wrote: post #56
tomrod wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, bitcoin does have an upper limit, but rug pull coins don't. The exact number is ₿20,999,999.9769

Well, if you believe that that somehow makes Bitcoin immune to scams, I have a wallet address where you can send me some right now and I "promise to return you twice the amount to give back to the community"... Note that Bitcoin might have a monetary cap built in, but source code is not actually capable of preventing people from denominating IOUs in it.

I don't think they were rebutting that, it's just that Bitcoin supply is only capped if you consider it the one true currency, but there is no cap on the supply of forks that perform identical function, only difference being adoption. It's like you could take the entire gold supply and put it through a Star Trek replicator, but now you have the job of convincing the world that your vault is full of gold too

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#66

Post by throw678937 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #22
ryandamm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguing that manufacturing is strategic is not the same thing as manufacturing being “all that matters in an economy.” There’s a logical fallacy in your rebuttal.

How about I put it this way: Manufacturing is the bedrock of power. Everything else above it, particularly fiat currency, is built on that bedrock. While those cards can be mighty attractive, losing the bedrock for any reason would destroy everything. Apple isn’t going to be worth $3 trillion when they can’t sell an iPhone for the next decade. Heck, General Mills won’t be selling much breakfast cereal, when the parts…

[dead]

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#67

Post by Barrin92 »

ryandamm wrote: post #11

I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. -there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not. -gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy. -these ideas only sound self consistent withou…

>there is more to an economy than manufacturing.

Not really. Most developed economies are basically 70% Baumol's cost disease[1]. The 20% of the American GDP that goes to healthcare, half of the military budget that goes into salaries, public services, the police isn't billed on productivity. Those are non-tradeable services whose compensation inflates with growth in the productivity gaining sectors of the economy.

That's why you can go not to a wealthy Tier 1 city in China, but to a Tier 2 or 3 city and it has better public services despite having like 10% of the per capita budget of a US city. Most compensation is.. fake. If you want to know what an economy does look at the stuff they make.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#69

Post by Finnucane »

roenxi wrote: post #44
Finnucane wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the gold standard 'effective' at? In the 19th century, the US had a more or less continual stream of panics and recessions. In 1932, everyone had to get off the gold standard because there was no mechanism to stop the deflationary death spiral otherwise. 'Bretton-Woods' failed to control inflation, and it became possible to arbitrage gold across markets.

> In the 19th century, the US had a more or less continual stream of panics and recessions. In 1932, everyone had to get off the gold standard because there was no mechanism to stop the deflationary death spiral otherwise. Disabling the feedback mechanisms isn't a win. When it had the feedback from continuous minor panics the US built an economy capable of taking on the entire word and winning by a massive margin in…

When gold was money, most people were poor. Gold was mainly good for the aristocracy.
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