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The Demoralization is just Beginning

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Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#751

Post by intended »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #379
intended wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But thats the heart of the gold standard. The only difference here being that you’ve described it before things like watering gold down, fraud, volatility, bank failures and the rest resulted in it coming under a single aegis. Issuing currency against gold is what the gold standard is all about. What do you think it was? And eggs are expensive, you should save them for later.

> Issuing currency against gold is what the gold standard is all about. What do you think it was? This seems pretty reductionist in a way that ends up being quite lossy. With the gold standard, I believe the conversion rate between the dollar and gold was set by the government, right? With private bank currency, it is literally a voucher for a specific weight of gold. There is no exchange rate like there was with the…

Think it through - you just showed how currencies came about.

They were all receipts against the payment of a physical good.

Thats what the gold standard is. The difference is simply centralization.

Are you aware of what happened to The Spanish monarchy regarding silver and inflation?

The discovery of more physical silver results in more inflation.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#752

Post by AnthonyMouse »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #690
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can truly come up with an objective measure of wealth, I believe there might be a (quasi) Nobel Prize in economics for you. Is it actually that hard? The material worth of something is what someone will pay you for it, i.e. the value it would sell for at auction. Your material wealth is the sum of the worth of what you have. That means if you own something and the market price of it changes, i.e. someone cha…

> The material worth of something is what someone will pay you for it, i.e. the value it would sell for at auction. The problem is that this i.e. isn't right, because the vast majority of market transactions are not auctions. The value a pallet of rice would auction for is very different than the value a rice farmer would accept to load it onto a truck, which is very different than the value a supermarket would pay t…

That's because those are all different products. Water in the desert is a different product than water at the river and they can still differ in value even in a competitive market because of the cost of transportation.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#753

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ryandamm wrote: post #644
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that sort of thing is predictably wrong. It's premised on the combination of low interest rates and a lack of inflation, even though low interest rates generally cause inflation. As soon as you get inflation, keeping interest rates low would make it worse, but raising them explodes the interest rate on the debt. And your other alternative to paying the high interest is to print the money to pay the debt, which al…

I think you’re confusing correlation for causation. I trust a Nobel Prize winner has thought through it more deeply and integrated the causes and effects more than most random internet commentators. I am happy to report that “low interest rates” do not cause inflation by themselves on any scale less than a decade. Source: 1995-2021. What actually causes inflation is more a function of overall demand and supply in an…

> I am happy to report that “low interest rates” do not cause inflation by themselves on any scale less than a decade. Source: 1995-2021.

Interest rates in 1995 were about average, not particularly low. The zero interest rate period really started at the end of 2008 in response to the housing crash, with a very specific goal: To counteract the deflationary effect of the housing crash.

A major deleterious effect of that policy was to effectively re-inflate the housing bubble, which is now Causing Problems. But it was quite effective at doing the thing it does, which is increasing the rate of inflation relative to the alternative. When the rate of inflation would otherwise have had a minus sign in front of it, that can be what you intended to do, but that doesn't mean that's not what it does.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#754

Post by amy_petrik »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #714
flyinglizard wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US of 50 years ago, democracy was protected by codes of conduct, honor, and most importantly, strong content moderation in the form of monopolistic legacy media. All of this went out the door with the rise of social networks and the demise of legacy media. I don't see how democracy has the tools to survive populists with direct connection to the voting public. Even if elections happen in 2028, there's a good c…

Didn't Ben Franklin have his own printing press promoting his views? America's political class got complacent and lazy, and forgot that they have to sell what they were pushing to the American people. They never even FOUGHT the battle of ideas. As they age out/get pushed out new Ben Franklin with their own printing press types will rise.

Other part of it, yes, Benny F was quite an edgelord, but it took patience and drive in those days. You couldn't just drop a shitpost in 30 seconds, no, you had to lay out the shitpost in little tiny metal letters, and make copies of the shitpost, painstakingly, one at a time, to distribute. And people didn't come by much reading material in those days, so the shitpost was cherished when acquired. Generally speaking the supply/demand curve of the written word was very much different than it was now. Now, the writing itself and the distribution is automated by machines

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#755

Post by bad_user »

tasuki wrote: post #719
bad_user wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is "they"? People that don't know any history?

Have you even read the comment you're replying to?

> They say the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship

I asked who is "they" from this sentence.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#756

Post by dredmorbius »

mullingitover wrote: post #221
kawaiikouhai wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I had this exact thought experiment of "What if America were no longer Hegemon". So, I looked at other historic examples. The British, Dutch, and Spanish. (You can add German/Austrian and the French, close contenders). They're all still very well-off!

If Britain were a US state it would be between Mississippi and Alabama in GDP per capita. Not sure I’d call the place well off. Granted, a lot of the reason they’re in this situation is because they put everything into stopping the Nazis and thus saving the world. The US kinda lucked into inheriting the UK’s wealth.

Though with (for the moment) a rather better social safety net / services provision than the US as a whole, and MS/AL specifically.

I do agree with your larger point, it is however counterbalanced in part. Gross per capita income doesn't reveal the full picture.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#757

Post by stevenhuang »

buzzert wrote: post #742
cyanydeez wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, it's really bizarre people think economics at this scale works with gold. People really think humanity operates on some kind of fixed physical properties, when everything we rely on in modern society is not real. Borders are not real, the value we place on a human life is not real, the stocks and bonds arn't real. They're all relative relationships with historical and future promises, reliant upon the trust we…

This is such a deranged take, I can't even tell if it's satire or not.

Yeah first half I was following along but then it jumps the shark.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#758

Post by dredmorbius »

rayiner wrote: post #109
rat87 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India despite flaws is a democracy same as the US. It's a very different country then China. Plenty of immigrants from tyrannical countries are as if not more committed to democracy as those born here And just because someone was born in China or India it doesn't make them any less American then someone born in Iowa. Their children might be born in Iowa

Democracy isn't created by intentions or "commitment," but rather the culture of the people, their attitudes, and mental processes. An Iowan born in Iowa to Iowan parents who were born to Iowan parents is steeped from birth in a culture that is very different from someone born in India or China--or even the American-born children of Indians and Chinese immigrants. Immigrants may become legally American overnight, but…

I'm not persuaded that if you took 1,000 people like me and put them on an island you'd recreate America.'

A rare moment of strong agreement.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#759

Post by sph »

snowwrestler wrote: post #556
sph wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's revisionist nonsense. The "issue" with gold standard is that you cannot compete with countries that can print money at will, which gives them the advantage NOW, even though they'll suffer massive inflation later down the line. How will you ever win a war when your enemy has infinite money? I guess people forgot what happened to Germany's economy after WWI. Your only hope is to be the one that wins the war, and…

Seems like maybe you forgot what happened to Germany’s economy after WWII, which they also lost?

What do you mean? From a quick search, they had to pay in reparations:

* for WW1, $12.5 BILLION

* for WW2, $413 million

Even Allies figured out that the ridiculous demands of WW1, with the double whammy of 1929, were a direct cause of hyperinflation in Germany trying to pay for it (which already had borrowed incredible amounts of money as they were the first country to abandon the gold standard to finance the Great War) and the second time around they allowed the country to have a chance to actually rebuild itself.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#760

Post by netsharc »

desumeku wrote: post #613
georgehotz wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike gold, the "finite supply" of BTC is socially constructed. That's my whole argument for gold. The finite supply isn't socially constructed, and getting more requires building real infrastructure.

Computer programs and algorithms are the last thing that I would call "socially constructed".

The meaning behind them are, though. When car alarms was a big thing, it might wail, and the idea was people would have a look to see if somebody was trying to steal your car, but at the end it was mostly false alarms. So the wailing got the reaction of "Not that shit again!".

Meanwhile a TSA scanner's beep get treated as "this person is bringing a problem.".

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