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Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

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Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#81

Post by JohnFen »

bheadmaster wrote: post #24
hakfoo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect there are three flavours of gold bugs: 1) Wealthy + Paranoid + Stupid. They'd rather keep their money in sovereigns under their mattress, than put it into any sort of productive economic activity. On a long term, especially in the US, you could pretty much throw darts and build a portfolio that competes with, or beats, inflation. 2) Conspirational: "fiat currency is a grand scheme to undermine our savings f…

> fiat currency is a grand scheme to undermine our savings How exactly is it not? Inflation = stealing value from people, that they have already created, time-limiting their spending power so that there's no way to actually save money in the long-term. Money printing is theft, indirect taxation without consent.

> Money printing is theft, indirect taxation without consent.

I think this characterization is incorrect.

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#82

Post by jfengel »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #79
harywilke wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It is the stated position of the Texas GOP that they should secede. "33. State Sovereignty: Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government199 has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes200 upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified. Texas201 retains the right to seced…

There's a difference between maintaining the right to do something and wanting to do something or preparing to do something. I maintain that I have the right to leave my employer and wife. I don't have plans or want to do either at the current moment

I suppose it depends on what "pass a referendum consistent thereto" means. I have no idea.

My suspicion is that it's talking out of both sides of their mouth. It means they can go to any kooks and say "We want to secede", while saying to everybody else "oh, it's just a referendum to re-assert what we already claim to be true, just for funsies".

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#83

Post by nobody9999 »

fredoralive wrote: post #71
yardie wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article that allowed the UK to leave the EU was specifically crafted for the UK at the time they joined. The EU realized that mistake right away and removed it for future members. No such agreement exists in the Constitution because having states come and go as they please would be incredibly dumb.

Huh? Article 50 is still there, and isn't a UK specific thing: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements." Wikipedia (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_the_European_U... ) notes that a formal method of leaving became a thing in the early 2000s when various Eastern Europea…

>As for the US, I did say actually passing a constitutional amendment to allow succession would be unlikely, but I don't think it's legally impossible?

Why would you need a constitutional amendment for more seasons of a popular TV show?

Even if the producers don't want to make any more episodes, all it would take is the money to acquire the rights to the show and pay for production costs. No Constitutional Amendment (or even a law) required.

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#84

Post by jfengel »

zpeti wrote: post #68
Geee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold is not deflationary from monetary perspective. More gold is mined constantly. Due to its high stock-to-flow ratio, the monetary inflation is very low. From the perspective of CPI (consumer price index), gold would be "deflationary", because prices would get cheaper. However, this is not a property of gold; it's the property of a capitalist economy, where companies compete to offer better products at cheaper pric…

I don’t understand the entire first principles these anti deflationists stand on. Like every single electronics product in the last 50 years has been deflating in price (either literally or increasing in core value). Does that stop people buying them? No! But perhaps someone here who’s anti deflationist could explain to me why I’m wrong.

Deflation mostly matters with currency. Deflation of products is a good thing.

The problem with deflating currency is that it encourages you to sit on it. Economists don't want you sitting on a hoard like a dragon. In the extreme case, GDP goes to zero today because everybody is expecting prices to be cheaper tomorrow. Then all the workers get fired because there's nothing to produce. Now they have no money, and buy nothing, so it gets even worse.

Obviously the extreme case doesn't happen, but the thought experiment illustrates the problem. A tiny bit of inflation encourages purchasing and investment, which keeps money moving. You may want to stop working as an individual once you've acquired enough money, but the nation as a whole never retires, and relies on consumption to give everybody work.

Prices of goods coming down is OK, because goods are consumed. You have to buy new goods tomorrow. Durable goods wear out; real estate is maintained; intellectual goods get boring. The economy rolls along, and people continue to make investments to get a bigger share of it for themselves.

So economists aim for low but steady inflation. It benefits the economy as a whole, at a cost to those who want to accumulate cash and not spend or invest it.

tl,dr: Sitting on cash removes it from the economy, and deflation encourages people to spend money tomorrow rather than today.

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#85

Post by hnburnsy »

nobody9999 wrote: post #10

IANAL, but doesn't Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution[0] bar Texas from creating such a currency? [0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C1-2...

Doesn't Starbucks and airlines in essence have their own digital currency which they frequently devalue?

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#86

Post by readthenotes1 »

hnburnsy wrote: post #85
nobody9999 wrote: post #10

IANAL, but doesn't Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution[0] bar Texas from creating such a currency? [0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C1-2...

Doesn't Starbucks and airlines in essence have their own digital currency which they frequently devalue?

They are not States

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#87

Post by readthenotes1 »

jfengel wrote: post #84
zpeti wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the entire first principles these anti deflationists stand on. Like every single electronics product in the last 50 years has been deflating in price (either literally or increasing in core value). Does that stop people buying them? No! But perhaps someone here who’s anti deflationist could explain to me why I’m wrong.

Deflation mostly matters with currency. Deflation of products is a good thing. The problem with deflating currency is that it encourages you to sit on it. Economists don't want you sitting on a hoard like a dragon. In the extreme case, GDP goes to zero today because everybody is expecting prices to be cheaper tomorrow. Then all the workers get fired because there's nothing to produce. Now they have no money, and buy…

"Sitting on cash removes it from the economy, and deflation encourages people to spend money tomorrow rather than today. "

Since most people are in debt, this really says: encourage people to borrow to buy what they cannot afford today and then hope for inflation to make that borrowing less onerous.

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#88

Post by jfengel »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #87
jfengel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deflation mostly matters with currency. Deflation of products is a good thing. The problem with deflating currency is that it encourages you to sit on it. Economists don't want you sitting on a hoard like a dragon. In the extreme case, GDP goes to zero today because everybody is expecting prices to be cheaper tomorrow. Then all the workers get fired because there's nothing to produce. Now they have no money, and buy…

"Sitting on cash removes it from the economy, and deflation encourages people to spend money tomorrow rather than today. " Since most people are in debt, this really says: encourage people to borrow to buy what they cannot afford today and then hope for inflation to make that borrowing less onerous.

Precisely.

Economists like debt. It gets the economy moving. A debt-less economy is very slow. Most non-trivial projects require debt: starting a business, buying a house, getting an education. If you had to pay for those in cash, you'd do so much later if ever.

It's the reason most corporations have debt. They use it to fund expansion. As long as that expansion brings in more money than the interest payments, they literally never have to pay that debt back.

Human beings, unlike corporations, retire. Inflation certainly puts a crimp in that, but there are many other problems with retirement with larger effects. Ultimately, those problems come down to an economy that continues to expand even after they've left the workforce, such that they can outpace inflation by either their own investments, or the government's.

Which, as I started with, is all about somebody taking out debts so that the economy expands. A vastly slower economy without debts is more straightforward to understand, but it's also a much more primitive and less productive one, and so everyone is worse off.

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#89

Post by nobody9999 »

rayiner wrote: post #64
_8j50 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the popular support isn't there but they'd in reality only need the support of the texas national guard. A traitor president also helps. And you also have a ton of people who go "who cares, let them leave" like they're breaking up with a romantic partner lol, absolutley no sense of patriotism. I mean, I don't care if it is texas, missisipi or claifornia, I am an american and all of it is mine. Whether it is a…

[flagged]

>Why should we be forced in this country of 300 million people to agree on everything?

It's more like 340,000,000 and no one is forcing anyone to agree about anything.

There are many things about which I disagree with my neighbors/friends/family/local, state and Federal governments, but I feel no no need to justify such disagreements to them (or anyone else, for that matter), nor are their choices/ideas impinging on my ability to disagree (or agree, for that matter) about anything.

And even if I vehemently disagree, that's no reason to commit acts of violence and/or attempt to secede from the Union.

What is it, exactly (not vague pronouncements or complaints about what other people think, say or do), that makes you feel like you must agree with everyone else?

Please do enlighten us.

Re: Texas moves to create gold-backed digital currency

#90

Post by _8j50 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #38
_8j50 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the popular support isn't there but they'd in reality only need the support of the texas national guard. A traitor president also helps. And you also have a ton of people who go "who cares, let them leave" like they're breaking up with a romantic partner lol, absolutley no sense of patriotism. I mean, I don't care if it is texas, missisipi or claifornia, I am an american and all of it is mine. Whether it is a…

> Whether it is a buch of small skirmishes or a full on civil war again, sececession can only be accomplished by a lot of blood spilled. There have been peaceful secessions in the past - the split of Czechia and Slovakia back in 1993 was one example. And I believe that both Scotland and Catalonia can achieve a peaceful secession, assuming that their respective central governments decide to actually listen to the will…

Of course it is possible, just not gonna happen in the US.
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