On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 03:40:04PM +0800, James A. Donald wrote: > Money, says Moldbug, is a bubble that never bursts, until it does. > > A very long time ago, all sorts of strange things, such as dog canine teeth, > were money. > > It came to pass that only silver and gold were money. > > And then only gold. The demonetization of silver gave us the long > depression, which by modern standards was not bad > at all - because it was long, gold rose, which is to say prices fell, very > slowly, because silver was demonetized very > slowly. People did not like it, hence the "cross of gold speech" demanding > that state power be applied to remonetize > silver,
I agree with all this. > but all the supposed horrid evils of deflation turned out to be not > very evil at all. This is a lie or propaganda (I assume unintentional on your part). The reason this last statement is pure propaganda is that whatever the "supposed horrid evils of deflation" being "not very evil at all", can only be true by specific metrics: There are two primary metrics, which those in the free/libre software world fortunately know rather well these days: 1. Freedom. 2. Utility. The latter (utility) principle in the context of money and "the economy" is often colloquially and cynically referred to "shiny stuff" or "muh free shit", and on this metric, "modern" "Western" economies (what many people mistakenly refer to as "society" or even "community") are doing fabulously - we have lots of cheap cheap two dollar cheap shit, brand new plant food spreaders (aka vehicles) for incredibly low prices in comparison to inflation-adjusted comparables from half a century ago. Even this utility/ shiny-thangz metric is a lie, but I'll get to that later. The former metric, which ought be our primary consideration, is our Freedoms - our freedom to communicate, to travel, to (attemp to) create a raise family, to work/ build wealth, to grow any plant, to collect water to drink, clean with and water your plants with. And also, the extent to which society proclaims, values, upholds and most importantly, protects, these freedoms, is a fundamental corollary - it's all very well to "get away with" growing a few dope plants, or skirting draconian monitoring and revenue raising rules (e.g. vehicular and licensing taxes etc), but that's not the same as the fundamental corresponding freedom actually being upheld, proclaimed in public, and protected by the authorities. Now back to the lie about how great fiat-based pyramid schemes and the "inflationary" (i.e. reducing cost of shiny things) "economic miracles" we supposedly live within: - 100 years ago in Australia, we build railways and roads all over the place, into the hills, across every state etc. - we did this with horse and bullock, and steam engines - we now have 1000's (or 10's of thousands) of TIMES more productivity with modern machinery - one man can do the work of 100,000 labourers with a big earth moving machine, single road-laying machines can lay 6 or even 8 frigging lanes of highway, simultaneously, continuously (fed by other trucks/ machines), at meters per hour! - Yet the average household is a dual-income household now, earning roughly the same as a single-earner did back in the 1950s! (in today's money, about $60K annually). So the lie is, that the most incredible, phenomenal, and in fact astounding growth in mechanistic productivity has been witnessed in the last century - the industrial revolution, and yet we people are on average still struggling to get by, and focused on survival rather than living a creative life, family life, anything other than "work for the man" life! And the truth is that this is by mathematical design - money is brought into existence by the creation of debt, encumbering future generations perpetually (the "debt based credit expansion system" or aka "debt based money expansion" system). And the most recent institution of this system began in Germany in the the 19th Century, by Lord Rothschild the first (he adopted this name, forgot his original name), and entrenching this banking system was the fundamental cause behind both World War I and WWII. Every time we go get a house or car loan etc, we are consenting to future enslavement, and the steady transfer of wealth to those who are the primary shareholders/ owners of the banks. For those with mental competence and/or connections, this system is an almost irresistible system to involve oneself within - any tiny vestige of egotistical self interest (or the much more obvious human failings of greed and lust) readily cause the typical human to fall straight into this simple yet highly effective and entirely mathematically based, enslavement system. Would you knock back the benefits of a hedge fund? In the 12th Century in England (I think - may have been somewhere else in Europe), the people spent 3 months of the years planting and harvesting, and roughly 9 months of the year living their lives with family and personal development etc - being creative, helping out your neighbours and whatnot. > From time to time governments discover that they can make some arbitrary > thing money by the mere exercise of power. > This usually ends horribly badly. Due to the nature of humans. It is our duty to future generations to, as far as possible, hold to account those in our community who are in power. And that means more than voting once every 4 years. > Right now we have the disturbing and strange situation that it is hard for > savers to receive positive real interest on > their money, and at the same time hard for worthy borrowers to borrow money. > The system is malfunctioning rather > badly, NO! The system is working exactly as its mathematical design intends - control over the entire system by a few powerful individuals at the top of the BIS/ World Bank etc. And the current circumstances are merely the evidence of the, once again mathematically certain cyclical "reset" which in the past has typically signified the casus belli for a world war. Certainly those deca-billionaires and above with their underground luxury hotel bug out bunkers consider that war is nothing but profit all the way to the next bank+MIC shareholder dividend bonanza. > but monetary systems have frequently malfunctioned one hell of a lot worse, > so I will not bother explaining why > we are in this hole. (tl; dr; Governments did wicked, but extremely popular, > things with money. To the surprise of Yes and no. It seems you have not read the book, Creature from Jekyll Island. Governments were undermined - "democratic governments" are the easiest to undermine by those with inordinate wealth. > many people, myself among them, this did not destroy the currency, but it had > other extremely bad effects.) > > Because of governments doing bad things with money, the thought occurred to > some people: maybe private individuals, > not armed with state power, could make some arbitrary thing power. > > Turns out, we could. There is always hope, but the fundamental you can never avoid is that humans are involved, with all their usual foibles - greed, lust, gluttony, impatience and anger, pride and the rest. Commoditization of the power to issue economic value, I believe will be a good thing - an interesting dynamic in the human experience if nothing else, so, good luck all. This world seems to be (in the words of Harold Klemp) "a big ole school house". Regards,
