<quote name="Nicholas Leippe" date="Fri, 5 Dec 2008 at 08:26 -0700"> > On Thursday 04 December 2008 09:17:16 pm Von Fugal wrote: > > I'm curius why since you are so adamantly oppose to the federal reserve > > and central banks, yet you seem to think the function they perform > > (expanding the money supply) is so necessary. I agree with all you said > > about the fed, but not only shouldn't the fed control money, nobody > > should. Money supply should not be expandable under any power. I would > > concede that inflation is inevitable, but I don't think it's good or > > necessary (if somehow we were able to have a money that never expanded I > > don't believe that would generate any problems), but inescapable... ya. > > Does that mean we should allow some consortium of men to perform the > > inflation deliberately? Absolutely not! > > I believe the amount of currency per capita should remain fairly constant, in > order to facilite the exchange of goods. > > If the capita is growing, and the currency supply is not, then there is > obviously less to go around. Scarceness of currency causes poverty. There is > ample history to demonstrate this. There is less MONEY to go around, but I will say it time and time again, MONEY IS NOT WEALTH!
Why is it bad for me or anyone else, if when capita increases, we all have less money? There's more people per unit money, but there's also more goods per unit money, so really it all balances out. How does constant per capita money facilitate exchange? If the US population doubled tomorrow, those new people would absorb approx half the money supply. I can see why this would be problematic, but such dramatic change does not occur. With the doubling, eventually all the new people would become producers (you might even say they would become producers by necessity before they absorbed any of the money supply) so at the same time they are shrinking the per capita money supply, they are also increasing product, or generally maintaining a relatively constant per capita production (in reality per capita production goes up over time, THIS is economic growth, THIS is wealth, regardless what the money does.) So if everyone makes pies, and there's on average one pie per person. What mattereth it that now there's twice as many pies, twice as many people, but we all have half the money with which to buy pies? Pies would simply cost half as much. In reality such changes take place gradually, giving plenty of time for these adjustments to happen naturally and smoothly. > Thus where our capita is growing, so should our currency supply. In fact, it > really should be in lock-step. If we have a decrease in capita, the currency > supply should be likewise reduced. I don't see how this would be so difficult > to regulate. You make the decision once, up front, to regulate it based on a > mathematical formula that takes population (from a census perhaps) and > whatever other economic indicators you choose and go with it. Once a year you > make an adjustment, on queue. No big board of directors doing whatever > adjustment they "feel" "might" help (or suit their own agendas)... How do you propose to distribute this new money in lockstep with capita changes? Perhaps you could give each newborn an average savings worth of money in a trust fund. Anything less than this is redistribution of wealth and is abhorrently immoral. The capita increases and so does the money supply. What then? The printers of the money benefit first, then the first receivers of that money, and so on, until the average American is just completely screwed over because he doesn't see that new 'per capita' money until it's value AND the value of the money he already had AND his paycheck are ALL devalued! Inflation is theft any way you look at it. At least with gold the inflators actually have to do some work to mine that gold, so that's not theft, it's work. But printing new fiat, theft in my book. You mention astrian economics. I haven't delved to deep into it myself, but from most of my conversations with other subscribers to austrian economics, I was under the distinct impression my views were highly aligned with austrian economics; maybe I was wrong? Von Fugal -- Government is a disease that masquerades as its own cure -- Robert Lefevre
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