Hacker News Reader

Sometiems I wonder how much debt is the right amount of dept. Looks like we now live in a dept based society where getting into ultra leveraged dept (mortgage) is the most sentible thing to do for a family. Governaments do exactly the same with bond issuance. When did this become acceptable? Is it good? How much dept do we want to carry forward? Does dept matter anymore?

Unfortunately the author doesn't talk about any of these points.

View on HN

Debt (or more generally, an economy based on promises) is what carries essentially all of modern civilization.

Going back to silver and gold coins takes us back to Ancient Greece. It works, but it is very inefficient and very little gets done by comparison.

And even so, metal coins aren't actually the goods they're traded for, so you're still relying on a promise of sorts.

A gift economy would be the truly promise-free way of life. There's a reason we have very little knowledge of how those work: they don't produce much worth remembering for future generations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com