Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

I recommend the PBS documentary on the fed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RbL8lTsITY

Imo we need to change the social contract back to what it originally was. The fed has too much power and its been used (perhaps inadvertently) to centralize power further. There’s a reason the bank of the US was abolished back in the 1800s.

Also, I think most people forget just how diverse the U.S. is. A great example: I don’t think guns are necessarily good in the city. But in the country I need a gun because I have mountain lions and bears in the area (and county sheriffs would take an hour or more to respond). So federal gun laws don’t make a ton of sense. States don’t have the same interests (see Florida vs Washington state) nor ethos.

The way the US stayed together was each state was sovereign. Some authority was seeded to the federal government for the betterment of all. That being said, both political parties are attempting to consolidate power, and neither likes what the other wants.

Imo the premise is correct we need a new social contract, but imo we need to reinstate the one we already had.

>The fed has too much power and its been used (perhaps inadvertently) to centralize power further. There’s a reason the bank of the US was abolished back in the 1800s.

The Fed has too little power. It doesn't even have enough power to address all the macroeconomic problems that the congress is ignoring. Just think about it. We have to rely on the clowns in the government to make purely logic and rationally driven decisions relating to our economy when they are voted in for the exact opposite reasons. People vote based on emotion and ideology and that is how politicians have to think to win elections.

When you have a government that isn't even doing the bare minimum then yes you'll have to rely on a different institution even though it's not the job of that institution to solve the problem.

Honestly. I am tired of this. I am tired of people refusing to face reality, living in their little bubble and then blaming some guy named fed trying to extinguish a house fire with a bucket.

You have to raise the equilibrium interest rate. Either by raising inflation, lowering interest rates below the equilibrium rate, increasing borrowing or simply taxing money in bank accounts. I'd rather have a big inflation year that makes macroeconomics work again than endless stupid ideology.

This isn’t the 1800s anymore. The documentary, from what I’ve seen of it, discusses quantitative easing - which arose because of insufficient oversight over wallstreet. A lack of oversight that arose from repeated lobbying, weakening of the regulator, and faith that “the system will never allow it to happen” and “these are the smartest guys in the room”.

The old social contracts worked in an older world, which didn’t have mechanization and labor was the source of industry.

Today, network effects mean gmail is free but the user is the product, and other configurations which would seem extremely odd in the 1800s.

The FED isn’t even the problem for what you are trying to resolve. I cannot understand why people tend to focus on it.

>> The FED isn’t even the problem for what you are trying to resolve. I cannot understand why people tend to focus on it.

Because they don't know what they're talking about.

I'm a capitalist with many socialist friends. I disagree with them often, but I never think that they don't know that they're talking about.

People who are hung up on The Fed aren't even wrong. They just don't know what they're talking about.

>quantitative easing - which arose because of insufficient oversight over wallstreet.

Many would take issue with this conclusion. It's the fact that the Fed exists as a lender of last resort that created the moral hazard in the first place, thus enabling "Too big to fail" and all of that.

I am sorry to be this blunt, but for all practical discussions, those people are wrong.

Unless your goals are a reduction in US GDP, and dramatic decrease in financial ability in the USA, you need a central bank. In analogy terms, they’re the next evolutionary node in the banking tree. The higher complexity let’s you exert stability against things like currency manipulation, macroeconomic instability and the like.

The crash is because oversight disappeared and people bought into myths.

Crucially one of the myths that Wall Street believed was that someone else was always checking the work to find advantage.

Most of Wall Street aimed for safe advantage and were following along as a herd.

You really nailed it here. We need the freedom to disagree.

Federal power leaves no room for disagreement. At a state level, people have the freedom to move to another state.

Technically people have the freedom to move to a different country too. You make moving to another state sound trivially easy.

Compared to moving to another country? Yes it absolutely is. There are no legal impediments for moving to and living/working in another state for a US citizen. This in contrast to even the EU, where despite freedom of movement, there are significant legal restrictions/requirments depending on state/jurisdiction for permanent alien residency.

The only real impediment to moving between states as a US citizen is financial and social, but this is the case literally everywhere, even intrastate.

You absolutely do not have that freedom. Every country has their own rules and has it in their power to prevent you from moving to their country permanently.

Because it is...? People move to different states all the time just to change jobs.

If you disagree with the way that your state operates so strongly that you can't stand it anymore...moving becomes a pretty easy decision.

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