Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaekwon | Hacker News Reader

No, the text in that link is also flawed. You're assuming that owners of efficient machines actually spend their money. What if they don't? What if they invest their money in privatized land, IP patents, TBonds, cornering the food futures market instead?

That's not spending... that's exploiting & extracting. Jobs would disappear as money dries up. I believe this is happening, no?

View on HN

The idea of "money on the sidelines" is also an economic fallacy. Money invested in land, futures, or TBonds still gets circulated into the economy. There's still another person on the other side of the trade. The landowner who sold will have cash to spend, the government with new borrowed funds will spend them on a new bridge, and so on.

I'm talking about cornering markets. The money received for land sold can be can still sucked out of the economy. It is possible for one entity to own all land.

And then what? Continue the thought experiment. One person owns all the land. What does he do with it? Does he rent it to people? Then those renters are willing to pay a price to use the land in order to generate some kind of return. The economy expands. If the land owner refuses to allow people to use the land, what was the point in accumulating it all in the first place?

I used to think kind of like you, until I realized that the rich people would also buy military robots. Then they could defend their land against revolutions for free. Sure, it would maybe be kind of pointless (although, maybe by then there would be "super golf clubs" that allow you to play really big golf ranges), but that doesn't seem to have stopped people sitting on lots of land in the past.

That's interesting. Never really thought about the military robots. I guess it wouldn't take much for a "rich person" to pay an individual enough to be willing to fly a drone over a crowd of "poor people"

Someone crazy enough to try to own all land, is crazy enough to do nothing with it.

That doesn't seem to automatically solve all problems. For example, imagine I sell my land in exchange for 1000 apples. I eat apples for a couple of months, then they run out and I starve to death. Whoever bought my land still has the land, but nothing is left of whatever he paid it with.

Yes, I might have worked those months, powered by apples. But what if I was sick, or played farmville instead?

Unless that money is tied up in assets that are thought to be safe like land or commodities.

If you don't spend any money, the State can print without creating inflation.

Imagine that there are $1000 in the world, and you earn $450 of them. Then you burn all your money instead of spending them. The State can now print another $450 without worries because... you have just been taxed at 100%. Also, investing isn't the same as not spending money.

All true, but then the problem is how the distribute the money being printed. Giving everyone X dollars seems more fair than what the Fed is currently doing, but you may disagree.

Also, investing is not the same as spending. Investing, then getting bailed out by the Fed is especially not the same as spending. That was my point.

It could be worse. Imagine you were trapped in a giant reality TV show the size of a planet, set up for the entertainment of a ruling elite, who through generations of decadent luxury have degenerated to the point where recreating the 21st century actually seems like an amusing thing to do with their essentially unlimited resources.

Kind of a "The Matrix" meets "Doctor Who: Bad Wolf" sort of thing. Maybe our unseen overlords are just too lazy to make good TV, and want a planet of genuinely suffering artists to do it for them?

But really, who knows? Strong AI, automation, and resource recycling might head off a lemming-like bust in the next 100 years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com