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Comment by Throwfi44 | Hacker News Reader

Money do expire! There is inflation...

I would like similar system for land ownership and buildings. Property taxes at level of 5%. In China land can not be owned, but only leased for 70 years.

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I carry around a piece of hard currency (1901 Silver Dollar) to remind me of what real money is like... it's always been worth about 4 retail gallons of gasoline. I expect that trend to continue for at least another decade.

Soft money, tends towards zero, as you said.

How do you get a gas station attendant to give you $16 worth of gas on the spot for a $1 coin. No intermediaries.

I think the comment is about the equivalence, not about being ready to perform the real transaction.

I keep 200 Swiss Francs in my drawer, because the last time inflation in that country went above 4% was in the 90s and the last time they had war on their soil was in 1847.

Over here this should afford you a month's worth of groceries for up to two people if you're careful with your spending.

200 francs isn’t going to buy you shit in any type of inflationary crisis situation.

It will buy you nearly a ton of wheat.

... and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

According to the internet this coin is worth between $45 and $2150, depending on the condition, but its weight in silver is only worth $18.40 [1]

[1] https://www.ngccoin.com/coin-explorer/united-states/dollars/...

I don't mess with coin collecting, just the melt value.

I’ve actually been casually looking for a Carson City dollar to carry around, just as a keepsake. Trick is finding one in bad enough shape to lose much of its numismatic value (since my intent is to carry it in a pocket with keys and other horrors) but retain the fact that it is, indeed, a CC dollar.

If you’re only interested in the intrinsic value of the metal, why not melt some silver and make your own coin?

If land is not owned by anyone the risk is that it's treated poorly since there is no incentive to treat it well. Take the profits that are available during your 70 years lease and run, it's not your problem afterwards.

And is that really a problem?

Infrastructure ages and needs to be refreshed. Look at NYC, how old "land improvements" get stuck.

I disagree, it's about the culture, the culture and education will dictate how well public property will be treated, just look at public toilets in Japan vs ones in the US, it's quite revealing

Money that expire will work well in the EU/Asia, probably not in the US, it's a way too self-centred and selfish country

It's remarkable how many problems seemingly come back to Land Value Taxation.

maybe the only real technical problem is "whose is that?"

If nobody is to he found to tax then you can just take the land. Super lax version of use it or loose it

Actually no. Expiration of money and inflation can exist simultaneously.

Expiration of money is an end of life cycle event of individual bills - it affects certain lump sum of money that will become void in corpore. The nominal value of the money will remain the same.

Inflation is continuous devaluation of nominal value of all the money regardless of individual bills.

If we discuss expiration of money then we should consider what constitutes as money creation - when will the countdown start.

Is the money created when it is issued by a (central) bank or is created when an exchange (for value) takes place?

With the first idea a single transaction can contain money with multiple expiration dates and as such the money with longer expiration date will immediately become more valuable and the nominal value of the money is not universal anymore.

The second approach avoids this problem - the nominal value of the transaction is always the same. This has an other interesting side effect as it would incentive to make transactions legal.

But what Gesell describes is mandatory deflation of value of money by insisting a tax on money - a monetary money holder tax, kind of. Whoever holds the money is obliged to pay the tax - if you put your money into bank then it would be the bank. So his idea is considerably different.

Inflation serves the purpose. But more directly we also have various fractional reserve systems of money creation through debt.

Bank creates credit (money), often with timed terms of repayment

As you repay, that credit is gradually removed from the financial network.

These seem easy to game, and would just generate a (pure dead-weight) industry of money persistence optimization. Alternatively, people would ditch their <expiring currency> and buy <some other country's more stable currency> instead.

The whole thing sounds incredibly dumb.

What fool is going to buy that expiring currency with a stable currency?

> Expiration of money and inflation can exist simultaneously.

yes, but we are also expected to pay: rent, taxes, and subscription (utility) services simultaneously

One of the points in the article is that inflation wouldn't be necessary. Is inflation a workaround for the same issue that this is trying to solve? I imagine a bizarro world where they use this system and call inflation nonsensical- we already have expiring money!

I'm not an economist but it's intriguing. Keynes at least thought it was interesting as well.

Yeah but inflation also affects rich people you see. With this we can have selective inflation but only for proles

Not really. Rich people don't sit on cash. They have their money either in safe staff that has real value so it isn't affected by inflation (like real estate or gold) or some gambles like stock or other stuff.

When rich people use cash it's usually borrowed as needed.

No, inflation (as the name suggests), inflates then money supply and as a result, each person's holdings reduce in value. Here the value gets transferred in small blocks through purchase of stamps.

> Money do expire! There is inflation...

If someone put 1 dollar on the bank in 1900, then what would it be worth now, considering both inflation and interest?

Well it'd still be worth "1 dollar". But that's the problem with talking about the value of a dollar - the typical unit of measurement is the dollar itself.

However, in 1900 you used to be able to buy 70 pounds of potatoes for $1. Now you can buy 1 potato.

So yeah I would say that's pretty expired.

https://historycollection.com/30-things-you-could-buy-for-1-...

So. that isn't "money", that's "debt"; and, in fact, the article covers this...

> Money could be deposited in a bank, whereby it would retain its value because the bank would be responsible for the stamps. To avoid paying for the stamps, the bank would be incentivized to loan the money, passing on the holding expense to others. In Gesell’s vision, banks would loan so freely that their interest rates would eventually fall to zero, and they would collect only a small risk premium and an administration fee.

This only goes back to 1913, but says $1 in 1913 is worth $30.65 today. That's pretty rough. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...

If it's sitting in the bank, it isn't subject to inflation, only interest. Depends on the interest rate. With 2% compounded annually, it would be around $11 today. With 5%, around $400.

If you open a bank account today and deposit $1, you'll be in the red next month due to maintenance fees.

Land cannot be owned! There is property tax.

Land can be owned but there are other obligations. The whole idea that you can buy the land is because of a government and law.

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