Comment by liber8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by liber8 | Hacker News Reader

This example always amuses me because Krugman guilelessly puts forth the case for central control while glossing over the results:

>>"But eventually the economists prevailed. More coupons were issued, couples became more willing to go out, opportunities to baby-sit multiplied, and everyone was happy. Eventually, of course, the co-op issued too much scrip, leading to different problems ..."<<

Of course, these different problems are just ignored. Krugman never seems to want to discuss whether these new problems, entirely caused by centralized control, are worse than the problem the "alert management" intended to solve in the first place.

It's what makes his oft-use example so excellent. Here you had, presumably, a small group of highly-educated and, presumably, reasonably intelligent folks who couldn't even manage an economy with 150 homogenous players. And yet, we expect much better results when we introduce billions of players and millions of additional variables.

i think its ironic that you're putting forth the case for unmanaged economies while glossing over the results.

i think most economists (including Krugman) would agree that managing an economy is hard, and that oftentimes, the people in charge don't get it right. but that doesn't mean the alternative is better.

in this specific case (bitcoin), the alternative to managing the money supply centrally is a fixed supply of money. in an environment where the economy (the gross output of the market) is growing, that leads to deflation. krugman points out that deflation slows down economic activity, possibly catastrophically. do you disagree?

The economy is already centrally controlled. A few centuries ago, much of the world, even the outer reaches of Europe, had mostly independent, semi-nomadic people living on it - including the land the USA is on.

Now the vast majority of people are wage slaves for a very tight group of intermarrying heirs - the Waltons, the Koches, the Sauds, the Mars's, the Johnsons, the Newhouses, the Rockefellers etc.

From 1993 to 2008, the US unemployment rate never hit what the current rate is - 7.6% unemployment. Most of those people currently have no control of the economy, or their own lives. The idea that the government's protection of this central racket may lessen is of little concern to most of these unemployed.

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