facepalm If the "natural tendency" of capitalism is for prices to deflate, and you want time preference to not be defined by the currency, then exactly what you want is for the currency to be inflationary! Otherwise, you now have two compounding forces toward hoarding, or "late" time preference: capitalism, which drives future prices down, and the currency (Bitcoin, gold...) which also drives prices down -- since, when we say a currency is deflationary, like Bitcoin is, we mean it deflates goods' prices over time... Needless to say, that should fuck the economy up pretty badly, by your own admission.
To be fair, it was an interesting argument, until he just freaked out and confused up for down. Or deflation for inflation, whatever. And this is supposed to be one of the founding fathers of the Tea Party, by the way?
> This in turn forces the producers of goods and services to innovate in order to attract your economic surplus from under the mattress and into their cash registers, since not spending your economic surplus is in fact to your advantage.
Yeah, this forces producers to work harder in order to get paid the same. That this means a production glut is left as an (easy!) exercise for the reader. Extra points if you develop your conclusions regarding debt and interest under this currency.
To be fair, I completely agree with his comparison of Bitcoin to a pyramid scheme. It's funny how the dude has such a tenuous grasp over the most basic economics, that he gets it right by pure accident and for all the wrong reasons.
> That means that if you were one of the early adopters you get paid through the difficulty of those who attempt to mine coins later! That is, your value increases because the later person's expenditure of energy increases rather than through your own expenditure of energy. If that sounds kind of like a pyramid scheme, it's because it is very similar to to how the "early adopters" in all pyramid schemes get a return -- your later and ever-increasing effort for each subsequent unit of return accrues far more to the early adopter than it does to you!
You know what? This is exactly the definition of a deflationary currency. He just admitted BTC is a pyramidal scheme because it's deflationary! But, of course, he's a right-wing pundit, he can't admit that! What to do? No matter, some pseudo-cryptography, pseudo-physics bullshit (entropy, of all things!) saves the day... Now I'm just fucking screaming at the screen... Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit...
I just can't believe it. The inevitable conclusion is, I must be just too fucking stupid to understand these elaborate libertarian doctrines. Yeah, that must be...