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Comment by sshamoon | Hacker News Reader

Why are you saying this is an outdated idea? For the many millennia that money has existed, it has been a store of value AND a transactional commodity. Only in the past 100 years (more like 40, really) has this changed so drastically.

Are we, as a society, so special that we can change what money has been for all of humanity throughout all of time?

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We are not special. Money has been very unpredictable entity in history. In the past, economic thinking was not that developed. There were no alternatives.

Historical fluctuations in inflation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Historical_Inflation_A...

Historical interest rates: http://i.imgur.com/i0xit0K.png

More important than store, is predictability. If you know it's going to be 1-5% inflation next 20 years with high probability, life is much easier to plan than if there is high change of huge deflations or inflations.

I completely agree that predictability is an important aspect of money. We don't know that inflation will be 1-5% over the next 20 years with any certainty.

This makes planning very difficult with money. I suppose my point was to hold a mirror to society and show how we value ourselves using money as the barometer.

The main benefit of the fiat money is that it follows the economy and not the other way around. USD is what it is because US economy. 30-year bonds have yield 3.58% and it tells us much about how markets see the future of U.S economy and inflation.

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