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Comment by toasted | Hacker News Reader

> Nobody really knows how this ends, good or bad.

Efficient market theory is based on the fact that when you leave people to their own devices, they tend to do a far better job and be better off than if you try to help them. Basically everyone agrees on that.

So why do we accept efficient market theory for basically everything, yet when it comes to currency someone has decided that we need elaborate schemes of variable government decreed micromanagement in order for things to work?

In terms of keeping things simple and letting the market decide, the perfect currency would be global, unable to be printed or manipulated, of a fixed amount, so that external interference is impossible, and people knew exactly what they were dealing with at all times. The closest we have is gold (and maybe bitcoin).

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>yet when it comes to currency someone has decided that we need elaborate schemes

Money is a commodity, and the demand for it changes over time. Do you really believe that we should have the same "amount" in circulation as we did 200 years ago?

>unable to be printed or manipulated

Think of money as a concept. It's a means to perform financial transactions, nothing more. My ability to perform such transactions shouldn't be constrained because we haven't "cut down enough trees make paper", or "dug enough metal out of the ground" or "solved enough mathematical puzzles".

>"My ability to perform such transactions shouldn't be constrained because we haven't "cut down enough trees make paper", or "dug enough metal out of the ground" or "solved enough mathematical puzzles"."

Why would it? You simple sub-divide each unit until you have the necessary precision (this works for physical currency, too). I'm really curious why you think a lack of growth in the money supply would hinder you from making a transaction?

Really, government-mandated inflation is nothing more than obfuscated stealing (or wealth transfer). Think about it: If it were simply a matter of "we need more physical(or virtual) money in circulation so that the transactions will flow" then the logical (and fair) solution to that would be to simply apportion some sort of "income" to each individual based on their current capital. But that's not how they designed it, and based on that, it shouldn't surprise anyone that there are many out there who feel that inflation is unfair to a large majority of people.

Take land - demand for it changes over time, the exact same amount is in circulation as there was 200 years ago, the value goes up as population increases and it becomes more scarce, why can't money be the same?

>Take land - demand for it changes over time, the exact same amount is in circulation as there was 200 years ago, the value goes up as population increases and it becomes more scarce

Why is that a good system? Why should people who happened to be here before our time have an inherent economic advantage by owning land? Wouldn't the world be a better place if we could cheaply create all the land we wanted?

The world is not fair, period. You can't expect individuals to work their asses off to strive for something better for themselves and their children, only to turn around and complain that their children suddenly have "inherent economic advantage"... followed by a swift call to somehow "fix" that so that everyone is equal all over again.

Oh yes, of course. Some individuals did some rather bad, questionable things to get an advantage in this world. But until you can prove that all "well-off" individuals did that, you have no moral ground to stand on.

>But until you can prove that all "well-off" individuals did that, you have no moral ground to stand on.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Are you telling me that if we had the technological wherewithal to "create land" at will, you wouldn't use it? That you'd recommend we continue to deal with land scarcity? If not, why would you recommend those same actions when it comes to money?

>"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Ask me which parts you're confused about.

>"Are you telling me that if we had the technological wherewithal to "create land" at will, you wouldn't use it?"

See, land is not the same as money when discussing inflation. But most of my comment was directly discussing plain money-printing or inflation, not land-creation. And if you really must know: if we had some magical-fairy-powers to create a physical resource out of thin nothing (with no cost/effort), then I think land ownership would be the last thing we'd have to worry about. You've effectively created a post-scarcity economy.

>"If not, why would you recommend those same actions when it comes to money?"

Please re-read my initial comment. Your entire argument rested on individuals having an unfair advantage simply because they were "be there before" us. And I basically told you that you'd be stealing from honest, hard-working peoples' children by devaluing the value of their possessions.

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