I doubt he can really believe that dropping 10M on a project will somehow prevent Skynet from happening. AI will just get nasty, or it won't. No one knows.
-15 karma · joined November 6, 2014
Velocity of money? Concomitant effects, huh? .. I suspect you might be some sort of government shill though. Very few actual Libertarians don't see Austrian economics for the rational truth it is.
Nope, we can't expect our salaries to rise along with inflation - not in today's insane world.
- http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
- http://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/nov/23/uk-household-earnings-fall
>> There are advantages to inflation. One is that it encourages people to keep their wealth invested in production
That's not an advantage. Inflation does punish saving (which is bad to begin with), but also encourages risky investments. The higher the inflation, the higher the return on investments you need to not lose wealth, and the riskier your investments, the more likely you're to lose them.
So no, that's not good. Purchasing power increases are good.
>> Another is that it discounts debt.
Yes, this is why governments keep lying to us that inflation is good for us. They're trying to manage their massive debts, but they'll ultimately fail.
How about just not using money you don't have, or money you can't afford to borrow? Oh but that would curtail politicians' crony-capitalist spending, so we can't have that.
>> The ideal would be a money supply that exactly kept pace with growth in production resulting in neither inflation nor deflation
You're basically suggesting that our purchasing power should not increase. That's just absurd.
>> Because mild inflation is not particularly harmful
So even you acknowledge that it is harmful, even if not to a large extent. But what do you get if there's 2% inflation for 10 years? It keeps compounding you know. How much of your purchasing power will you have lost by then?
>> deflation is really bad
No it's not. It's your purchasing power increasing. Everyone wants to get more for less, and that's what (price-)deflation means.
If we could, we'd choose a sound currency, and then our purchasing power would keep increasing steadily (because of productivity improvements and wealth accumulating over time).
That may be, but that's something everyone should get to choose for themselves. In today's world, we don't, and that's wrong.
Besides, we're not even getting any advantages "in exchange" for losing our purchasing power to the machinations of governments and central banks everywhere. We're just getting milked and fleeced six ways from Sunday all the time.
So anything that's not mainstream is just as crazy as thinking that the earth is flat, huh?
For example, it's decidedly mainstream to believe that ~2% inflation is a good thing, mostly because governments say so.
But it's plain crazy to disagree, realizing that not a single sane person on earth actually wants his purchasing power to decrease, but that's exactly what the 2% inflation does to us.
You're not going to take my word it, but feel free to see for yourself. Watch their lectures on YouTube ("misesmedia"), and you'll get it.
You're talking about something different now. Namely the effects of all the speculation, and for example governments figuring out if Bitcoin poses enough of a threat to them that they need to make it illegal, and so on. Will they shut it down? Will they not? Will they first make some money with it, and then shut it down?
The point is that the wild fluctuations in Bitcoin's price you see are not proof that it's not a good store of value. It could well be, after stabilizing, if it ever does.
A good store of value is something that could serve as a good medium of exchange too, like gold for example. Gold was used as money for ages, exactly because its characteristics made it suitable for that. It can't be printed by pressing a button somewhere, it's divisible, durable, and so on.
Bitcoin has some of the same characteristics, and that's why it might well become a widely used medium of exchange. I bet something like it will.
Central banks are not actually helping you. If you have a sound currency, it can't be printed, and central banks can't meddle with it.
You see, printing a currency devalues it. If the pool of currency in circulation grows faster than the pool of wealth it can be exchanged for, then the currency loses some of its value relative to the wealth available.
>> Bitcoin's sole value as a currency lies in its ease of use as a back-end for transactions.
Fiat currencies' sole value lies in the fact that governments force us to pay taxes in them. Otherwise we'd all be using a sound currency instead, because it would be in our self-interest to do so.
Whatever shreds of interest your bank gives you will be way, way less than the inflation you're experiencing. In other words, your money's purchasing power keeps decreasing even if you're getting some interest on it, ie. you're losing your wealth.
Bitcoin doesn't experience inflation like that, so it should be a better store of value than your fiat currency. I said "should" because bitcoin has been in a speculative bubble, and just came down even more. Right now it's still just a speculative asset, but it could serve as a stable currency.
Your card is irrelevant.
Transaction fees are not extortion. They're a massive skimming operation inflicted on the masses, because the masses have no choice but to eat them. Thank your state-maintained bank cartel for that.
But let's see.. The target audience of this website is people who abandon animals. But they're kind of lacking in the empathy/remorse department, because otherwise they wouldn't abandon animals!
So basically, all the work put into this website was wasted, because you can't guilt those people into not abandoning animals!
But great work tricking me and others with empathy though!
You call that customer service? Imagine McDonald's tasing you for complaining about not getting what you ordered.
-That's exactly how governments behave. As a recent example, China and HK declare that from now on, Hong Kong's electoral candidates will be chosen by the tyrants in Beijing. HK's citizens protest. HK's police forces brutalize the citizens.
But what we do know is that it's all a geopolitical power struggle. The US wants Kiev under its control, but that control has been slipping.
Even if wages do fall, as long as your purchasing power increases more than your wage drops, you're just fine.
People take on massive loans exactly because prices have been inflated. That certainly doesn't mean deflation is bad.
Even if you're paying off a loan, price deflation is not a problem because though the loan is becoming more "onerous", you'll have more money left over for paying the loan after you've bought everything else you need.
I'm not so sure about that.
> Also, the US torturing people doesn't make other atrocities okay. I keep hearing countries and their fanboys say "yeah, but that other country also does bad things", or "but China is even worse!" Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's okay for your country to do the same.
I'm equally against all "countries" (=governments, in practice). You may have noticed they all do bad things, either currently or eventually.
Price-inflation means our purchasing power decreases. We're all better off if we get moar stuff for our money instead of less, but governments would like us to believe the opposite.
We ordinary people clearly don't benefit from inflation, but who does? -Might it be the same people who are telling us inflation is good?
Putin is evil and Obama is good, right? Nevermind that the US is still torturing people in the very Guantanamo Obama promised to close.
It's just not as simple as choosing to side with "the good guys" (=The West). In reality, it's a game of politicians vs us little folks, ie. rulers vs subjects.
NATO / "The West" uses its own mainstream media to further its own agenda. Russia uses theirs to further theirs.
The ordinary people on both sides are just bombarded with propaganda.
- Russians are scary and bad. We're on the good guys' side.
(The good guys are NATO and the West in general, of course)
- We need to increase our military spending.
- We need to join NATO.Agreed.
As for most of the rest, I don't want to fish for meaning in a pond of analogies.
I found something that's actually addressable though:
> It seems perfectly obvious that states of some kind are a naturally occuring phenomenon.
Yes, in the sense that psychopaths have existed for ages, have always wanted power over other people, and have always been exceptionally good at manipulating people to get it.
> It also seems obvious that they are easier to get wrong than right.
Oh they're functioning perfectly well. In other words, they've been "gotten right". It's just that their purpose is not what we imagine. It's not to "maintain order" or to "protect our rights" or other brainwashospeak people spout.
Nation-states are a vehicle for a small elite to exploit everyone else.
> If only the criminals are allowed to set up states, all the states will be run by criminals.
If most people are evil, then they clearly can't be allowed to rule over others.
If only a small percentage of people are evil, then states are a bad idea because they'll be run by the power-hungry evil minority. Strangely enough, our governments are run by psychopaths.
> And as for the car: you and I may be happy, but Joe down the street has to breathe the same air. Was our exchange beneficial for him?
I haven't claimed anything about Joe. Do you want to make a claim about voluntary exchanges, based on what happens to Joe?
On a related note, if you've ever bought a pair of sneakers, you've motivated China (etc) to cause externalities. Was it immoral for you to buy sneakers?
Please make a specific claim. I don't know how to address the nonsense you linked to.
> Remember, though, that not all voluntary exchanges and agreements are mutually beneficial
They are, to both parties involved in them. Otherwise they wouldn't go through with the exchanges, assuming no coercion of course.
> there may be an unknowing third party suffering some nasty externalities (I will sell you an extra-polluting car for only $1000!). Is this not a non-exploitive use case?
If you sell me an extra-polluting car, you're not exploiting anyone. I value the car higher than the money I'm parting with, because otherwise I wouldn't buy it.
They're just trying some desperate measures to stay relevant. You already know MS is institutionally evil.
Well, the fix for corruption is for no one to have political power. Would you say the fix for illness is to be dead?
The current degree and overtness of corruption in a particular area is completely irrelevant. The point is the very nature of political power: Its only use case is to gain at other people's expense.
That's it. Political power implies intervention in what people would otherwise do in their mutually beneficial, voluntary exchanges and arrangements.
Want to charge a fee for driving people from A to B? -You have to get a $X-hundred-thousand license to do that. If you don't, you will be punished, by force if "necessary". Who benefits? -The state-supported taxi cartel of course: now their drivers are debt slaves and profit margins remain higher than otherwise.
Note all those foreign governments protecting their taxi-cartel buddies from Uber.
Rulers want subjects because they benefit from them. Subjects are resources, like human livestock to be milked. And oh boy, milk us they do.
Sorry but I'm not sure how to address the rest of your post. Feel free to ask something or make some specific claims.
There is no fix for "corruption".
Imagine there's a ruler with only one subject. Would someone inevitably ask him for a favour? "Could you have your peon mow my lawn? -I'll buy you a beer some time!"
Would the ruler want more subjects? -Of course! It just means more benefits for him, more opportunities for making money at his subjects' expense! The possibilities are limitless!
Now take a bunch of rulers with 320 million subjects. Would Comcast ask them to make it difficult to compete with them? Competition is bothersome you know. It forces you to provide better quality at lower prices, even though you'd much rather just fleece a captive audience!
"Corruption" is a bit of a misnomer. It sounds like something is wrong, but actually it's just an element of a system with rulers and subjects working as intended.
> There's no shortage of stories of homeowners or landlords with videos of vandals and robbers only to be told to piss off. The police don't want to mess with the gangs unless they have to or it looks bad if there are too many minority arrests that month.
You're seeing another aspect of the system working as intended.
If you're a ruler, do you really care about your subjects' well-being? -Of course not. You'll pretend you do because you need them to refrain from overthrowing you, but your subjects are just tools to you.
Your "Royal Guard" (=the police) are meant to protect your power and to enforce your edicts, not to help your subjects. They behave accordingly.
The US and England are leading the charge to show the Western world that having rulers is still a bad idea, just like it was when Stalin was in power. Will we ever learn?
> And while I agree with you in theory that "laws don't "actually grant any rights", that's a matter of ideology. For all practical intents, they do.
Practical intents? Well, here's a practical example: if laws actually affected/defined rights, then the government could just pass a law that says "it's alright to kill innocent bystanders", and people would have no problem with it.
But we both know people would consider such a law illegitimate (and insane), exactly because passing a law that says it's alright to kill people doesn't actually make it moral to do so. In other words, rights are not defined by laws, even in practice.
> it has the effect of granting rights by preventing signatories that have subordinated themselves to it from enforcing laws that try to take those rights away
So once a government signs a paper that says X, it can't sign another paper that says not-X? Or alternatively, if a government promises it'll be good, it can't then be bad?
If government A promises to be good, but is bad, will governments B, C and D then invade A to force it to be good? Or will they go give A a stern talking to? Or will they perhaps impose economic sanctions that hurt their own economies too?
You see, signing a law that says a government will be good is nothing but PR, in practice.