ucaetano

If the supply of money is constant but the demand for it (due to economic growth) is growing, the value of money will always increase, and the prices of things will always decrease.

This is trivial.

And the consequence is that everyone is better off holding currency than investing it. Which is disastrous for the economy.

> Just the deflationary nature of a currency isn't enough to destabilize cycles.

No need for cycles: a deflationary currency means that you're better off holding it than investing it.

This is disastrous for the economy.

> Compared to the Fed, which makes arbitrary (non-cyclical) adjustments to the "cost of money", Bitcoin's more predictable deflationary attributes might lead to more predictability in financial cycles.

Quite the opposite. The money supply wouldn't adapt dynamically to the demand for money, leading to harsher crises.

No, they didn't.

They did fractional reserve with gold-denominated currencies.

Sure, you could create a bitcoin-denominated currency (a terrible idea, but let's entertain it) and perform fractional-reserve banking on it. But at that point, bitcoins become irrelevant.

Gold standard != using gold as currency.

I'm not talking about spending, I'm talking about savings, capital accumulation and re-investment. Your entire point (and your parent's) isn't even wrong.

And no, the federal reserve doesn't control the supply of money by any means.

It influences it, sure, but it doesn't control.

> Continuing the thought experiment, consider what goods and services people would continue to spend money on, in spite of the expected increase in the value of money.

Sorry, but you didn't understand how capital accumulation works.

People work and so on, get paid and so on. Then they spend part of it on their living expenses and save part of it (that's the domestic savings rate).

The money saved doesn't just sit under a mattress, it becomes the stock of capital in a country (plus and minus capital imports and exports and so on), which is then invested in projects (startups, infrastructure, etc.) that need capital.

Banks are the intermediaries in this market, taking capital from savers and providing investments and loans to projects that need capital. That's why so many emerging countries are desperate to get people into the banking system and to move their savings to the banks (the US did it by Executive Order 6102 for example).

Without this stock of capital, it is impossible to start a business, or to fund large infrastructure projects. It is a key and necessary component of a healthy economy.

And bitcoin kills it completely.

No, you can't, you need to create a new "currency" to do so. You can't do fractional reserve banking with gold. What banks did was create "gold bonds" that were just a promise to pay.

And then you're just creating a bitcoin-back currency, which at some point will inevitably see the same fate as all currencies did, and being de-linked from bitcoin just as other currencies were de-linked from gold.

> A thought experiment: how would an economy run solely on a Bitcoin-like currency behave? And how would it respond to business cycles?

Terribly.

Bitcoin is by design deflationary, which creates an incentive to maintain currency under the mattress. This is accentuated by the fact that bitcoin can't be used in fractional-reserve-banking.

This means that there is little accumulated capital available to borrow and invest.

It also means that any investment would need higher returns than the expected appreciation of a bitcoin, which might set a very high bar for investments, making raising capital nearly impossible.

Today, in most open economies, nobody controls the supply of money, it is increased and decreased dynamically by the market according to supply and demand and to maintain a certain level of risk on the banking system (with some adjustments from the central bank).

Make it "Apple has 100% market share in unlicensable mobile operating systems".

Doesn't change the fact that it has 100% market share in that market, no matter how you call that market.

You can't have your cake and eat it too: you can't defend the ECs case on Android and not demand the same on iOS.

Well, you can, but then we're not talking about antitrust policy, we're talking about politics and picking winners.

It didn't, because it only addressed Android so far:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1492_en.htm

"At this stage, the Commission considers that Google is dominant in the markets for general internet search services, licensable smart mobile operating systems and app stores for the Android mobile operating system."

Not only the EC used "licensable smart mobile operating systems" but it also used "app stores for the Android mobile operating system".

It assumed that Android does not compete with iOS and that the Play store does not compete with the App store.

So, if Android doesn't compete with iOS, then Apple has a monopoly in it's market: proprietary non-lincesable mobile operating systems.

> That's a very specious argument

That isn't an argument, that is literally the market definition used by the EC.

> The "licensable" vs. "proprietary" distinction are distribution models that, from a consumer choice perspective, is irrelevant.

You are literally wrong, and clearly didn't do you homework:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1492_en.htm

"At this stage, the Commission considers that Google is dominant in the markets for general internet search services, licensable smart mobile operating systems and app stores for the Android mobile operating system."

Not only the EC used "licensable smart mobile operating systems" but it also used "app stores for the Android mobile operating system".

It assumed that Android does not compete with iOS and that the Play store does not compete with the App store.

> Apple don't stand to profit from making Safari the default/only browser on iOS.

Yes, it does: it sells placement on that browser, since it is the default browser.

And that's billions of dollars per year.

> Apple don't have a dominant position in the smartphone market

Apple has 100% market share in the "proprietary mobile operating system", just as Android has 100% market share on the "licensable mobile operating system".

Those are the market definitions the EC used to assess the case, not "the whole mobile operating system market".

Get you facts minimally straight :)

No, you're wrong.

They are evaluating Android within the context of "licensable mobile operating systems", within which Android has 100% market share.

Similarly, iOS has 100% market share in the "proprietary mobile operating system" market, and would therefore be subject to the same implications as Google & Android.

The reason why the EC decided to go after Android but not iOS I'll leave for the reader to inquire.

And not reporting your gains to the IRS?

This wasn't a case of someone having had a previous developer account, but of someone having being banned for posting malware on the Play store.

AFAIK they've been for many years.

You're assuming that the action was based on policy, not on politics.

It matters, the EC defined the market as "licensable mobile operating systems", and not "mobile operating systems".

If they were looking at "mobile operating systems", their antitrust ruling would make no sense.

> A more comparable analogy would be one where the hypothetical security company isn't told who of their staff is banned

That's what background checks are for. If you're hiring someone, it is your responsibility.

Can't reinforce this enough.

Would a bank hire a security company that has a previous bank robber on staff? Would you put your kids in a school that has a previous child molester on staff?

Is this Microsoft's response to Google's Stadia?

Probably efficiencies of scale.

And those tools aren't there to protect small, inefficient businesses, their existence doesn't make small, inefficient businesses more successful.

Quite the opposite: regulation disproportionately impacts small businesses in a negative way.

So you could even argue that they are "losing" because of those tools.

> opened up broader quotas

I love how you try to justify that this isn't a subsidy by using the word "quotas"!

> In the Internet sense of the word

But that's not the original meaning :)

If you're going by the original meaning of troll you're missing the fifth category: monstrous cave-dwelling creatures.

:)

> How am I hypocritical?

Oh, that wasn't about you specifically, just humans in general. We aren't internally consistent, we are all hypocrites.

It isn't a criticism :)

And we're all in favor of no lock-in until it conflicts with our own interests.

So you're just looking after your own interests while calling Spotify hypocritical for doing the same?

We're all hypocrites, and we're all looking after our own interests...

No, it is just an update to what they've been doing for years: showing the top 4 search engines per market as options.

Nothing new to see here.

> Canadian dairy farmers coordinate with one another with the assistance of the Canadian Government to avoid over-producing and under-producing

Translating: the Canadian government protects collusion between the Canadian farmers to reduce competition and extract undue economic profits from society.

Yep, it is a subsidy.

> Could S.C.M. software include a “workers’-rights” component—a counterpart to PP/DS, incorporating data on working conditions?

That exists, it is called compliance software, and usually serves as an input (of constraints) to the SCM. It might be labor compliance (hours worked, breaks, etc.), it might be food safety compliance (max temperature, max time in storage, etc.), drug compliance, etc.

The article is a bit of a joke, it reads like assigning a humanities professor to report on resource optimization techniques.

Oh, wait, that's exactly what the article is!

But well, it is the New Yorker, no reason to expect something different.

It is a subsidy in practice: you're restricting competition to increase the profits of the farmers.

Call it whatever you want, but the government it guaranteeing the farmer's profits, and society is paying for it.