While this is generally true, land values do tend to rise over time simply because the population increases and thus there are more people competing for a finite resource. It's a value change that can only be measured accurately over decades, however.
Indeed; although there is a historic counter argument to my point. Not so long ago land was such an important economic asset and it was concentrated in so few hands that those who owned any could easily live off their ownership for generations and even accumulate more wealth in the process, while everyone else was doing the actual labor. It was called the feudalism. And that is precisely what a deflationary currency would result in. |
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What are you talking about? My money isn't worth less every year, because I invest in immovables like every other sane person. Actually land is more valuable to me than a house, so no incentive for economic activity there...
By the way, what is the difference between me getting paid in gold and paid in USD, as long as I can freely exchange USD<->Gold? Absolutely nothing, am I right? It seems to me that we are already living in your dystopia. What am I missing?
The way you put it, the only thing holding the economy together must be friction
Do you really not see the difference? Your land is only becoming more valuable because you express its value in an inflationary currency. Try expressing its value in bitcoin for a laugh. The actual purchasing power that the land you own represents isnt going up significantly every year unless you made an above average clever investment. You and future generations cant live of the value of your land for the rest of your lives and accumulate more wealth in the process, not without taking economic risks. At best it preserves your wealth. The same goes for gold btw, an ounce of gold buys you a lot less labor today than it did 50 years ago. It also buys you roughly as much bread as it did 2000 years ago (despite massive productivity increases in farming and baking which ought to reduce its real price). Unlike a deflationary currency, buying gold or land doesnt make one get eternally richer, its only a way to preserve wealth. |
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but "doing nothing" means not participating in the allocation of productive force. The claim that it is harmful seems to imply that inflation provides the only incentive for economic activity. Its harmful because it actually increases in value, not just because its idle. Someone has to produce the goods and services that are represented by this increase, and the benefactor is the one that just happens to have money. The ones creating goods and services are trying to make those who save give up their savings. That's the game. If you can resist that, you deserve to get richer. Think about it. lets say your currency appreciates by 10% per year and you can live a luxury life spending only 5% of your savings. Whats happening? You get richer every day by doing absolutely nothing. You could end up owning the world, but you say you deserve it? How? Wealth doesnt create itself, someone is making that happen and not getting the fruits of his labour. In the end everything will be owned by precious few and we wont have an economy anymore, just slavery. I think the only proof we need to understand that this works is the fact that this is already the case. No its not. You cant get richer today without taking risks and participating in the economy. Your money is worth less every year, if you dont do anything to maintain its value your fortune will dwindle rather than grow. |
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Your premise is, providing incentive for economic activity is the duty of a currency alone
Where did I say or imply that? I am saying it actually creates a major economic disincentive and results in the transfer of wealth from economic activity to economic inactivity. The ones creating the goods and services end up making richer the ones doing nothing. I cant see how thats a good thing, unless you happen to be on the receiving end of this scheme. |
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EU has intentionally destroyed the economy of Cyprus by refusing to create an extra 6 billion accounting entry in their computers. This is all.
Are you saying you want the european central bank to create the money for every bad debt out there, moral hazard and inflation be damned? You were then also in favor of the bank bailouts in the US? You oppose the idea that bad businesses should go out of business and instead should be rescued by government bailouts? Really? Letting those banks go bankrupt while protecting the small savers is the only sensible thing the EU or Cyprus could do. If you want to blame them for anything; then blame them for having it let come this far but realize then that you are advocating more government oversight over banks. If you oppose that then you also have to accept the depositors liability for not doing their own due diligence. You cant have it both ways. |
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A purely deflationary currency provides no incentive for investment or economic activity
I'd like to point out, that this might actually be a positive aspect. Right now the worlds monetary system is geared towards infinite growth. This strikes me as not very smart since last time I checked, we were living on a planet with finite resources There is certainly something to be said to create a more sustainable society, but I dont think the way to get there is by causing massive unemployment and killing the economy. Sure, doing so will preserve some resources for a bit longer, just like for instance the killing of 5 billion people would, but surely there are better ways to achieve that? A deflationary currency doesnt discriminate between resource intensive economic activity and eco friendly one, it will affect either in the same way. So if your claim is that it will decrease economic activity and therefore is desirable, then I think thats a silly proposition. You might as well argue for mass killings, war or famine |
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Id just like to point out; one can claim the government is stealing from savers, but if the government and EU did nothing, those banks would go bankrupt and big and small savers alike would lose most, if not all of their money. After all; that money isnt theirs anymore, they lent it to the bank at interest. Is that really a better solution?
Now for sums below 100K those funds were supposedly guaranteed by the government and I can understand the anger; but for anything above that, if you have all your money invested in an insolvent bank, you are going to take a haircut one way or another and blaming the government doesnt make much sense.
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I hope I'm not alone in not buying this whole "deflation is bad" argument. By your logic, Samsung should be broke because the SGS3 that used to retail for $800 is now available for $350. And by the same logic, I will never buy a computer because in a month's time it will always be cheaper than buying today. Thats not currency deflation. Cellphones and computers actually are getting cheaper to produce. Its called an increased productivity and if that is what is causing the price deflation; then there is nothing wrong with that, on the contrary. We had the same during the industrial revolution; we got massive increases in productivity causing price deflation. But also causing more production of actual physical wealth because we produced more goods more efficiently. As a society we actually got richer and the increased purchasing power of our money was just a reflection of that. But you cant reverse that. Making money more scarce doesnt cause an increase in productivity or production, let alone wealth- anymore more than printing more money can make everyone rich. |
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From the economist who wrote half the textbooks we use in the economics department at my university: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/golden-cyberfetters/Basically, he says that bitcoin is not really being used as a medium of exchange because it's deflationary. He has a point. If you aren't using it to buy goods and services then you are using it as a way to save your money, speculating on it. Constant deflation stops people from using it as a medium of exchange. Its hard to argue against this. A purely deflationary currency provides no incentive for investment or economic activity; it only causes rich people to get richer just from being rich and sit on their money. Its a great system if you have money, but economically its.. not very smart to put it mildly. I think the solution to this problem is - or could well be ripple; or something like ripple. It allows the issuing of credit money at a rate that keeps pace with economic growth (or shrinks if the overall economy shrinks). Bitcoin could act as monetary base like gold did for fiat. Although one could question if in the longer run, if such user issued credit money becomes mainstream; if there really is a need for the monetary base in the first place. |
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Im getting this error using the beta socketio server with the javascript library: DEBUG: Error: Hostname/IP doesn't match certificate's altnames at SecurePair.<anonymous> (tls.js:1280:23) at SecurePair.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:92:17) at SecurePair.maybeInitFinished (tls.js:883:10) at CleartextStream.read [as _read] (tls.js:421:15) at CleartextStream.Readable.read (_stream_readable.js:293:10) at EncryptedStream.write [as _write] (tls.js:330:25) at doWrite (_stream_writable.js:211:10) at writeOrBuffer (_stream_writable.js:201:5) at EncryptedStream.Writable.write (_stream_writable.js:172:11) at write (_stream_readable.js:547:24) |
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I am constantly getting "site not accessible software update in progress"
I dont think you guys update the software 6 days per week do you?
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Full on panic. Had to happen. Im calling bottom in the 30's
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Perhaps not a huge amount of help but you might try asking over on the Bitcoin StackExchange http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/ . Seems like the sort of thing that would go down well there, and they're in need of support during their beta phase. Its the order book; ie market depth. You can get a subset from that using the HTTP api; or a full set if you dont call it more than 5x per hour. |
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Had to put that in my sig. |
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This is the worst day i I have seen mining here. luck is just ridiculous. New new blocks and all is confirmed (120+blocks past)  But carpo446 is back! Let us hope the luck will come with him again! Getting quite addicted to the Live stats feature of bitminter. But arent loving what it shows now, allmost all the BTC that have been found took forever, paying more in electrisity at this point. Trowing a bag of salt over shoulders and crossing fingers=) Nice to se Carpo back. Earlier he was over 400k Mhash/s, what kind of equipment do he use?? thoose "superasics" arent out jet. Cant be GPU usage? that amount of speed from fpga (thats a lot of units=P) Avalon has asics out in the wild; which is what carpo is almost certiainly using (66GH I thinkj per device). Asicminer also has as a growing asic farm online; but those devices are not for sale. |
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Should be pretty smooth sailing after that. [/quote] LOL. Its almost 6 after their promised shipping date; testing is yet to really begin, but as always, Josh can see nothing go wrong. Well I can. |
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HAha - awesome! And then, after he called bluff once, nobody would believe him anymore!
Except that his bluff might well work, and more than once. Even if/when it doesnt, plenty of people still take advice from "analysts" whos batting average doesnt exceed statistical randomness. |
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twitter blocked from work.. please summarize... Guessed the dip from 71$ to 66$ 3 hours ago. Guessed it or caused it? Isnt this the same guy who posted the 10000BTC Mtgox screenie? We might have a new manipulator. With enough coins and cash you can cause a few spikes and drops that you "predicted" a few hours earlier until people take you seriously, then use that credibility to cause movements with just words... |
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i seem to be able to connect to websocket occasionally; but socket.io seems completely non responsive now?
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