DEFLATION GETS A BAD NAME

[Lloydie]

Consumption is the one and only goal of all economic systems, thus deflationary currency is a poor system.

We're going to disagree there. Which is okay, I suppose, but just remember that not all advocates of  ---- actually, screw that too, I'm not a deflation advocate; I believe that there should be zero intervention into the effective interest rate. Fix supply, take Bitcoin-like system with "zero" friction of transfer and near-zero intertia of V, and there's no way that it will be less efficient, and will almost assuredly be more so. Less human labor involved in tampering with the money, let the machines do the work transferring and securing value, and we get more free time to either pursue hobbies, work on projects that benefit humanity, etc. Janitorial duties that can be left to machines, should. If a Roomba can vacuum just as well, that's not stealing jobs from anywhere, that's doing work that used to cost money, for much less money; freeing that labor for other things. It makes no sense that this wouldn't work for value transfer systems too.

Anyway, by my study, money is a token, and it is *itself* a proof of work. Work done in the past, by you, or someone who gave it to you. You trade it for someone else's work, and we come to mutual agreements in the open market about what a piece of work is worth. That changes with time and variables like supply and demand. But it eliminates trying to figure out whether the work involved in creating three oven-ready 12-lb chickens of a certain quality, is worth ten pounds of raspberries from this particular farm and reputation during a fantastic season for growing berries etc etc. We just trade proofs-of-work (this is why it's so intriguing that mining and the chained-hashes model is called performing proof-of-work to me) and call it a day; and it doesn't matter whether it was really my work or not. It is of course important that proofs-of-work cannot be faked. Work can't be faked, so it's troublesome if the proof can.

Likewise, if I sweep your floor for 3 hours, we come to an agreement on the value of that work, and you pay me in... a proof of it, a token, money.

Over time, the net amount of work is the sum of all previous work, and even more happily, its value is greater than just the sum of the raw parts. Knowledge on top of knowledge. The global GDP is going up as long as humans are learning and discovering and inventing and becoming more efficient. So, firstly, using Bitcoin therefore directly accelerates our rate of acquiring efficiency, thereby raising global "wealth".

There's a lot to write on this... I hope this makes sense. I have a massive paper on the grand unified economic theory tying together the reasons why time is money, and proofs of work, etc.

Those are some great economic concepts.

Economic systems will continue to gain value as long as they are allowed to expand by building on population growth and productivity.

Very elegant.

[zerodrama]

Consumption is a retarded premise for an economy.

Transaction a little less so.

Compensation a bit better use for money.

Trade is it.

[Impaler]

I believe that there should be zero intervention into the effective interest rate. Fix supply, take Bitcoin-like system with "zero" friction of transfer and near-zero intertia of V

This is your logical falicy you call a Fixed supply 'zero intervention' as if a fixed supply were the natural state of things.  Their is nothing natural amount money, it is a man made system of symbols and math and the supply is determined purely by human choice.  In the case of BTC a human chose to make a fixed supply and that choice was completely arbitrary, Satoshi could have chosen to do an unbounded supply as lots of alternatives have done.   That arbitrary choice by Satoshi constitutes a massive and ongoing intervention on the interest rate.  Because people create money and interest rates it behooves us to create the BEST rate of interest that will serve to create maximum productivity.

I find you deflation people to be so intellectually sloppy, when I demonstrate that Deflation lowers productivity you respond that you don't want economic growth, it is in fact 'bad'.  When I ask how you think it is fair to profit from holding deflationary currency you respond that your deferred consumption is encouraging investment and you then deserve to receive the fruits of thouse investments.  Your beloved deflation can not be both causing and rewarding you for hugely profitable investments AND causing economic growth to cease.  If you believe growth will be halted by deflationary currency then you can't believe that your speculative profit from holding it is anything but a transfer from other people.

[Ibian]

I believe that there should be zero intervention into the effective interest rate. Fix supply, take Bitcoin-like system with "zero" friction of transfer and near-zero intertia of V

This is your logical falicy you call a Fixed supply 'zero intervention' as if a fixed supply were the natural state of things.  Their is nothing natural amount money, it is a man made system of symbols and math and the supply is determined purely by human choice.  In the case of BTC a human chose to make a fixed supply and that choice was completely arbitrary, Satoshi could have chosen to do an unbounded supply as lots of alternatives have done.   That arbitrary choice by Satoshi constitutes a massive and ongoing intervention on the interest rate.  Because people create money and interest rates it behooves us to create the BEST rate of interest that will serve to create maximum productivity.

I find you deflation people to be so intellectually sloppy, when I demonstrate that Deflation lowers productivity you respond that you don't want economic growth, it is in fact 'bad'.  When I ask how you think it is fair to profit from holding deflationary currency you respond that your deferred consumption is encouraging investment and you then deserve to receive the fruits of thouse investments.  Your beloved deflation can not be both causing and rewarding you for hugely profitable investments AND causing economic growth to cease.  If you believe growth will be halted by deflationary currency then you can't believe that your speculative profit from holding it is anything but a transfer from other people.

None of that really matters. The important point is, the current debt-based fiat system is designed to end in periodic meltdowns at the expense of the poor and middle class and for the benefit of the very richest. The majority of us think the current system is a bad one, and we are voting with our wallets and hardware. And you are free to do the same, which is one of the many beauties of bitcoin. Nobody is forced to join in, everything is voluntary.

I hate debt with a passion. I think it is equivalent to slavery.

It is. That's why it's called being a wage-slave. It's not a fucking joke, that is exactly what most people are.

"Gold is the money of kings, silver the money of gentlemen, barter the money of peasants, debt the money of slaves."

[Lloydie]

I believe that there should be zero intervention into the effective interest rate. Fix supply, take Bitcoin-like system with "zero" friction of transfer and near-zero intertia of V

This is your logical falicy you call a Fixed supply 'zero intervention' as if a fixed supply were the natural state of things.  Their is nothing natural amount money, it is a man made system of symbols and math and the supply is determined purely by human choice.  In the case of BTC a human chose to make a fixed supply and that choice was completely arbitrary, Satoshi could have chosen to do an unbounded supply as lots of alternatives have done.   That arbitrary choice by Satoshi constitutes a massive and ongoing intervention on the interest rate.  Because people create money and interest rates it behooves us to create the BEST rate of interest that will serve to create maximum productivity.

I find you deflation people to be so intellectually sloppy, when I demonstrate that Deflation lowers productivity you respond that you don't want economic growth, it is in fact 'bad'.  When I ask how you think it is fair to profit from holding deflationary currency you respond that your deferred consumption is encouraging investment and you then deserve to receive the fruits of thouse investments.  Your beloved deflation can not be both causing and rewarding you for hugely profitable investments AND causing economic growth to cease.  If you believe growth will be halted by deflationary currency then you can't believe that your speculative profit from holding it is anything but a transfer from other people.

That's right but Satoshi didn't choose an unbounded supply.  Thank God for that.  Nothing that Satoshi did was arbitrary.  It was carefully planned and thought out.  It is the work of a genius that you can only begin to comprehend after the fact.

The problem is you are still thinking like a fiat creature, stuck in your three dimensional fiat world.  Debt is not the best response for productivity.  You have been conned.

Debt creates artificial increases in GDP growth that people pass off as real economic growth because the GDP number measured in dollars is getting bigger.  The reality is that real economic growth comes from research, hard work, population growth and general productivity increases.

The debt based system distorts real economic growth by adding credit to it.  Some dumb fuck borrowing a billion dollars to build some condos is suddenly a superhero because the value of those condos rise due to speculation caused by yet more debt.  What a sick fucking system.  

Bitcoin will increase in value as the Bitcoin economy expands.  Yes, there will initially be a transfer of wealth from new adopters to early adopters but this will sort itself out over time because the rich fucks will need to spend their Bitcoins to get economic value.  They can't just make more Bitcoins out of thin air, as the banks can do right now with credit-money under the current fiat monetary system.

I think you haven't considered that 16% interest in Bitcoin world was a design feature, not an arbitrary choice.  Someone understood that debt is deleterious to society as a whole and that person did something about it.  Now, that is the mind of a genius.

[Impaler]

None of that really matters. The important point is, the current debt-based fiat system is designed to end in periodic meltdowns at the expense of the poor and middle class and for the benefit of the very richest. The majority of us think the current system is a bad one, and we are voting with our wallets and hardware. And you are free to do the same, which is one of the many beauties of bitcoin. Nobody is forced to join in, everything is voluntary.

That would be relevant response IF I was defending the 'current debt-based fiat system', but I've simply been pointing out the Flaws with deflation not defending the current system.  As you can see in my Sig I support Freicion which uses demurrage rather then inflation to promote velocity, and if your familiar with other threads I am searching for a means to design a fully stable (no inflation or deflation) cryptographic currency.

[Ibian]

None of that really matters. The important point is, the current debt-based fiat system is designed to end in periodic meltdowns at the expense of the poor and middle class and for the benefit of the very richest. The majority of us think the current system is a bad one, and we are voting with our wallets and hardware. And you are free to do the same, which is one of the many beauties of bitcoin. Nobody is forced to join in, everything is voluntary.

That would be relevant response IF I was defending the 'current debt-based fiat system', but I've simply been pointing out the Flaws with deflation not defending the current system.  As you can see in my Sig I support Freicion which uses demurrage rather then inflation to promote velocity, and if your familiar with other threads I am searching for a means to design a fully stable (no inflation or deflation) cryptographic currency.

Right now there is no third option. But you are free to code one and release it into the wild.

[Lloydie]

None of that really matters. The important point is, the current debt-based fiat system is designed to end in periodic meltdowns at the expense of the poor and middle class and for the benefit of the very richest. The majority of us think the current system is a bad one, and we are voting with our wallets and hardware. And you are free to do the same, which is one of the many beauties of bitcoin. Nobody is forced to join in, everything is voluntary.

That would be relevant response IF I was defending the 'current debt-based fiat system', but I've simply been pointing out the Flaws with deflation not defending the current system.  As you can see in my Sig I support Freicion which uses demurrage rather then inflation to promote velocity, and if your familiar with other threads I am searching for a means to design a fully stable (no inflation or deflation) cryptographic currency.

It probably hasn't occurred to you that velocity should be left alone to real economic needs. The monetary system should just get out of the way of economic drivers.

There is a reason why freicoin is not popular. It goes something like this: please use my freicoin which costs you money the longer you use it and don't use bitcoin whose value is increasing in value the longer you use it.

Seriously, do you expect people to switch over to freicoin? They would have to be some kind of special stupid.

[Impaler]

It is not popular as a speculative investment, that is the point.  

As for velocity, you admit the velocity is embedded in the nature of the money, so how do you know that the velocity in BTC is what the economy needs?  As I've said it is an ARBITRARY choice to employ a money system with either a high or low velocity, with either velocity encouraging or discouraging features.  If you want money to 'get out of the way' then you money needs to give the velocity that the economy wants for full productivity.  You need to establish that the velocity of BTC is the correct velocity, even if it is just in a theoretical sense, what is the 'right amount'.  I'll give you my answer, money needs to have a velocity inducement that makes money no more desirable then holding real goods, BTC falls well short of that in my opinion.

With regard to your prior post

You confuse 'Arbitrary' with 'accidental'.  When I say the choice of a fixed supply is arbitrary I mean it is not forced on Satoshi by anyone or anything, he was free to choose from an infinity of money supply growth curves.  His intent was to create a deflationary asset and that lead him to pick the design he did and he succeeded in getting deflation.  What I've been arguing is if deflation is a good thing to have in an economy.

So far people seem to have conceded that deflation will cripple economic growth but that's 'good' or your argument which seems to be that it will cripple debt which is 'enslaving us'.  I think you confuse Debt with Usury here as a debt is something that humans have been creating and repaying for millennia before the existence of any form of money.  Usury is expecting your debt to be repaid with INTEREST.  I am firmly opposed to usury and believe the means to remove it is a money system which lowers interest rates to zero.  Thus people can and will and should continue to incur debt but they will repay them 1 for 1, no more no less.  

BTC if it were our money would manifestly NOT eliminate debt, first because debt is so necessary for any form of complex division of labor, which is the basis for our entire society.  But second because 16% is really not historically unprecedented, a simple look at an interest rate chart will show you that rate that high were reached in the 80's by Volker and frequently as high during the 19th century (during the gold standard).  The issuing of Debt did not and dose not cease because of high interest rates, their are always going to be some people willing to borrow and some people willing to lend, in fact the total interest payment may not even be declining much as rates rise.

[Ibian]

Reminder that bitcoin is only temporarily deflationary. Once saturation is near the peak, it will be close enough to stable for the argument not to have much merit. This could happen in as little as five years, and certainly within 20. An entirely new economic system within the span of one generation or less is not bad.

Personally, my main concern is to get rid of usury and for people in general to only spend money they have, not money they don't have as they do now. Bitcoin won't enforce this, but it may encourage it.

[FenixRD]

*sigh*

I'd hoped for a better debate. Or simple understanding. Or polite deferment that our basest opinions differ. Rather, I get condescension and insults. Typical, I suppose.

I can formulate a system that behaves exactly as Bitcoin does, but instead of a fixed supply, the price is fixed to an energy constant, and the supply (M) varies with demand. In our current state, this would mean you hold coins worth exactly the same relative to a basket of goods, but the *amount* you hold varies. Like dividends of a stock. So now you have no inflation or deflation, by primitive definitions. The price is unchanging. But the effect is the same. Your mind is so narrow... I'm not even sure how to go on from here. I extended my frond of diplomacy and you defecated on it. So be it, then...

[Lloydie]

It is not popular as a speculative investment, that is the point.  

As for velocity, you admit the velocity is embedded in the nature of the money, so how do you know that the velocity in BTC is what the economy needs?  As I've said it is an ARBITRARY choice to employ a money system with either a high or low velocity, with either velocity encouraging or discouraging features.  If you want money to 'get out of the way' then you money needs to give the velocity that the economy wants for full productivity.  You need to establish that the velocity of BTC is the correct velocity, even if it is just in a theoretical sense, what is the 'right amount'.  I'll give you my answer, money needs to have a velocity inducement that makes money no more desirable then holding real goods, BTC falls well short of that in my opinion.

With regard to your prior post

You confuse 'Arbitrary' with 'accidental'.  When I say the choice of a fixed supply is arbitrary I mean it is not forced on Satoshi by anyone or anything, he was free to choose from an infinity of money supply growth curves.  His intent was to create a deflationary asset and that lead him to pick the design he did and he succeeded in getting deflation.  What I've been arguing is if deflation is a good thing to have in an economy.

So far people seem to have conceded that deflation will cripple economic growth but that's 'good' or your argument which seems to be that it will cripple debt which is 'enslaving us'.  I think you confuse Debt with Usury here as a debt is something that humans have been creating and repaying for millennia before the existence of any form of money.  Usury is expecting your debt to be repaid with INTEREST.  I am firmly opposed to usury and believe the means to remove it is a money system which lowers interest rates to zero.  Thus people can and will and should continue to incur debt but they will repay them 1 for 1, no more no less.  

BTC if it were our money would manifestly NOT eliminate debt, first because debt is so necessary for any form of complex division of labor, which is the basis for our entire society.  But second because 16% is really not historically unprecedented, a simple look at an interest rate chart will show you that rate that high were reached in the 80's by Volker and frequently as high during the 19th century (during the gold standard).  The issuing of Debt did not and dose not cease because of high interest rates, their are always going to be some people willing to borrow and some people willing to lend, in fact the total interest payment may not even be declining much as rates rise.

No you are wrong. There is this thing called DIVISIBILITY in bitcoin. The bitcoin economy will do just fine. It doesn't need your intervention or anyone's velocity intervention.

The special stupids can use freicoin. That is their right to vote with their money. You can rationalise it all you want as non speculative or whatever but at the end of the day you've gotta to be stupid to use a devaluing currency if given a choice.

Debt doesn't have to be necessary. We can use equity investments instead. If someone wants to borrow at 16% in bitcoin land then let them. I for one think that equity based investments will work perfectly fine.

[Impaler]

It's okay. I like it here. Your explanation sucks and was inadequate so I helped it. Divisibility in bitcoin means that freicoin is a stillborn. Argue all you want but everyday the growth in bitcoin and the stagnation in freicoin will stare you in the face as a reminder that divisibility is better than demurrage.

Here, I'll help you a little more. The divisibility in bitcoin allows people to spend smaller units of bitcoin even as the value of one bitcoin rises. Hey presto, liquidity problem solved. All without inflation or demurrage.

For the last time stop jumping into other threads and attempting to hijack them, it is rude to people already participating in thouse thread and if you do it again you'll go on my ignore list.

Your apparently ignorant that Freicion is actually more divisible then BTC as a side effect of the use of high precision math to calculate demurrage rates down to exceedingly small fractions of what would be a 'Satoshi' in BTC.  Also we don not measure success by valuation.

Your also confused as to what liquidity means.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_liquidity

It has nothing to do with granularity or coins being 'too valuable' to make small transactions with.  I've never argued that BTC will run into a problem with divisibility so I do not see why you feel your refuting anything.  BTC clearly experiences deflation irregardless of if it is divisible or not, being divisible simply means their is no point where deflation has to stop due to granularity limitations.

[Lloydie]

It's okay. I like it here. Your explanation sucks and was inadequate so I helped it. Divisibility in bitcoin means that freicoin is a stillborn. Argue all you want but everyday the growth in bitcoin and the stagnation in freicoin will stare you in the face as a reminder that divisibility is better than demurrage.

Here, I'll help you a little more. The divisibility in bitcoin allows people to spend smaller units of bitcoin even as the value of one bitcoin rises. Hey presto, liquidity problem solved. All without inflation or demurrage.

For the last time stop jumping into other threads and attempting to hijack them, it is rude to people already participating in thouse thread and if you do it again you'll go on my ignore list.

Your apparently ignorant that Freicion is actually more divisible then BTC as a side effect of the use of high precision math to calculate demurrage rates down to exceedingly small fractions of what would be a 'Satoshi' in BTC.  Also we don not measure success by valuation.

Your also confused as to what liquidity means.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_liquidity

It has nothing to do with granularity or coins being 'too valuable' to make small transactions with.  I've never argued that BTC will run into a problem with divisibility so I do not see why you feel your refuting anything.  BTC clearly experiences deflation irregardless of if it is divisible or not, being divisible simply means their is no point where deflation has to stop due to granularity limitations.

I didn't realise this thread "belonged" to you. A bit arrogant don't you think? Isn't that what the ignore button is for? Use it then.

I'm not confused about anything. You're the one confused about why demurrage is pointless. High precision maths. Gimme a break. No one will use the freicoin with demurrage built in.

Here use my coin that costs you money if you hold it versus bitcoin that is rising in value. No contest. Freicoin loses 1 million times out of 1 million. 

Yes, bitcoin is deflationary, get used to it. It's actually a product feature.

[Kungfucheez]

Just ignore him Impaler, it helps clean a thread up nicely.

[Lloydie]

Just ignore him Impaler, it helps clean a thread up nicely.

As they say, do as you do, not as you say. Otherwise that makes you a hypocrite. Who are you?