[ejlo]

> The miseries from bank runs and crashes are real, but even so, the total impact on human welfare from fractional reserves has been overwhelmingly positive.

It surely has been positive in the past but that does not mean it is positive now or in the future.

We are entering a new era, where (economic) growth is no longer necessary for human development, due to automation and that an increasingly large percentage of innovation is in software. In a world of progress without growth, we cannot have an economic system that requires growth to function properly.

Instead, we need economic stability.

[levosmetalo]

So true. The real problem we are facing is not lack of growth, it's getting used to the situation that we'll never again achieve absolute employment, since the need of human labour is shrinking. Depending on our choices today we may end up in either Star Trek or Elysium kind of society in the future.

I can only applaud Switzerland taking seriously this, as well as basic income initiative. If anyone is able to pull it through, it's them. The only pity is that the current discussion is made in German, so most of the anglosphere won't be able to read or contribute to the discussion directly, and would be left to low quality "journalism" as a source of information about the debate.