[frankfrankfrank]

The thing that has nagged at you as it has me, is the simple fact that not only was “economics” conjured and molded by and for the interests of the upper echelon of society, to control the language and thoughts about its terms; but that at the core of it, it’s nothing more than fraud, deception, con artistry.

That’s all inflation is too, fraud that if you would commit it, e.g., you added filler to some product you delivered or forged signatures on delivery paperwork, you would be punished for.

You are given currency coupons in exchange for your work, and then more of those coupons are just forged than correspond to actual work having been done, thereby defrauding you out of the value of your work, also commonly called theft of service.

[throw0101a]

> You are given currency coupons in exchange for your work, and then more of those coupons are just forged than correspond to actual work having been done, thereby defrauding you out of the value of your work, also commonly called theft of service.

All currency is made up. Even gold, or bitcoin, or giant rocks:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones

The only thing that has "inherent" value to humans is air/oxygen, shelter, water, and food. Everything else is psychological projection for convenience.

See The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession by Bernstein:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L._Bernstein

And Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Goldstein:

* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50358103-money

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Goldstein

[achenatx]

>>The only thing that has "inherent" value to humans is air/oxygen, shelter, water, and food. Everything else is psychological projection for convenience.

This isnt really true. If you put someone in solitary confinement for long enough they will go insane.

People commit suicide for a variety of mental health reasons.

Mental health is absolutely as important as physical health and it isnt obvious where to draw the line for required vs. convenient.

There is also health/medicine/medical care/sanitation.

There are also secondary requirements that enable the production capacity for the above stated requirements.

[Turing_Machine]

> All currency is made up. Even gold, or bitcoin, or giant rocks

Yes, but gold, bitcoin, and giant rocks can't be inflated at will, which is what the OP was complaining about.

Simulated pieces of green paper can.

Even with the formerly-used real pieces of green paper, there's a physical limit to how fast printing presses can run.

With simulated pieces of green paper, you can just type some numbers into a computer and suddenly there are twice as many of them as there were before. Or a hundred times as many. Or a trillion times as many...

[orwin]

Okay, but creating money at will is not a bug, its a feature.

I know there is this myth of the "no crisis ever during the gold standard era", but this is false. We had a crisis every ten years or so, sometime way bigger than the 2008 crisis despite the economies being less interconnected. And those crisis sometimes were entirely disconnected from production issues, unlike 2008 that is clearly linked with the conventional oil/gas peak. Because having liquidity that allow easy trading of ressources actually help recover faster and avoid made up crisis like the 1893 one in the US.

[stevesearer]

From my limited knowledge, I don’t believe hard money advocates would say there are never any crises, but instead that they are shorter lived and not as large.

[throw0101a]

> […] but instead that they are shorter lived and not as large.

Which of course does not match the historical record:

* https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the...

* https://archive.ph/FWKcL

[Grim-444]

The article presents two graphs of arguably manipulated/unreliable CPI rates, and that's somehow being using as evidence for whether crises are larger or smaller? The article from the beginning uses obviously incredibly biased language throughout, it's a pure opinion hit piece; the author isn't even attempting to present an impartial view on the topic.

It always amuses me how strongly people come out in opposition to the idea of the gold standard, when it demonstrably seemed to work for America, it powered the country from the time it was a collection of colonies to the time it had men driving buggies around on the moon. The country was on the gold standard for hundreds of years. Coming off the gold standard is the experiment, is the outlier. The gold standard obviously worked well enough for that vast majority of the country's history, yet it's somehow regarded by certain people as an obviously horrible idea which is gross, repugnant, "a barbarous relic that belongs in the dustbin of history". It just doesn't add up. If it's such an insanely horrible idea, how did it work so well for so long?

[stevesearer]

The Atlantic article mentioned the necessity to abandon gold standard temporarily in order to fund WW1, however the American people did not want to enter the war and were unwilling to fund it directly.

An alternate telling would be that abandoning the gold standard allowed the government to circumvent the will of the people and enter a war there was no appetite to get involved in.

[orwin]

They are even more wrong than i thought then. The longest crisis was caused directly by hard money, it lasted more than twenty years.

And it was NOT a production or energy crisis. That what people seems to not understand. Yes, 2008 was a bubble, but a lot of bubble bursted since the 70s and none of the burst created a depression like 2008. The only reason 2008 was this big is because it was an energy crisis, almost four time worst than the oil crisis of the 70s (which is also the first energy crisis). The gold/silver standard manufactured crisis (not helped with fractionnal banking tbh) that had no reason existing at all. Just made people poorer by design. This wasn't even caused by a famine or a war.

Here is my advice: unless the expert/advocate is an historian specialist of the 19th century (or even better: specialist of foreign trade or economics during the 19th century), do not believe anything he said. Don't believe me either, but "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", so look it up, just read on how interesting where the time of hard metal, how easy it is to raise interest rate without impairing trade when you have a gold standard. 19th century financial crisis in the western world despite the huge production boost from pillaging colonies workforce and ressources...

[goodpoint]

> creating money at will is not a bug, its a feature

Despite the stupid downvotes, this is true.

Of course the mechanism can be abused by printing money that are not backed by real growth (like in the US), but most countries don't do that.

[audleman]

In reality, only 13% of our planet’s population is born into the dollar, euro, Japanese yen, British pound, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar or Swiss Franc. The other 87% are born into autocracy or considerably less trustworthy currencies. 4.3 billion people live under authoritarianism, and 1.2 billion people live under double- or triple-digit inflation. [https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-financial-pri...]

Since 1920, at least 55 hyperinflation events have taken place, destroying savings and creating economic hardship. [https://assets.website-files.com/614e11526f6630959fc98679/61...]

A stable currency and strong property rights are the exception, not the rule.

[throw0101a]

> Yes, but gold, bitcoin, and giant rocks can't be inflated at will, which is what the OP was complaining about.

Governments have been fiddling with metal-based currencies going back to Ancient Rome and Han China:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage

Never mind what the general public has done as well:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_coin_debasement#Coi...

See Bernstein.

> With simulated pieces of green paper, you can just type some numbers into a computer and suddenly there are twice as many of them as there were before. Or a hundred times as many. Or a trillion times as many...

Yup, and that's how private banks create loans and mortgages:

* https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m...

Central banks do not create the money that the public uses in the economy, and the only money that the government creates is coins and bills via the their mints.

Also, have you ever asked what happens when there isn't enough money?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Slump_(15th_century)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine

* http://www.nber.org/chapters/c11482

And it's not like 'hard money' brings any more stability:

* https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the...

* https://archive.ph/FWKcL

[Turing_Machine]

"Fiddling with" is not the same as "can create arbitrarily without limit". You're still not addressing the OP's actual complaint.

[kqr]

Governments can (and has!) "created arbitrarily without limit" metal currencies too. Given their monopoly on violence, they can just say "this coin now pays for ten pigs, not one, as you thought before". (Of course, they'd also decrease required tax payments correspondingly to maintain stable inflation.)

[srean]

But haven't such debased currencies fallen out of favor, more often than not, in favor of those currencies that have not been debased, for example, the Florin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin

[lordnacho]

> The thing that has nagged at you as it has me, is the simple fact that not only was “economics” conjured and molded by and for the interests of the upper echelon of society, to control the language and thoughts about its terms; but that at the core of it, it’s nothing more than fraud, deception, con artistry.

Yeah this true, but I wonder if it's as straightforwardly sinister as that. I'm sure there are a lot of economists, esp in the mid 20th century, who would have liked to turn economics into physics. Some of those ideas are of no real merit after further inspection, but are kept alive by political interests.

You do come across a lot of thought pieces by think tanks, which seem to be more political than science.

> You are given currency coupons in exchange for your work, and then more of those coupons are just forged than correspond to actual work having been done, thereby defrauding you out of the value of your work, also commonly called theft of service.

The problem with that is there are legitimate reasons for printing more coupons, they're just mixed in with less legit reasons.

If people want to exchange more, they need more coupons. Otherwise everyone would have to wait for their income to arrive before sending it on, and while they wait some of the opportunities will vanish. A little bit of creation isn't so bad.

[ekianjo]

> f people want to exchange more, they need more coupons.

thats a fallacy. nothing prevents you from exchanging more even if you had a fixed number of coupons. you would just have to consider that the value of each coupon becomes more, not less, over time, so you need to use subdivisions of coupons more.

Inflation, even at low levels, is ultimately value destruction over time.

[klipt]

> the value of each coupon becomes more, not less, over time

Deflation has historically been a bad thing every time it's happened.

[ibeckermayer]

Nonsense. Sure, deflationary shocks can be calamitous, like the Great Depression or the GFC. But steady deflation over time is logically the natural and good outcome of improvement over time—as technology advances and we get better at producing things, they should get cheaper, on average.

Instead, our savings are buying us LESS over time, so that government can buy votes, fund wars, bail out defense contractors, pharma companies, financial institutions, and other cronies, etc. Inflation via the printing press, which is now just considered by many a normal phenomenon, is actually legalized wealth transfer from the savings of ordinary citizens into the coffers of giant government bureaucracies and the large corporations that feed off them.

[simonh]

Devaluing in-the-mattress savings is a good thing, hence all the many government schemes to incentivise small scale productive investment. Here in the UK that's through tax free consumer savings accounts like ISAs, but also pensions. Savings that are invested do work in the economy fund businesses, promote economic activity and aid job and wealth creation. Stuffed mattresses are a boat anchor on the economy.

Having said that, deflation isn't always the awful spectre of doom it's sometimes made out do be, especially if it's due to technological improvements or increased supply. As the article we're all notionally discussing explains, inflation in a reasonably well managed economy is generally differential and reflects shifts in the structure of the economy.

[nagasadhu]

That's basically saying u can't hold on to ur hard earned money after paying taxes. Give it to the government or some pension firm. And depend on the government and incompetent regulators to take care of you in your old age.

[dinom]

What is "in-the-mattress" savings exactly... besides one person's savings that another wants to spend differently?

Who should be the ultimate judge of how capital is saved and invested? You? The government? What about the person who actually did the saving?

Taken to it's logical conclusion, saying that "devaluing in-the-mattress savings is a good thing" sounds a lot like "let's soak the rich" to me.... and it's a very slippery road to serfdom.

[dinom]

Lol, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31539114

you say "I don’t want to devalue their savings" yet above you say

"Devaluing in-the-mattress savings is a good thing".

Either your thinking has changed or, you're trying to cause confusion or, maybe confused yourself, or are trolling. At this point I suspect I may even be chatting with an ELIZA... so what else is there for me to say? Think whatever you want.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[mrow84]

Goods getting cheaper broadly means that supply is going up relative to demand - we call this deflation.

If the supply of money goes up relative to demand then we call that inflation.

It seems like you are conflating the two categories.

[someguydave]

Yeah that decreasing price for silicon chips over the past decades has been a real disaster.

[actionablefiber]

There's a difference between decreases in the price of specific goods that comes about due to technology, and deflation that comes about due to monetary policy.

That I can think of, the obvious difference is that the second one almost definitionally means a steady decrease in nominal wages. This seems like a perverse incentive - if I sock away my first paycheck flipping burgers under my mattress and do nothing with it for 50 years, a deflationary regime means I can take it back out and buy a lot more with it than someone with their first paycheck flipping burgers today.

[someguydave]

> the obvious difference is that the second one almost definitionally

People said similar stuff about negative interest rates, yet they were rolled out and kind of worked around the world. I'm not buying this defense of inflationism.

[ekianjo]

> if I sock away my first paycheck flipping burgers under my mattress and do nothing with it for 50 years, a deflationary regime means I can take it back out and buy a lot more with it than someone with their first paycheck flipping burgers today.

Thats still true with inflation too. No idea what your point is.

[ekianjo]

Says every governement that promotes inflation. Funny hey?

[flybrand]

> straightforwardly sinister

If the impact is sinister, then debating the motive just extends the duration of the pain experienced.

Motives matter at the time of trial - when the action and pain are over. Until then, debating motive is just a distraction from stopping the unjust activity.

[simonh]

So you seem to be adding your voice in support for the article which, er, directly contradicts your views about money printing and current inflation.

Right now we know for a fact that current inflation is a genuine global shortage of actual stuff. Crude oil, cooking oil, wheat, Chinese products. Plus American government overspending, to be fair, but that's just a US phenomenon.

Of course that's inconvenient if you really desperately want to complain that you specifically are being cheated. After all if you have less, it must be because somebody else has more, right?

If we're all screwed, who do you blame? Putin and Xi are far away and broadly hated already, so there's no satisfaction to be had blaming anything on them.

[bko]

> Plus American government overspending, to be fair, but that's just a US phenomenon.

That's not true. US spent the most, but Europe spent €3.2 trillion. US spent $12 trillion but they had to "shore up" a lot of global banks because that's just what they do. About half went into asset purchases and liquidity measures.

I take a simple approach. What would you expect to happen if you just created trillions out of thin air and distributed it? Arguing nothing would happen is the economic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. It just doesn't pass the smell test to me because you can just create global wealth from changing some numbers in a computer with no repercussions. It's alchemy. Can I "prove" that there are negative consequences that in the long run outweigh the benefits? No. But I can say that I cannot find a single case of high inflation that did not coincide with government printing money. Printing a lot of money doesn't always cause inflation, but any time there is inflation there has been a lot of money printing.

Sure what happens may not be predictable, but its obvious that you're messing with a complex system and effects aren't instantaneous or uniform. That's why you see things like product X is going up 50% while product Y is going up 5%. And the people that point this out think they're debunking something.

With complex systems its best to keep things simple. You can get lost in the data from all the noise and overconfidence will bite you in the ass. Which is why it's not a smart idea to increase the money supply by 30+% in a year and dump it into the market.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/european-union-financ...

https://www.covidmoneytracker.org/

[kqr]

> Printing a lot of money doesn't always cause inflation, but any time there is inflation there has been a lot of money printing.

In fact, you can even argue that inflation causes a lot of money printing! When the government has trouble affording things that have gotten more expensive, they have to print more money to be able to buy the services they need!

(Of course, any responsible government would then also provide a drain for the corresponding amount of excess money -- e.g. tax it back out of existence shortly thereafter -- but somehow it's much easier to get elected when you promise to buy things, and not so much when you promise to tax the money away again...)

[simonh]

The excess inflation in the US (above that in Europe) isn’t due to pandemic spending or increased money supply, it’s demand driven due to the Biden infrastructure bill. The supply side can’t meet the increased demand, leading to excess inflation.

Look, I’d have voted for him too given the options, and probably still would, but his economic policy is ill advised.

[1ncorrect]

My current thesis, from a position of absolute agnostic ignorance, is economics is what filled the void in society vacated by religion after the enlightenment.

They’re functionally indistinguishable, with mythology replaced by mathematics, and God replaced with GDP. Similarly, they’re both arbitrary rules; conjured, imposed, and protected from scrutiny by the ruling class.

That’s not to say it’s not useful, but I find it baffling that an imaginary concept is unquestionably granted veto over tangible and visceral phenomena.

[achenatx]

the difference between economics (or science) and religion is that economics is used to predict the future. When economics fails to predict the future, the models are changed until they can predict the future.

religion tells you what goals you should have and how you should live a life, passing judgement and establishing morality.

They are orthogonal to each other.

[lukifer]

"Economists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions."

[lukifer]

I've used to think the Reagan-era political coalition (persisting to this day) made no sense: the values and worldviews of evangelicals and economic libertarians have terribly little in common. Then it clicked, the common belief that united them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

[perfecthjrjth]

Also, note that mainstream monasteries are at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc. That's where these secular priests 'corrupt'/preach the next generation of elites.

[pjc50]

> then more of those coupons are just forged than correspond to actual work having been done

Is this Karl Marx's critique of inflation?