[jagraff]

Non-inflationary currencies are a bad idea. Without inflation, hoarding is incentivized, and investment discouraged (or at least, decreased). Currency is most useful when people spend it - money in bank accounts is useless for society.

[anonym29]

The decision to weigh the needs of society over the rights of an individual to retain the value derived from the productive output of their own labor is not a given.

You own your body. Your labor is just you consciously deciding to operate your body in a manner that fulfills the needs of someone else in exchange for something of value. The value of your money being diluted is, for the worker, no different from wage theft by an employer - the rightful compensation from your productive labor being taken from you without your consent.

[hbrn]

> rights of an individual to retain the value

Those rights are not a given either. In fact this is a first time I hear those are "rights".

If I pick an apple from a tree using my productive labor, somehow apple doesn't seem to care about my rights and starts to rot.

Are you sure you're not confusing rights with desires?

[anonym29]

Your apple analogy is not applicable here, because inflationary monetary policy is optional and instated by deliberate human choice, the decay of fruit is a non-optional natural process, not the result of deliberate human choice.

Inflation is a tax, albeit an indirect one. It decreases purchasing power of the citizens (with the greatest harm incurred by the most vulnerable), it decreases the value of the nominal debt held by the government, and it's produced outside of a democratic process (federal reserve is, in theory, independent - not subject to the demands of politicians, who, in theory, represent the interests of the people).

A tax that nobody voted for, that harms the poor and helps the government is nothing like the natural decay of an apple. It's value being taken from you without your consent, not unlike a mugger taking value from your wallet in the form of the currency itself.

Many people engage in labor in exchange for value, denominated in currency. Theft of the value of the currency, ultimately, boils down to theft of labor.

[hbrn]

Nothing you said explains why retaining value of past work is a human right.

Most results of the productive output decay same way as apple does.

If you trade iPhone for a car, both car and iPhone will lose value over time. But in your world if you trade iPhone for $1000, only iPhone will lose value. That doesn't seem fair.

Furthermore, you're saying it harms most vulnerable, but I don't believe it is generally true.

If both a billionaire and a salaried working class person lose 10% of their wealth, gap between the two shrinks. Of course, laws of nature are such that rich are getting richer, but that's a different story.

[anonym29]

Clearly, the working class person who loses 10% of their purchasing power has to forgo more essentials than the billionaire who loses 10% of theirs. Maybe that means the working class person can't keep the lights on, maybe they eat 400 calories a day to ensure their children have adequate nutrition.

Plus, flatly rejecting the notion that people have a right to not have the value of their wages stripped by deliberate, human intervention in the first place - with a rationalization for wage theft of "some of the things you would buy with your wages lose value over time anyway"?

Forgive me for having a hard time taking you seriously - you're starting to sound a bit like Tucker Carlson. Have you ever actually been part of the working class?

[hbrn]

> Clearly, the working class person who loses 10% of their purchasing power has to forgo more essentials than the billionaire who loses 10% of theirs

And I never denied that. All I'm saying is that in isolation inflation shrinks the gap between the two. It seems like you're trying to challenge it with emotions.

> Maybe that means the working class person can't keep the lights on, maybe they eat 400 calories a day to ensure their children have adequate nutrition.

Another emotional take. But I encourage you to speak to a working class immigrant. Working class struggles in US are nothing compared to the rest of the world. It's quite funny seeing how top 1% keeps complaining about top 0.01%.

> Plus, flatly rejecting the notion that people have a right to not have the value of their wages stripped by deliberate, human intervention in the first place - with a rationalization for wage theft of "some of the things you would buy with your wages lose value over time anyway"?

I'm still waiting for an explanation why result of labor not losing it's value over time is a human right. You gave several emotional takes and went into ad-hom territory, yet said nothing on the matter.

> Have you ever actually been part of the working class?

I did engage in manual labor for a brief period of time. Though I fail to see how that's relevant. Have you been a billionaire?

[tmn]

This is an often held view. Just for fun. Let me play devils advocate. Yes, currency hoarding (saving) is incentivized. This raises the bar for investing to investing that is needed / has clear value. Similarly, with an inflationary currency, it is real things that are incentivized to be hoarded. Is it not better to save currency and let real things circulate more freely to those who actually need them, as opposed to speculators.