[ericd]

It’s an important function, but the guys making these bets frequently pull down $10-$100M per year, each. That’s a huge toll to extract from the productive economy for playing this game.

And then there are the guys managing things like pensions, skimming a percentage every year, just because they happen to be locked into that position, meanwhile underperforming a basket of index funds. Just happily eating away at the retirement savings of thousands-millions.

[b112]

There's no such thing as money being squandered. Money isn't a resource. It's not food, or energy, or even an allotment of work.

If you try to seize or reduce, what you perceive as excess, wasted money supply, that money supply will simply cease to exist.

[thou42o369098]

It is when it gets spent - duh!

This endless money-spinning & the larger monetary system is a big scam to steal from actual productive work. How is it fair to normal people that the whole system is rigged such that if they DON'T indulge in all this gambling (ignore the fact that most retail traders are on the sucker-end of the trade), they lose whatever wealth they've stored to inflation ?

[dpoloncsak]

Maybe I've drank the kool-aid, but I don't understand inflation to be an effect of a 'rigged system'. I think anyway you look at it, it's natural

[lupire]

Money is an IOU. It's not a secret that US central bank policy is to devalue those IOUs at a rate of 2% per year in order to artificially stimulate demand for production.

[gloryjulio]

We can have different opinion on how much inflation is too much. But the universal consensus is that a little bit of inflation is good. It's ok if you think 2% too high. Maybe 1.25% is better.

But we cannot just dispute this basic economic model and thinking that 0 or negative inflation (which would cause the stop of investment), or no consensus(that would just cause more chaos) is better. That's just absurd

[ericd]

The value of the USD wasn’t monotonically inflating away for most of its history, people were mostly fine? Were those periods disastrous in some way?

[b112]

What an incredibly revisionist take on history.

For decades before that policy, a policy even the Bank of Canada holds, inflation was crazy high. The 80s saw inflation, in Canada, briefly hit over 20%, and double digit inflation was a regular thing.

Everyone decided 2% would be a good rate to aim for, that more control was better, to prevent inflation from flying out of control.

Then some dude comes along and tries to spin it like it's a conspiracy to hurt people.

Please, read a little history. Please.

[ericd]

It’s squandered from the perspective of the laborers and savers, because they don’t have it anymore.

I didn’t say anything about excess money supply, though, were you responding to a different comment?

[b112]

Money just isn't viewable with this paradigm. It's not a thing which has shortages, a fixed value, excess.

Ypur original comment spoke of, what might be best thought of as leeches on society.

But just as a leech sucks blood, so too is that blood easily replenished. Money is literally unlimited, compared to blood replenishment.

You could literally destroy 100 trillion of "money", and various US banks would just make more.

I get what you're saying, and the view of individuals in the system, but it's meaningless on larger scale.

Anyhow. Enjoy the weekend.