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by johnny4000 4826 days ago
Seems to me it's an argument for the status quo, so if you are say Warren Buffet it is a vary valid concern. If on the other hand you just graduated undergrad and had a huge debt and your wage was actually set in bitcoins this would be great for you because the cost of paying off your dept would be from your bitcoin point of view spiraling to zero, as would the cost of everything else. That sounds like a pretty awesome situation to be in.

Be wary of financial explanations, because in most cases when a business person or economist says its good, they either mean its good for keeping things stable, its good for the elite, or its good for the average person, all of which might not be you. For example, you might see someone on CNBC saying they need to make sure they don't have a disorderly default, but really if you are in a position to take advantage of that temporary disorderly market you could gain from that.
1 comments
maxerickson 4826 days ago
If you are going to insist on a deflationary economy, you have to admit the possibility of wages going down over time.

For a cartoon example, with high enough deflation and a less than perfect job market, that debt might represent more years of work when you are 35 than it did when you were 25.

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johnny4000 4823 days ago
Wages in what currency? Bitcoins or USD or? If wages in USD decrease by a huge amount and I get paid in Bitcoins, I can eventually hire more people for a cheaper amount if I pay them in USD.
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maxerickson 4823 days ago
Wages in bitcoin.

But I really want to talk about it in terms of units of productivity. If the value of bitcoin goes up over time, then each unit of productivity will be worth less bitcoin over time. Meaning that relative to units of productivity, a debt will increase.

In your first example, you relied on the assumption that your boss or customers or whatever would not take the current BTC value of your productivity into account. In your new example, you are relying on the people you hire not taking the value of their labor in BTC into account. Neither of those are reasonable assumptions.

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