On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 07:35:58AM +0000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
On 2/15/16, juan <juan.g71@gmail.com> wrote:
and thankfully we've now got Bitcoin to keep anti-inflation quacks
So what are you? You sound like a pro inflation quack. Well quack is not best word. Though of course inflationists are poster children for economic bullshit, and their 'theories' are laughable nonsense. But calling them "quacks" kinda misses the point...
"pro inflation quack" - I like it, very apt.
Let's rewrite "anti inflation quack" to "pro stable money proponent", or perhaps more likely: - "pro gold backed currency conspiracy theorist" - "anti fiat currency revolutionaries" - "government financial accountability quacks" - "pro constitution subversives"
or, as we've probably all heard - "pro constitution terrorists/ extremists"
A phrase many years ago from a friend of mine: "Inflation is the precise measure of the transfer of wealth from the people to the banks, for the unit of time for which inflation is being measured."
This applies when the following are true: 1) Fiat currency is the legislated currency. 2) The banks are privatised and not owned by the government/ people (which situation is unconstitutional/ unlawful/ treasonous, as per current USA and Australian constitutions respectively)
3) inflation rates exceed the demurrage cost of holding currency. *every* real thing is subject to entropy. If your currency is not subject to entropy, or theoretically magically increases in value over time cause reasons (bitcoin), it's a wealth transfer from the latercomers to early adopters. Hyperinflation is generally massive failure of something, and a wealth transfer from everyone to whomever's printing the money (usually corrupt government officials). Now maybe gold holds it's value, but it's still got a demurrage cost. The gold holders have to pay gun holders to keep the non- holders away from your gold, or you don't have anymore gold. Bitcoin has to pay the miners, or you don't have any more transferrable bitcoin. If you don't understand entropy, and how that impacts money, then we'll never get any sort of consensus on the when inflation goes from necessary evil to wanton corrupt wealth redistribion. This number is far from precise, and has about as many values as there are people that use money. The real cypherpunk question is when are we going to have a blockchain that allows a distributed and coercion-free market to transparently set a consensus demurrage and/or inflation rate to transfer wealth collectively from those that hold money to the cryptographers and coders that collective maintain the blockchain's value.