Topic: Defiatize the unit of value (Read 3145 times)

What is a "non-digital native"? Also, there are billions of people on the planet still struggling with providing adequate drinking water, food, and shelter. We aren't in some digital utopia, this is very much a new part of society.

That's not accurate. Don't believe it just because the internet says so.

Again, highly dramatic and inaccurate.

Its not up to the consumer.  Its up to the state.  Fiat money is created and maintained by the state.

As a consumer you are free to use any private money you want except when paying taxes.  You have to use the states money to pay taxes

So then we arrive at the same question.  Why is private money better than state money?

Look up Free Banking Era and see what happened during that time

I hate to be this blunt, but honestly the general problem of non-digital natives will be solved over time as the people who aren't comfortable with technology get old and die.

In the specific case of Bitcoin, the factor you've left out of your analysis is that fiat currencies around the world are in the process of committing suicide.

If our grandparents can figure out how to use Facebook just because they want to see everyone's pictures then they can figure out how to use Bitcoin as their financial survival increasingly depends on it.

Obviously you are not a Nigerian prince, so you can not get what I'm talking about  

You used to work in a vague large multinational? Man, no way, I used to work for a nondescript multinational so you should believe what I am saying! I am also a Nigerian prince!

I doubt your efficiency rose 10 to 20 times. What industry were you involved in, and why was efficiency so poor? And those are the ONLY two possible reasons in your fabricated scenario? Unlikely. That's a fake choice you're trying to force.

OMG! You've seen it with your own make believe eyes! It must be true! You're making all of this up, it's pretty obvious.

It will be a long process, maybe will never happen. Bitcoin is deflative and increase in value constantly, it is difficult to act as a unit of value

Energy can be used as a unit of value, like Joule. Energy can always be utilized in modern society to do some work, so its value is relatively objective. However, you can't store and circulate energy directly, so something that is produced mostly by energy will act as a token of corresponding energy's value

Since most of the time Bitcoin's value is closely related to the energy that used to produce it, using bitcoin as a token of energy will make it close to a very objective measure of value

That's just my experience. I used to work in a large multinational enterprise. In 10 years, I clearly observed that the efficiency has increased at least by 10 to 20 times. However, the average salary of the branch never raised by that much, in fact it barely keep up with the inflation. Where are all those increased productivity gone? Why did not we have 5-10 times increase in salary?

There could be two reasons:

1. Demand has dropped due to market saturation, more production means less profit, so those added capacity will only result in redundancy of work force, not added income

2. Although the money supply also increased many folds, but those money did not reach the consumer to purchase more of our product thus bring us more income, they actually went to a few investors, they use majority of those money to push up the asset price and seldom increased the consumption of the whole society.

So, your income solely depend on where the FED money goes. This is very true because I have seen some of those top executives chasing the FED money, they even call it the top of the food chain. It is amazing that although we have so high productivity today, most of the people are still chasing those money which is simply printed by a few, and they don't even care slaughter each other to get a bigger share.

In one word, as long as banks create money and others chase, most of the people will always fall to the lower end of the food chain and get the least share of those money

To defiatize the unit value of bitcoin at this time or even on the next five to ten years is next to impossible. we always need something to measure its value. In saying that the valuation of one currency is not correlated into another currency is like saying that import and export is not existing.

That's a completely fabricated statistic. How do you expect to be taken seriously when you're clearly making things up?

No, checkbook money are just like your bitcoins in an exchange, it is the number that platform shows you, just a number in their database. It is this part most of the people misunderstand

For example, you put 100 bitcoins in an exchange, your account shows a number of 100, exchange write 100 coins in their checkbook. However, those coins went to their own wallet, and get moved to somewhere else. You still play around with the platform thinking you are playing with your bitcoin. But one day, the platform closed and the owner claim it was hacked... In fact, those coins are long gone the moment you put them in, you were just playing with numbers in their database

Same for the banks, the moment your 100 dollar bill were saved into a bank account, it is gone, you are left with only a number in your account to play with. Banks lend 90% of that bill to another people and he deposited or spent and deposited to merchants account in the same bank and they get another number 90 dollars, and so on. Because there are many people playing in the bank's account just like in an exchange, they are all playing with numbers, it is these numbers banks call it M2 M3 etc... But without your original dollar bill, these numbers will all disappear since they never existed in reality, that is the reason banks strictly restrict your daily withdraw of cash, a large scale of cash withdraw will empty their vault quickly

So, base money is the money, checkbook money is database numbers, just like your bitcoins in an exchange, they never existed in reality

When you do commerce with other people, those numbers move around: Your numbers get lower, merchant number get higher. From bank's point of view, the sum of your numbers does not change, they don't need to move money around, just adjust numbers in your account. However, every time the same money get loaned again, there will be new numbers generated in the database, that is the reason they say loan create money, in fact it only create new database numbers

If paper money is totally eliminated, then the loop will close, banks will never have a bank run and can create as much money as they want to rob people of their wealth. But what if people abandon their money altogether and don't play with their game anymore? Bitcoin fist time in human history let you hold your own money without the need to put them in a bank and play with numbers in their database, this is a vast evolution

What I mean is, you and many others around you should have 10 times more wealth than you have now, because your productivity is enough high to command that amount of wealth. However in current system you are maxed out at your current status, all your extra productivity goes to those bankers and become their asset, they don't work, you work

What is this fair share bull****? What is this egalitarian crap? Economic systems are inherently unequal, because we are not equal. People makes choices and win or lose. You aren't entitled to a fair share, you're entitled to the same shot every individual receives. Make your own way instead of asking someone to give it to you.

You may not call checkbook money "money", but it's 90% of what most people and industry needs for commerce. Some countries are exploring eliminating paper money altogether. Base money will then just be numbers in checkbooks between the fed and the banks.  That will certainly "confuse" normal people.

I'm not saying base money isn't important. It keeps the banks honest. In practice they never have to hand out more than a small fraction of their liabilities in base money. But they do have to produce it on demand hence they need to keep their reputations intact so they can borrow some when they need it.  This makes the correspondence between checkbook money and base money very tight.

My comments on the desirability of being able to borrow fiat (base or checkbook) still hold. My comments on the opinion that fiat (base or checkbook) is backed by loan contracts representing promises to labor also still hold. Banks will shun a bank that has ruined its own credit by not balancing its liabilities (checkbook accounts) with assets (loan contracts and the associated income).

Base money, of course, can be printed as needed by the fed. They print the right amount to target inflation at under 2%. That's the "if it's well managed" part of my comments. As far as I can tell, the fed seems to be pretty conservative in this regard.

An intersting alternative setup is to get rid of the fed and allow banks to issue their own paper money. See the literature on free banking for how that works. The idea is that if a bank abuses its power to print it is punished by the market when their paper bills are not accepted. The owners will have a market incentive to be responsible.

There is nothing called "total fiat money", only two types of money: base money and checkbook money. Banks usually add them together and call it money supply, but this is to confuse normal people

A 100$ note is base money, banks can lend it out again and again to accumulate 1000$ in their checkbook (records), but at any time, they have only 100$ note in circulation, when more than two customer ask for a withdraw at the same time, bank will run into a liquidity problem and have to borrow base money from FED. Of course in a mostly electronic money system like today, the customer withdraw will end up in another bank account, which the original bank can borrow back to deal with more withdraw, so the liquidity crisis only happens when all the banks were facing the same withdraw pressure in a very short time

Anyway, that $1000 (or M2) is only the total number recorded on bank's checkbook, it has nothing to do with what amount of money in circulation, it is just a database number indicating how many times the banks has lent the same money out

That's true, banks bribe you with a good job and a family life and even a home and a nice car, while at the same time they grab hundreds of more asset than you without doing anything, but you don't care, since you are fine. This is the mindset of many people, so you really should not be here

But there are some people who feel the unfairness nature of the current system and want to get their fair share of the wealth

He's right. The practice by which banks create money is called "fractional reserve banking."

You keep repeating one event:


My slavery? Hahahaha my slavery is quite palatable. I have a job I enjoy, a wife I love, a nice home, a dependable vehicle, hobbies I enjoy, and enough of this evil evil money to provide all of these things comfortably. If this is the curse of fiat, I welcome the curse!

I'm afraid that's not right.

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdf

Commercial banks do create money. It may not be base money but base money is only a small fraction of total fiat money. They create a loan on their books and balance it with an asset which is the contract you sign for a loan, not any base money they may or may not have. Base money is only used for cash withdrawals, a very small value relative to their normal volume. If they run short they're allowed to run to the fed and borrow some.

They don't over borrow from the fed because they have to pay interest. They can't just have base cash sitting in their vaults if they have to pay interest on it.

Base money is small part of the total fiat money we use.

Commercial banks does not create money, I mean base money, not some check book numbers in their database. When you ask for a loan, if commercial bank does not have base money, they can not give you a loan, that's a liquidity problem. Otherwise there will never be any bank failure, they could just loan to each other and create trillions of dollars

Only FED create base money when government and commercial banks borrow from them. However, a loan is a promise to pay back in the future, what if you are not able to pay back? Then you have to default and all those money will be backed by nothing. So money backed by debt should worth much less than money backed by existing asset, since the debt is some thing in future, must be discounted for its risk of default

That is the situation today, since the aggregate ability of the whole society to pay back the loan will be less and less because of diminishing increase of productivity (partly caused by less and less increase in aggregate demand due to centralization and automation of the production), the loan based money issuing will eventually end up with large scale of default

The only way to avoid such a default is to borrow more and more to pay back the loan + interest, and that is what the government is doing right now. So it becomes such a game: Your ability to pay back the loan depends on your ability to get new loans, as long as you can get new loans, the game continues

So, unlike what you believe, the fiat currency's value is backed by the government's ability to get new loans, not any tangible product or service in future

Money is no different than any other goods, it is just the most liquid commodities in the market, it must have a cost to hold its value. Money without production cost is a scam

You know, of course that most money is not printed by the central bank. Most money is created by the stroke of a pen by normal banks when someone comes in asking for a loan. 90% of our economy runs on money created this way.

In reality fiat is not without backing. Fiat is backed by the promises we make to each other to pay back loans. Personally, I can't think of a better backing for the money I hold. Much better than some arbitrary faith in a yellow metal or some cryptography.

If the Government paid back all it's loans it would have to do it by taxing everyone today, making us poorer today. We are getting richer as a society all the time so it makes sense to pay our loans in the future when we are wealthier. Government borrowing is being paid off all the time. We do borrow as well so it just appears that we are not paying our debt. The amount we can wisely collectively borrow is also going up because we are getting richer. It makes sense that the balance goes up. We can afford it.

You may disagree with how much society spends through Government. That's politics. Just don't blame fiat. Fiat enables Government. It enables Industry. It enables you and me. It's just a tool and a good one if well managed.