Topic: Krugman makes some good points - page 3. (Read 7202 times)

In my opinion; of course not. Although credit money and bitcoins are not necessarily antagonistic, as ripple demonstrates.


no, why?
Its deflationary nature  is only a problem for bitcoin to become a mainstream currency, or it could be a problem for the economy if it somehow were forced on us. But the mere existence of something that can store wealth and cant scale with the economy is no threat to the economy. For argument sake; there is only a limited number of Rembrandt paintings; that may make it a worthwhile investment; but I dont see why that would wreck our economy. Then again  no one claims we could use rembrandt paintings to replace credit money, and if we were to try it anyway, I think we can agree it wouldnt end well.


Its rather the opposite.

Does it have to replace credit money? If what you have been saying is true, it should cause economic collapse without even having to compete with credit money as currency, its mere existence should be enough. However your debate with MoonShadow seem to indicate otherwise.

(Sorry if I'm making an odd statement, isolating the problem helps me understand the argument better.)


No, I'm just perfectly convinced that the deflationary aspect will not hinder its usage in commerce. The claimed harmful effects of deflation seem to focus on the investment aspect.

It seems to me that, if the assumption is true, no one will make an investment if it likely will not outperform the economy. The problem I'm having with this is that it should already be the case. I guess we both exhausted our arguments about this, so time will tell...

Is this beat into people during their training at the Keynesian Academy for the Performing Arts? I hear it frequently enough that it sounds like a political slogan.

It's certainly painful to witness.

There is always a conflict between interests of the individual and society. I dont like paying taxes any more than anyone else, but that doesnt mean a society with no taxes is actually feasible or desirable.
Secondly;  the tool that works for you doesnt work for a business that needs credit to invest. It doesnt work for the majority of people wanting to start a business, buy a house, or even a car. So you are a tiny minority.

Let me repeat; I have nothing against bitcoin. Its a great concept, a powerful tool and potentially a lucrative investment; bitcoin is possibly an alternative to gold but anyone who thinks it can actually replace credit money is seriously misguided. You cant have a flourishing  economy without credit and you cant have credit with a hugely deflationary currency. Ripple might fit the bill and could potentially be a more credible alternative to fiat, even if bitcoin is used as its monetary base, like gold used to be our base under the gold standard, but then the obvious question becomes why in the long run you would need that monetary base to begin with.

Close. I want society to allow me to use a tool that works for me. As, indeed, I suspect does everyOtherFrickinBody.

You can tilt at your 'what's good for society' windmills all you want. The market is made by multitudinous individual actors, each endeavoring to maximize their benefit.

You want to sell some monetary scheme that doesn't work for the individual? You're not selling anything that society (merely a large collection of those samesaid individuals) wants.

Amen.  Stupidity should be more painful.

Speaking as a Jew, the fact that he's Jewish isn't the problem. It's the fact that he's a fucking idiot.

We can't help what people we were born to but we do have some choice in whether or not to be a fucking idiot.

AND HE'S GOT NO CLUE

WHAT HE'S TALKIN' BOUT. 

LIL WONDER.

economists know stuff about models.
usually - as in the case of fucken Krugman - they have no clue about the economy. 


Max Keiser - on the opposite - does ! 

Make perfect sense, that is why we should spend fiat and save in bitcoin, you really don't want the same currency works both as a medium of saving and a medium of transaction

You want the medium of saving to be deflative to hold their value, and you want the medium of transaction to be inflative to stimulate spending and improve liquidity, a currency can not be both deflative and inflative at the same time

Honestly, I really didn't care.  Such a revelation neither harms nor improves my personal opinons of him.  And since I'm ethnicly part-Jewish, I've grown accustomed to disagreeing with the liberal wing of my greater relations anyway.

I'm also ethinicly part-"native American", and the Office of Indian Affairs can stick it up their arse, too.

Yes lol, from '53

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman

Krugman is Jewish?

Very good way of putting it! When a transaction is made in a free market it is generally because both parties want what they are receiving more than what they are losing. This means that, unless they made a poor decision, they both leave, in effect, wealthier, than they came.

KRUGMAN IS A FUCKING JEWISH TROLL .


OK ? 

The part I highlighted is absolutely correct; the latter part is probably also correct, but is irrelevent to the core issue.  The specualtion about the reasons why are simply value judgements.  Political perspectives infecting the conversation again.  Again, it's not that I'm disagreeing with your speculations; just that they aren't really material to whether or not money "works for society" or not.  Unless, of course, one considers collectivism to "work" for society, so perhaps I just contradicted myself.

I feel that there are also several assumptions at work here. That government is synonymous with society (implicit in the idea that a currency needs to be controlled to be beneficial to society) and that the government would act in the interest of that society in its actions (likewise).

I see, as I suspect Moonshadow does, that money is a tool that is used by individuals and that the actions of those individuals sums to the interactions of society. The extraction of "the needs of society" as something to be sheparded is simply collectivism and us used as a pretext so subsume the needs and rights of the individual.

I'm sorry, I assumed since you still had an economics textbook to refer to, that you were a student.  Learning that you are at least 40, and posses an economics textbook (presumedly from 20 years ago?) completely alters my mental image.  In my defense, most of the economicly uneducated in this forum are young and impressionable.

You're probably just too old to change your mind.

I stopped right here....

" but they never mention the rather important point that deflation and debt deflation were clearly factors in the economic and social turmoil that saw the fall of the Roman Republic in the first century BC and its replacement with the despotic Roman empire (for a timeline of Roman Republican history, see below)."

Because this is a strawman setup.  Of course "debt deflation" (as it's commonly defined, usually by Kenyesians) had significant effects upon the course of the breakdown.  That's freely acknowledged by most Austrians.  What your lot seems to misunderstand is the praxelogical effects of debt itself that leads to these ends.  It's not the debt deflation that is the root of the problem, it's the debt fueled boom that proceeded it.  The debt deflationary period is called a "correction" for good reasons.


Go right ahead.  If you honestly beleive that money is a tool intended to "work for society" then there is nothing that I can do to change your mind.  Nor would I care to try, you're as free to be wrong as the next guy.  And yes, I want a tool that works for me, for I am the only person that I can trust to best handle my tools.  The prisoner's delima doesn't apply to free market trades in the absense of third party coersion, so in a free society wherein the vast majority of economic interactions occur in the absence of such coersion, it's literally impossible for the collection of individual interactions (presumedly favorable to both sides of the trade) to be a net negative for society.

Think, young man, think.  Think for yourself, not just how your professor expects you to react.

I would appreciate a little less presumptiveness (if not even condescension). Its been almost 20 years since anyone called me a young man: I also dont feel like I somehow have to justify my motivation for posting here; nor do I see you as my professor.

I will respond to the other points when I have time.