Topic: Money is an imaginary concept, but humanity is enslaved by it - page 10. (Read 17699 times)

It depends on the country's trade deficit and how high the inflation is. If you have hyperinflation combined with high level of imports, the price increase will be transmitted to the local population at a fast rate.

Each country's citizen regard their own currency to be the standard of value. This is a habit they learned from their childhood. When EURUSD exchange rate drops, Germans will think that USD's value increased, while US people will think that Euro depreciated. The price level domestically normally won't change following the exchange rate change, but it will cause a profit/loss for enterprises doing international trades

I think this is because that when people are seeking authority's support, they normally won't go beyond the boarder. A foreign corrency is just too "unauthorized" for them, thus not suitable to measure value domestically

This is very centralized way of thinking, people unconsciously require a central authority to provide them with the unit of value. Could we find a better standard?

There probably is an underlying need for the standardization of value provided by money.  But if and when money clearly buys less and less, people will notice and take evasive action (as happens frequently outside the "core" countries.)

There are a host of facilities used by issuers of paper money to hide the forces of inflation.  The reason Britain kept acquiring colonies was to manufacture demand for paper sterling by having captive governments use it for reserves.  On the eve of World War I, while publicly committed to the convertibility of sterling to gold, Britain held only 3% of the gold required to redeem the total issued paper.  In its day the US used military help for Cold War allies as bargaining chip to have them hold reserves in dollars (and ditto for oil-rich dictatorships.)  There is a reason the US military is present in dozens of countries.

There is also the mechanism of "exorbitant privilege" of reserve currencies, used by both Britain and the US during their respective hegemonies, effectively (via a certain pattern of global capital flows) to offload most of the economic pain and instability of currency and debt creation (in the dominant country) to the developing world.  This is a well-known phenomenon for economists.  And you wonder why there is resentment and terrorism (not that the latter can be justified, just that it is objectively the effect of what is essentially theft by finance.)

Today, deflation (as a result of the financial bust and debt overhang) among the middle and lower classes of the West is the mechanism by which currency retains its prestige and value.  And you wonder why there is growing inequality.  This is essentially the same thing as "exorbitant privilege," but working in a domestic setting.

Great points on the standard unit of value and relativity.  There's always a certain percentage of the population that is looking to scam money.  Dates back to "reeding" coins in in the 1700's in the states and probably even earlier in other parts of the world, where the mint started adding ridges to the side of a coin so that people couldn't skim precious metal (gold/silver) off the sides of the coin.  In the 1900's the scam artists began to control the money supply and started to counterfeit money legally.

I think that price stability only exists because the USD maintains global reserve currency status.  Other currencies have drifted into hyperinflation with overly aggressive monetary expansion.  

Money's value has an tendency to be regarded as a constant when people use fiat money as a unit of value

This should be called "The dependency for standard"

When you use a failed scale to measure the weight of your suitcase, you will accept whatever the reading the scale give you, since normally that scale is the only standard of weight that you have. Unless you have another scale to compare their result, you won't notice that the scale failed. In fact, even if you have another scale, you still won't know which scale failed

Similarly, if you compare USD and Euro, you can't tell if Euro's value is dropping or USD's value is rising, or both of them are rising/dropping at different speed

In a commercial based society, people need such a standard unit of value to do business. Because everything's value fluctuates, they turn to authorities to seek the required standard. However, authorities also have no idea what is the standard unit of value, but since people demand it, they invented fiat money to satisfy that need. In turn, they discoverd that this price stability usually holds by itself because people think that standard is from an authority. So as long as they maintain authoritative, they could print themselves lots of fiat money while still satisfy this need of price stability...And when they measure price level, they only need to exclude the price of those things that they buy, e.g. capital goods and debts

In about 10 years im fairly certain that by then, most americans will see the fiat system for what it is and will be glad to accept bitcoin as an alternative to the corrupt system in place.

I like this post a lot, but think some clarification is called for...

The major means by which the elites' issuance of currency and debt enslaves the populace is not by inflating financial asset prices (stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.) beyond the average person's affordability.  This is a side effect of their actions that they would rather avoid (but really can't.)  The reason they don't like it is that high asset prices can crash (especially since the assets are directly or indirectly supported artificially by central bank and government policy,) and when they do, everybody suffers, the elites included.

The most extreme cases of financial busts were the Great Depression and 2008 crisis, so far.  The elites would definitely not want a repeat.

The major means of enslavement is issuing money and debt to benefit themselves while financial stability lasts, and making the entire economy absorb the costs of the resulting long-term inflation and financial instability.  If you think about it, while confidence lasts, issuing debt is as good as a license to print money.  Politicians get re-elected by conjuring up "free" money to fund benefits and projects.  Bankers take a cut in the new debt they issue.

Another important point is that money's unique status among commodities (that it's always desired) is not a device of enslavement.  This is the core design of the monetary society, to facilitate its unique and irreplaceable role as a means of exchange.  The trouble only comes when the elites don't allow money's value to be determined by the free market, but use some form of public power to artificially prop up the value of the money that they issue.  (And the root cause of trouble is that the elites have quite personal incentives to maximize the issuance, and so the system can't possibly be stable, at least on a long term basis.)

I don't see that happening. You just can't convince quite a big number of the average people. They stand for what they believe in, even if it is wrong. This is completely irrational and illogical, but so are people.   
We could see this change happen very quickly if the government told everyone that we're moving onto Bitcoin (because people.).
It's funny how people tend to complain about corruption, yet they pick the same people and don't try doing anything about it.

we just want more money.even we got what we want always we need something better. always something better than what we have. we are the slaves of modern time.

Justice is also an imaginary concept, the fact something is imaginary doesn't mean it's necessarily bad.

Religion is a much more imaginary concept and it enslaves many more people than money.

Nixon did a few key things that were critical to having the situation we have today.

1. Getting rid of the gold standard, allowing limitless monetary expansion
2. Forcing the world to use the petro dollar, increasing the aggregate demand for the USD
3. Making drugs illegal around the world, creating the largest black market economy, where conflicts are resolved through violence and prisons are filled with victim-less criminals

I think the sad part is that no one has stepped up after Nixon to fix these major issues.  He had only done these things in order to get re-elected, and we are still on the same system.

Food and water are physiological needs, so I wouldn't say that is a concept, it is an actual life or death need.

It is possible to live without money, there are some aboriginal/tribal groups that live off the grid, and interact directly with nature to satisfy their needs of food, water, shelter, etc.  This type of lifestyle isn't possible living in the city, where there is a monetary cost of living.

It is true that people need money. But at the same time they need food, water and social interactions. Do you think that they are also enslaved by it? Or we are just frustrated by bitcoin's rises and drops but not happy that Nixon took the US off the gold standard in the first place? Angry that central bankers continue to meddle with the macroeconomy?

Is this another leftist thread to trash on money?

Because money is not the root of all evil, that is nonsense, nor it is something made up and inexistent.

It is a concept, which is a mathematical representation of goods and services that are valued by human interaction. Thats all money is.

Now fiat money is indeed imaginary, because the CB print as much as they want, but a legitimate currency with fixed supply is just as real as the air in your room, it is invisible and intangible, but it's real.

Just as the internet, thoughts, or sound, all of them are intangible, yet nobody questions their existence. So it's hard to get used to intangible things i know but i can assure you that real money is 100% real, and by real money i mean bitcoin and other cryptos with fixed supply.

The fiat money on the other hand are illusion.

Billions.

Even people that don't subscribe to religion are affected by it, as religious concepts have made their way into laws and policy and infringe on civil liberty in some cases.

Religion involves a lot of conditioning from an early age, and I think it is becoming harder and harder to condition kids that have access to the internet.

I have heard about that Jews were sent by the God to rule the rest of the human, thus they became the bankers. Maybe it is a religious belief that human should be ruled by bankers

But now it seems the religion of science is more widely accepted than bible, the tide is turning

Religion is also an imaginary concept, also many enslaved by it.

Yes, the key question is: Could people live without fiat money? That really require some thinking

The concept of money exists since there was trading, the original money was something that can satisfy everyone's demand, so grain and cattle were used as money, and eventually settled on gold because of its universal acceptance. When gold is used as money, the other utilities of gold are blocked, leaving only transaction utility

The current form of fiat money is already close to the abstraction of money: only satisfying transaction demand. However, it has a fatal flaw: Central banks can create money at will. And since money is power, this gives them too much power

If central bank is GOD, and only works for the greater good of humanity, then no one will question the validity of his action, he have all the right to change money supply, to make sure the economy is on right track

Unfortunately they are just human, when human command god's power, that power will always corrupt, as seen in banking class today

Actually this power is not acquired by force, but automatically granted by people who believe the value of their fiat money, if people don't believe (just like when they see a strange foreign currency note, they have no idea of its value), then that power will disappear

As long as people need fiat money to live, they would always grant banks the power to enslave them. But is it really a must to use fiat money to live? Use gold for example won't grant banks that power, since banks can not create gold out of nothing. Gold standard is removed by the government, they also helped banks to achieve today's status

So the interest rate, which inversely affects the demand of money, is also set by the central bank.  Artificially low interest rates, cause artificially high demand for money, followed by monetary expansion.  I think that this Keynesian model of central decision making only works when the government makes decisions in the best interest of society as a whole rather than being in the best interest of a select few.  Seeing that the government is not currently capable of making decisions for the greater good, that power to control and manipulate the monetary system should be decreased, and likely with a decrease in the control of money, the corruption will decrease as well.

Will you work without money ? If yes, PM me, I have an opportunity.