Replying to Avatar mister_monster

Man what a discussion you guys are having.

Youre not wrong you know, if your investment can't outperform a savings account it is not a worthwhile investment. But there's a problem with hard cap currency, it's worth noting no such currency existed in the world, ever, except bitcoin.

That problem is this: I want to invest in some worthwhile endeavor, so I take capital and put it towards that endeavor. That leads to economic growth, which leads to increased value of the currency, because now more items chasing the same money, the opposite problem of monetary debasement. I can siphon some of the wealth from what you create via this process simply by holding currency. This is the exact inverse of the cantillion effect.

So more people catch on to this. Hey, I don't have to produce anything with my sweat and imagination and capital, I can just get a little piece of what everyone else does by holding the money they want for it. What we have here is a very interesting tragedy of the commons, one of two particular ones caused by a hard cap supply currency, the other I've spoken about and you can find in my public bookmarks if you want.

What this inevitably leads to is a stagnation of economic output, artificially, you can say that it is self regulating and that would be true more often than not, output stagnates so the money stops climbing in value so the people look for other avenues to gain wealth and start investing again. But it suppresses economic exploration, it has the exact opposite effect as fiat debasement has, where fiat debasement incentivizes valueless investment just to have somewhere to pur capital that doesn't lose value, this has the effect of people not creating as many amazing things as they otherwise would've. The self regulation regulates lower than natural and optimal, just like a continuous percentage of supply self regulates higher than optimal.

Ideally, the concept of supply pacing exactly with growth of economic output is ideal, money never loses or gains purchasing power, the only way to gain wealth is to create it, and deciding not to participate costs you nothing. Of course, that's impossible. Behind that, a self regulating supply increase, that is, when the money goes up in value people produce more of it, otherwise they invest elsewhere, is fantastic. It can't be optimal all the time, but it is most optimal IMO. Gold has this property. The other one, algorithmic linear debasement, a flat amount every x periods of time, is also fantastic, it can't be optimal all the time, it smooths the effect a capped supply has and allows graceful reorganizing of the market indefinitely, but it still does downregulate economic production a little bit.

Well if everyone holds the currency since we are assuming this is the dominant currency to have control over the economy. Then everyone would get this effect meaning it would raise standard of living. Like you said no other currency has a hard cap so all we are saying all of us is theoretical because none of us have a crystal ball we can only make assumptions from our own understandings of economics and how we perceive the future will look.

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You can't increase standard of living with numbers, you can only increase standard of living with production and economic growth. Numbers are how we measure that, once a metric becomes a goal it ceases to be a good metric.

But since it's an adversarial system, that doesnt mean people will go "better not do that", they'll still do it and you get suppression of economic growth. You can't number massage your way out of these kinds of problems.