Doesn't one thing having subjective value to another make it have some degree of subjective value to you?
For example, I don't want a Dogecoin, but if someone offered me 100k Dogecoin I would take it then sell it for whatever I can get over a few grand.
I morally disagree with everything it stands for, but it still has value to me based upon the value it has to others. I don't like thay fact, but I can't deny it.
You value selling the Dogecoin, the Dogecoin as a means, not the Dogecoin as an end. Which is exactly the right way to think about any exchange currency.
People here talk about stacking and hodling Bitcoin as if digital fiat on a grand unified surveillance chain should be valued as a good in itself, not a mere facilitator of exchange to give away immediately, like your Dogecoin.
Oh, that's because they believe it is centrally planned to be deflationary, all of reality be damned? Their end, then, is accruing wealth, and the means is buying Bitcoin low and selling Bitcoin high. But if the price of Bitcoin is expected to rise, that actively discourages the use case as a medium of exchange. You're less likely to hire Johnny to mow your lawn, more likely to do it yourself - and thus make the whole economy poorer, one exchange that never happened at a time (the Austrian school teaches us prosperity itself excretes from the felt improvement in standard of living from both parties to a voluntary exchange). By discouraging voluntary exchanges, Bitcoin makes everyone poorer in real terms - regardless what happens to it's index price.
Any large fluctuation in any direction retards the function of an exchange currency and renders economic calculation in terms of anything else in advance impossible. And with a centrally planned, artificially fixed rate of supply, there's no market-determined rate of supply that can ramp up or down to counterbalance swings in demand, to stabilize the price, like there is with most goods. Bitcoin is thus engineered to swing wildly in response to any changes in apparent demand, enabling whales to game it by wash trading and generally just guaranteeing volatility into the future.
I actually find the incentive to reduce spending to be a positive. We live in a time of rampant overconsumption, causing inflation to incentivize more spending is unethical and toxic to culture in my opinion. I would prefer a currency with no inflation whatsoever.
We actually already live in a world with rapid deflation in certain areas. TVs rapidly decrease in price every year, we all know this, but still I buy TVs when I need them. I don't put off purchasing one just because I think it'll be cheaper in two years.
It's never a positive, unless you're a primitivist who idealizes and romanticizes poverty.
"I actually find the incentive to reduce voluntary exchanges to be a positive."
Doh. What you're really saying is a lot clearer worded this way.
Spending is not just spending, it's also earning. Every time you spend, someone else earns. But also, every time you spend, you earn more than you spent, in your own estimation - or you wouldn't have spent!
Maximizing voluntary exchanges is an unbridled good.
I'm having a really hard time following your reasoning throughout these.
It seems like you just keep saying unconnected ideas without threads of thought between them trying to argue just for the sake of it.
I don't think you responded to my point, but yes I still do believe in what I wrote above. I suppose that makes me whatever name it was you called me 🙃
You made 2 points, I addressed the first and will clarify here. Your 2nd point was a non-issue, we buy *despite* deflation of money relative to a good like a TV, and that's also what I said: Deflation discourages spending - not prevents it.
Wanting to reduce voluntary exchanges makes you flatly anti-human. Terms like "rampant overspending" put oneself in the place of God to tell other people how rich they shouldn't be. It' s completely interchangeable with "rampant overearning" since you prefer what you get to what you spend.
Did you even notice what I said? Every time someone spends, not only someone else earns, but THEY earn more than they spent - in their own estimation!
You want people to earn less. To spend less is to earn less, because every voluntary exchange, by definition, is at least expected to give all parties something they prefer to what they gave up.
You changed my quote to make your argument. I never said the "voluntary exchange" thing your entire argument was predicated on.
I think voluntary exchange is one of the most fundamental rights in a society. I think inflation incentivizes overconsumption, a perfect money with no inflation does not have that same incentive. I'm not arguing for some hypothetical money with 10% YOY deflation.
I simply think that underlying tool we use to valuate everything in society, should remain perfectly finite.
If you believe it should be finite, you'd think you'd go for a non-fiat good - one that never had an arbitrary amount decreed into existence, and one that physically could not, ever.
How's that inflation avoidance doing anyway? You sure if my widgets are finite they cannot lose value? Last I checked (today) BTC inflated 45% more than USD did in the past year. Talking hypothetical is great and all, but no central planner has ever invented a good that doesnt lose value relative to other goods, and it doesnt start here.
Perfectly finite is actually the reason I find bitcoin so enthralling. It is the most scarce thing to exist.
The first ever miner of bitcoin had to expend physical energy to get their first bitcoin. It wasn't even free for Satoshi.
