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a) No force of nature ensures there be enough of one good to buy everything.

However, if "everyone" would sell "everything" at once, then the double coincidence of wants ensure that "everything" would be priced in money, and Bitcoin is arguably the best money.

b) Goods aren't fiat per se, even though some use "fiat goods" as a term to classify "bad goods" as a joke.

I don't expect any limit on regular goods, except imposed by their producer or by physical constraints.

Any good that requires work isn't fiat, only money is fiat in my eyes.

And that's why Bitcoin is not fiat: It is anchored in the real word by Proof-of-Work, which renders impossible to create Bitcoin out of nothing, unlike fiat.

You have to spend actual energy to create Bitcoin, and no amount of decrees could create more bitcoin.

The arbitrary amount that fixed the final supply of Bitcoin could have been any number known to man.

You'll find different explanations, both technical or philosophical, for why it's 21M and not another number, but what matters isn't the finite supply, but rather the infinite divisibility of the supply.

I see that you pretend that one code commit or one dev could change bitcoin in a few keystrokes, and that's entirely true. You could even do it yourself, and it has been done several times in the past already.

But this just create something else, which is not Bitcoin... and today market forces have priced these "something else" at a fraction of the price of Bitcoin.

Lysander Spooner 2y ago

Why are you arbitrarily selecting the price of buying all goods only once?

Why are you arbitrarily selecting the value of spending all the money only once?

Couldn't there be too many goods to ever be bought with all the money in one go? Yes. Money circulates, the same $1 bill has bought maybe $600 worth of goods.

Goods also circulate, so I don't understand how you settled on 1 sale once for each thing.

There is no invisible hand pushing 'the value' of a money to match the price of buying precisely all of the goods in an economy precisely once.

You and I value everything very differently, and that valuation is not in terms of a nominal amount (25420 of another good) but an ordinal ranking (1st, 2nd, 3rd). This also applies to BTC. I don't value it at the index price. Never have.

If you valued things in terms of nominal amounts you would sit there clicking Buy until you are broke. Whenever you buy anything. And that's what a lot of people do with Bitcoin, because it gets them in the mindset of nominal objective value. The Bitcoin mindset says value is an objective, nominal thing that is wide open to manipulation through central planning (like the artificially fixed rate of supply and periodic halving). Not the subjective, ordinal ranking clearly articulated by the Austrian school.

Guess how much I value 1 BTC at? I wouldn't give up my salad. If you say that's a lie, I would resell it, all you're pointing out is that I value what I could sell it for -- not the BTC. That in itself is less than worthless, because it comes with and leaves a surveillance snail trail. That something is scarce doesn't "make it valuable" in an objective sense. But you cannot understand why until you understand there's no such thing as objective value.

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Discussion

mmm 2y ago

yes

Michael R. Sullivan 2y ago

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.

Lysander Spooner 2y ago

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.

Michael R. Sullivan 2y ago

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.

Lysander Spooner 2y ago

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.

Michael R. Sullivan 2y ago

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 🙃

Lysander Spooner 2y ago

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.

Michael R. Sullivan 2y ago

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.

Lysander Spooner 2y ago

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.

Michael R. Sullivan 2y ago

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.

Lysander Spooner 2y ago

We're going to pretend its unable to be edited arbitrarily by one of five dudes. Because you can always fork, right?

bitcoinjiujitsu 2y ago

#[4] who are the 5 dudes that can arbitrarily edit #Bitcoin?

Mysth 2y ago

I'm not arbitrarily selecting anything, I'm just taking an example that can be simply understood as a thought experiment.

- "Couldn't there be too many goods to ever be bought with all the money in one go? Yes. Money circulates, the same $1 bill has bought maybe $600 worth of goods."

I disagree. Because, transactions have to be settled.

Bitcoin on base layer guarantee finite settlement after 3 to 6 confirmations.

Assuming your $1 bill bought $600 worth of goods at $1 each, it didn't do it in one go, but it took 600 different transaction over several months or years.

But through fiat, your $1 bill could be rehypothecated 600 times and produce $600 of buying power at once. That's one of the things Bitcoin is trying to fix.

- "There is no invisible hand pushing 'the value' of a money to match the price of buying precisely all of the goods in an economy precisely once."

Indeed, but if you can divide your money infinitely (using multiple layers of bitcoin), then you have a money that can actually match precisely what you want to buy (or sell), however small or huge your transaction has to be.

It's also true that nothing prevents someone to ask, say for a marvelous piece of art: "21 millions Bitcoin + The sole ownership of the state of Texas"... however that's not a money problem but rather a tell sign about the actual willingness (or craziness) of the seller.

- "You and I value everything very differently."

We all do, and we're all speculators here, as are all human beings.

That's why I'm not trying to convince you to give up your salad, nor anything else for one BTC.

I'll argue that you'll find no one on earth who sell you his BTC for your salad, or even for less than roughly it's market price (maybe 20/40% less at worst, if coins are coming from "criminal UTXOs", but still very far from a salad.)

You couldn't buy a BTC from me at current market price, and I couldn't sell you a BTC at current market price:

That's what make a market, and in the end, Bitcoin will either be worth infinitely more than today, or zero.

Lysander Spooner 2y ago

You arbitrarily selected 1 sale of all the goods in the world, once, and 1 spend of all the Bitcoin, once. It doesn't seem arbitrary because 1 is such an upstanding character, but it is because so many goods and all money can be spent repeatedly. This is why there's no hidden hand matching up all the money to all the goods. Once.

"I disagree. Because, transactions have to be settled."

I was trying to be polite, but you can't actually settle buying everyone even once at 7 transactions per second lol. How many aeons do we have to wait? It would take half a minute just to settle for everything on my properties alone.

"You couldn't buy a BTC from me at current market price, and I couldn't sell you a BTC at current market price: That's what make a market".

Really, that's the opposite of what makes a market. You don't have a market until you have something I want more than something I have which you want, and vice versa. We're just passing each other like ships in the night. Bitcoin has other tricks up its sleeve to discourage exchange, like the expectation to be worth more tomorrow. As I just spelled out in my response to someone else here, the implication of the Austrian understanding that prosperity itself comes from voluntary exchanges, is that every exchange that never happened because you chose to hodl Bitcoin means Bitcoin made everyone poorer on net.