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It's decidedly less efficient for everyone who benefits from the manipulations (possibly unpopular, but I'd argue most Americans benefit at the expense of the 3rd world).

I do think btc is objectively more fair.. participants have a much stronger expectation of being treated equally.. but to your point. Whether or not you think fairness is good is a different matter. Most would say they think fairness is important, but they betray themselves quickly by talking about who NEEDS to be excluded.

Mike Brock 2y ago 💬 1

My point is the temporal nature of savings is a social construct. Even with sound money, it's not a perfect proxy for the availability of capital, nor does it account for capital depreciation across time, relative to the production in which the savings were accumulated.

You can do some basic thought experiments here to realize how this concept is purely normative.

Let's say you diligently saved up bitcoin for your whole life, and then suddenly, one day, every factory in the planet shut down. For whatever reason. Alien mind control, whatever. The point is you just have to imagine everyone stopped making "stuff" all at once.

What would your bitcoin be "worth"?

It's a silly example, but it reveals the socially contingent nature of all of this.

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Mike Brock 2y ago 💬 2

Moreover, the value of savings is tied to the productive capacity of the economy. If an economy is more productive, each unit of saved currency can command more real goods and services in the future. However, if an economy’s productivity stagnates or declines, the real value of savings may decrease, regardless of whether the nominal amount of money saved grows.

j'ai les clés 2y ago 💬 1

Plz ELI5

Why would the real value of savings decrease when an economy’s productivity stagnates or declines? I don’t follow this, especially in a global market for goods & services.

Mike Brock 2y ago

You assume unrestricted access to said global market. Or that said market exists at all.

Semi-Normal 2y ago

In the same way that monetary scarcity increases what can be purchased with that money, scarcity of goods increases the amount of money those goods can "buy".

If you save when goods are plentiful, and attempt to spend when goods are scarce, you will find that your "real" purchasing power has likely declined.

Semi-Normal 2y ago 💬 1

Completely agree with this. To over simplify... the % of the money you want to spend now roughly equates to the % of the stuff that's available to buy now.

Savers increase the spending power of current spenders by reducing the amount to be spent now, producers increase (or decrease) the spending power of money being currently spent bu producing more or less goods for sale.

If available for sale goes to 0, purchasing power of money being spent goes to 0.

Mike Brock 2y ago

So it's an ethical claim of how the world ought to be. It's not a universal objective truth of what constitutes good money.