The team has actually been talking about using long form content nostr events for our opeds. We will reach out to learn more 🤙.

*** HELL NOTE ***

*originally on the bird app as a hell thread. I’ve put minimal effort into reformatting. apologies in advance.*

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this is very confusing even to bitcoiners.

a sound money's value goes up because it enables capital accumulation that magnifies productivity and increases output.

this *means* the value of your time goes up. it can't fail to mean this. your wages will not drop.

note this is not the same as saying that you might be happy with lower wages and may, in real terms, still be earning more on a lower nominal wage.

many may choose to do this.

the argument is about whether wages *have to go down* because of "deflationary money".

they do not.

the value of sound money doesn't go up because of some magical metaphysical deflationary force that pushes prices down without any input from human beings making capital allocation and pricing decisions.

and it doesn't go up because "muh it's deflationary".

it goes up because there is the same amount of money and more stuff.

BUT WHY IS THERE MORE STUFF?!?

because capital accumulation has enabled the same inputs to create more outputs.

those employing this new capital will drop prices to try to boost returns by taking market share from those who have to produce at the older, higher cost.

again, the price of the *outputs*.

labor is an input. there is no capital accumulation that churns out labor.

has the value of labor decreased?

NO.

this entire process LITERALLY MEANS it has increased.

the value of labor increasing via capital accumulation is what causes the price of outputs to fall.

that is *what capital accumulation means*.

it is *why prices fall*.

not some mystical "deflationary" force.

it's also why 99% of jobs even exist in the first place, the only exceptions being subsistence farmers and pure services that somehow, nearly inexplicably, don't have any expenses other than the person's time.

every other job is a person adding value to an employer or directly for a client by manipulating capital.

if you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry.

in no circumstance whatsoever will an employer say,

"ah fuck, we need to pay you less because everything is cheaper now".

nearly the opposite is *obviously* true. employers would say: "ah fuck, we need to pay you less because everything else is *more expensive* now".

if everything is cheaper now, not only is there no such pressure, but this can only be the case because, somewhere, increased labor productivity via capital accumulation is churning out these cheaper things.

the idea that a business can be forced to drop wages to compete with lower prices via capital accumulation elsewhere is tempting to believe at first, but ridiculous on more rigorous analysis.

imagine you run a factory. you pay your workers to make widgets by hand.

you charge $x per widget and you make your y% return.

then the widget factory down the road invests in a widget-making machine that makes takes the same labor to make widgets z-times more efficiently. it can then afford to make more widgets and sell them cheaper.

so it both cranks out way more and drops the price to take market share. prices are falling. hurray. deflation. woop woop.

does it *also* take wages away from its employees? no. why would it do that? what a stupid question.

what about you? do you deduct wages to try to compete?

it might occur to you, but it's stupid. it's literally a luddite attitude.

the only way to compete sustainably is to also accumulate capital such that you can retake market share and regain your returns (on capital, fyi).

hence, even more prices fall. yay. deflation. woop woop.

if you can't do that, you have to close your business. so your employees will lose their jobs, but they will quickly be employed by another capitalist who, seeing the power of this capital to generate returns by (incidentally deflationary) production, hires them to run it.

will he force them to take lower wages?

no. why would he do that? is their time worth less now?

NO!

what a stupid question.

the very existence of the capital that enables their employment is predicated on their time being worth more!

where this confusion ultimately originates is an overly static view, whereas real economic activity and hence real (marginalist, subjectivist, counterfactual) economic analysis requires a dynamic view.

a unit of labor *doing the same outmoded thing* is now worth less, correct.

but people are not machines! people can learn! you wouldn't keep doing the same, outmoded thing. you would learn how to use new stocks of capital. you would magnify the productivity of your labor to the best of your ability.

saying, "but wages will have to come down because that same work is worth less now" is no different from pointing to candlemaker and wagon driver jobs disappearing and claiming capital accumulation - nay, "technology" - destroys jobs.

THE SAME PEOPLE GET NEW JOBS, LUDDITE!

and the people in jobs learn how to become better at them.

applying the argument to somebody who doesn't even need to change jobs is even more obviously asinine.

imagine you are in an office in which the norm is to handwrite letters. then everybody gets given a desktop and told to start emailing people instead.

is your reaction:

a) oh fuck, I don't know how to do that, my handwriting is now worthless, they are going to cut my wages.

b) oh sweet! I can be way more productive now!

this is the "debate" distilled to one nugget of stupidity.

and as if ludditism wasn't enough, if you take this idea seriously, that "deflationary money" will push down wages, then you are inadvertently arguing for labor's share of total income to trend to zero as time goes to infinity, with all productivity gains going to capitalists.

in other words, you are not only a luddite but also a marxist. this is the luddite/marxist case for (against?) bitcoin and sound money. congratulations.

if you want to not be a luddite or a marxist, think a little bit harder about what capital is, where wages come from, and where prices come from.

deflation is not "in the money".

it's in the capital.

greattt 🤝🏻 I'm Diego btw

Getting my parents on #nostr this morning via #[1]​ 💜

Setting them up on #[2]​ so they can partake in this beautiful #value4value network ⚡️

Will post their npubs once they’re ready to make their #introductions 🫡

PV 🤙

Coming soon 🫡

I am not sure if I can operate a search system in a stable way, but I would like to try to make it public.

Ok cool. Are the bounstr bounties being migrated here then?

Should we have considered this case 🤔 ?

#[2]