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Viktor Vsk
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Building #saltivka đŸ‡ș🇩 Nostr Friendly Relay (https://saltivka.org) Building #Knowstr — smart Nostr events aggregator (https://github.com/viktorvsk/knowstr) Working to enable people have more activities through the word of mouth between friends, friends of friends and more đŸ€ with https://recar.io and https://valent.network

In deflationary economy? Lets quickly think here.

TL;DR its a VERY complex topic and I would like more energy put into researches then it goes into “few understand it” and “bitcoin fixes this”

First, I would point that even today there are a lot of people who have enough money to cover their basic needs even without having to work (creating value) — I’m talking homeless and some set of mild criminals, not billionaires. Its just their “enough” is pretty close to zero. Also, there are very many people who do the smallest amount of work just to cover their basic needs because they don’t want to improve their lifestyle because of laziness or can’t due to health issues. So all those types of people unlikely to contribute more in case of money become more and more expensive with time. At best - they will have slightly better lifestyle. At worst - number of types of those people will increase.

Second, lets imagine today all fiat currencies disappear, everything is priced in bitcoin. Each day you can buy more and more if you have bitcoin. (We probably have to omit what happens to the world since govts can’t properly fund themselves but thats completely another story). Then if all the money you can save only buys more bread and water each day (change to some food you like) and you have where to live and utilities also get less expensive somehow then you can pretty preciously calculate how much amount of money you need to live until 90 years. And you have a clear retirement plan “earn X btc and stop working”

However, probably different people will have different X values and different velocity achieving it so they will fall out of economy at different times. Which in reality will probably lead to random price changes - i.e. if all bread producers in the world decided to retire then probably price of bread will skyrocket even though money supply is fixed. And you who already retired with a plan should either chose something instead of bread or keep working more

But the main question is “will deflationary economy improve people’s desire to innovate and make progress and will make it easier of will it make things worse?”. Inflationary economy claims it does make things better (even if this is incorrect). Those who promote bitcoin and deflationary economy just say “fuck it, they print money, we don’t like it” instead of arguments and researches today unfortunately

Bitcoin was created as an act of protest of incompetent money management. And it does great job to make people more responsible if adopted. However, here we are, we have bitcoin working pretty good actually, but it doesn’t grow exponentially every month and even every 4 years recently. And some people who want more profits off of it claim we need more radical measures including govt overthow and removal of debt from economy (I have personally no idea how innovations could happen without debt and credit and would be very happy to read such researches instead of “FEW”)

Fuck, today no one even tries to answer the question “why the hell if in recent years money supply went crazy bitcoin haven’t even responded accordingly?!”. Instead bitcoin promoters say “THEY control its price by BLAH-BLAH-BLAH”

Well, first, I think people should work until they die. Just not from 9 to 5, but by producing value to humanity in the way they enjoy - teaching, making art, growing kids etc

Second, regarding why would people stop increasing their life standard when they have basic needs covered — thats what we see today — there are people every here and there who don’t want to increase their life standard and stay in the same place for entire life. They don’t quit bad habits, don’t start eat healthy food, they are not eager for knowledge etc. and today those people struggle, work 9to5 and blame THEM (some other things) in their problem. But those people are forced to work by the economy. And they feel bad because: 1) they are forced, 2) they don’t want to improve their life. And I believe if such ppl will have basic needs covered by NGU they will just seat idle

Billionaires are a good example btw. Yes, there are sole of them who keep working even though they have everything covered. But first, I believe some of them could do it subconsciously because they are afraid to become poor again. And second, look at their kids who are wealthy from the start - being able not to think about money at all doesn’t seem to make those people contributing to humanity in the best way they can, doesn’t make them want to innovate — they usually mostly buy drugs and showoff with their wealth. And bitcoin doesn’t fix this

Everything has price. Some people have slightly different definitions of price

So you assume that in the world where prices dont go up there are still ppl who want to risk and innovate. Who will try to fine products ppl want to spend money even though ppl stick to hoarding

This way those products must be of top quality (cancer cure) or essential (bread)

I really hope for that. But doubt a lot because our human nature is lazy and stupid usually. And I’m not really sure we are 100% ready for that

Small note here, everything will become more affordable during deflation if innovations/optimizations keep coming. If there are always appearing more efficient ways of manufacturing etc

If I earned X money and can afford bread and water till the end of my life and I don’t actually want to do anything except for watching the birds in the nature and there are 80% of ppl like me - then prices of bread and water will skyrocket and CPU, jets and smartphones will fall down but nobody still buys it

Usual argument why inflation is necessary:

In case of deflation, if the price of everything goes down, people won't spend their money, because they will rather wait, and that is bad for the economy.

Good response (idea came from nostr:npub1h8nk2346qezka5cpm8jjh3yl5j88pf4ly2ptu7s6uu55wcfqy0wq36rpev ):

Inflation is a result, not a cause.

The price of the things can be defined as:

Price = "Amount of money" / "Amount of goods"

So inflation occurs as a result if either the amount of goods decrease (gdp) or the amount of money increase (money supply).

If we fix the money supply (amount of money), deflation can only occur if the amount of goods increase, so when the economy grows. So deflation means the economy is growing.

Now what is the problem with deflation then?

The problem bothering me with deflation is if humanity is ready for it? If prices go down and ppl hoard then only the most necessary goods and services will be bought and sold: food, utilities
 maybe even hair cut will be mostly handled by yourself

I see such a world as rather good - instead of new iphones each year we could put more efforts into space research, cancer fighting and thats all

However, most of the people seem to be quite good with iphones, hollywood movies and new dresses

Are you sure the humanity wants deflation and not just a tiny minority of people are ready to sacrifice current lifestyle in favor or the greater good?

Don’t really understand what they are still doing in EU. They should be excluded and let to initiate rusia ass lickers alliance with Serbia

It seems to me that our modern happy and peaceful life prevents us from understanding how much we underestimate a human will to survive, eat and drink

Do you prefer shutting down your country’s military industrial complex when there are dictators acting however they want while people who are far away from them (for now) want to drink smoothies and think of something aristocratic?

Or do you think cutting down military industrial expenses will make dictators disappear ?

Unfortunately, lately I personally see more and more people believe this and similar without any reasoning just because they hope US collapse will pump bitcoin price

Long story short, fines for driving are rather good. But if in your case there is really a place where its unavoidable to break rules - it has to be changed. And it doesn’t require a revolution to achieve :)

Government is people, even if its hard to believe :) police are people, doctors are people, killers are people, volunteers are people - just like me and you :) and people could be good or bad

Set of rules govts create (laws) - is a game

I don’t have any interest educating you on what wars and govts are really are and how history works

I will only finish with that I didn’t call you stupid. The way you try to promote bitcoin is stupid. And I (as one of the biggest bitcoin supporters) feel very sorry that I have to share this scene with people thinking such arguments are smart, funny and have at least some sense

Unfortunately, the most recent good promoters and great critics of bitcoin are lost in 2011 on bitcointalks. That was my point