I understand where you are right now, but the fact is central banks aren’t knowingly creating inequality, and aside from the ponzi scheme aspect the only economic use of cryptocurrencies is financing crime.
I’m not going to persuade you now, so I wont try. Put a pin in your expectations for the future and revisit this in a few years or a decade’s time. Look at whether any of the extreme outcomes you are predicting now came anywhere even close to actually happening, and why they didn’t happen. Look back now at your opinions in the past of what extreme outcomes would have happened by now. Has any of it come to pass?
Crypto in particular was supposed to have taken over as the payment method of choice, with near costless micro transactions funding amazing new businesses previously impossible. Instead it’s turned into a ridiculous ponzi cult, criminal financing network, and a way for wealthy dilettantes and rich world teenage gamers to collect
imaginary fashion statements. It’s an utter farce and a complete betrayal of its founding principles and goals.
They're just inflating asset prices and protecting investor classes at the expense of the rest of the economy. Disrupting the price discovery mechanism comes at a cost.
Perhaps some here would propose that these activities come at no cost or are otherwise a free lunch.
As for crypto, I am also disappointed. Many of the goals you listed have been accomplished technically. Unfortunately most people don't care. The speculative aspects trump the technology.
> Perhaps some here would propose that these activities come at no cost or are otherwise a free lunch.
Many people don't want to believe that the whole money system is a zero sum game. But it is. Just because people can't observe any change whatsoever when they're watching the numbers in their bank account while the central bank buys another chunk of bonds or lowers the interest rate, (in fact with negative interest being forwarded to end customers, people can actually see), doesn't mean the central bank's actions don't have any consequences for them.
Just because there's a long and not exactly transparent path of connections between the value of some money in a bank account and the actions of a central bank doesn't mean the two are not linked in a very grievous way.
Things exist despite being hard to spot/grasp.
> Many of the goals you listed have been accomplished technically. Unfortunately most people don't care.
Countries such as Lebanon or Argentina serve as examples for the obvious effect that beyond a certain level of inflation, people start to care.
Turkey banned bitcoin but with inflationary pressure being as high as it is, the story is not yet over I'd bet.
> I understand where you are right now, but the fact is central banks aren’t knowingly creating inequality ...
Phew ... what else is happening when most (if not all) of this money is brought into the economy at the level of financial assets?
Do poor people get to see any of this money? Give me one example except for the US one time payment to citizens.
Easy conclusion, if poor people aren't seeing any of this additional money: higher inequality.
Another post here mentions the Cantillon Effect. If you haven't done so already you might want to read up on that.
> I’m not going to persuade you now, so I wont try. Put a pin in your expectations for the future and revisit this in a few years or a decade’s time. Look at whether any of the extreme outcomes you are predicting now came anywhere even close to actually happening, and why they didn’t happen. Look back now at your opinions in the past of what extreme outcomes would have happened by now. Has any of it come to pass?
Well, a few years (3-4 maybe) back only "conspiracists" (including me) were warning/worrying about the danger that loose monetary policy would inevitably lead to high inflation (in the long term). There were these economists/journalists trying to wiggle their way out of the simple (and IMO true) equation (additional money supply without according increase in productivity leads to inflation) by coming up with fancy concepts like modern monetary theory MMT.
What do people in the US face right now? Exactly, high inflation. And no, it's not going to be temporary. Recently even Mr Powell, who'd very much prefer to announce otherwise, has stated that the currently higher (than desired) inflation level is _not_ expected to be oh so temporary. https://text.npr.org/1064478567
My conclusion: my worries were more right than what the majority of news/people claimed, who dismissed all of it as nonsense.
> Crypto in particular was supposed to have taken over as the payment method of choice, with near costless micro transactions funding amazing new businesses previously impossible.
True, bitcoin started out with this goal. At least that was stated, nobody knows exactly what Nakamoto thought when they developed the concept. Might have been different from what was explicitly stated for the sake of the thing gaining more attraction in the beginning than it would probably have, had they instead called it digital gold or similar.
> Instead it’s turned into a ridiculous ponzi cult, ...
Yep, for the moment it definitely has the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. But that's not to say it has to be like this forever (I'm sure one can come up with lots of systems/things that have in the past started out with Ponzi characteristics to then develop into something different) ... were bitcoin to become practically ubiquitous (with no additional potential users left to join in because all of them already have) ... well, then the whole thing would either collapse (proving you right) ... or the price would simply flatten out at whatever number and remain in some dynamic equilibrium with (of course) a certain level of fluctuation.
> ... criminal financing network, ...
Not a very good argument. Bitcoin is definitely not (and most likely won't ever be) the system, that criminals prefer doing their dirty business with. Compare with cash.
> ... and a way for wealthy dilettantes and rich world teenage gamers to collect imaginary fashion statements. It’s an utter farce and a complete betrayal of its founding principles and goals.
Honestly, who cares and in what way does it harm you? As long as bitcoin delivers the service of being a more stable store of value than central bank issued currencies it'll be useful enough to ignore whatever nonsense people do with it.
Everywhere is suffering inflation right now, including plenty of countries that didn’t do any QE or stimulus. It’s true the inflation is the US is higher overall, but looking at inflation trends historically that’s not unusual either. There’s just no good case that QE has ever had a big impact on inflation.
Plenty of people like you were saying the same thing back in 2008. The huge stimulus would drive up inflation. In the real world it temporarily crashed below zero.
The inflation we have now has nothing to do with predictions from before the pandemic. We’re you predicting that?
> Not a very good argument. Bitcoin is definitely not (and most likely won't ever be) the system, that criminals prefer doing their dirty business with. Compare with cash.
Cash is seriously small time. All the big crime syndicates, especially drug cartels, but also people traffickers, phishers and ransom ware gangs user crypto heavily.
What you’re forgetting is that everybody is part of the same economy. You can’t have a world where companies collapse and workers thrive. If companies go down, their employees go down with them, and companies rely on finance. That’s what QE is aimed to prevent happening.
> Everywhere is suffering inflation right now, including plenty of countries that didn’t do any QE or stimulus. It’s true the inflation is the US is higher overall, but looking at inflation trends historically that’s not unusual either. There’s just no good case that QE has ever had a big impact on inflation.
If I try to abstract what you're saying here, what comes out is: you don't see any hard evidence for QE directly (yet not necessarily promptly) causing inflation.
I assume we can agree upon the fact that apart from very few exceptions, in the last four decades just about all significant economies have seen massive increases in asset prices. See here: https://data.oecd.org/chart/6yZt
If the reason is not QE, then what else should have caused this?
I know, inflation by the official definition explicitly excludes things like housing. So to make it clear, when I'm using this term I mean not only the CPI with its basket of goods but also housing and other assets. No, this "definition" doesn't match the official inflation numbers. But still, it doesn't make sense to just use the official inflation number that excludes one of the biggest chunks of people's expenses when you want to describe what's happening to prices.
> Plenty of people like you were saying the same thing back in 2008. The huge stimulus would drive up inflation. In the real world it temporarily crashed below zero.
Yeah, "official" inflation has been pretty low from 2008 up to 2020 ... housing and asset price inflation, not at all. The prices are exploding.
Now there's people who just refer to the official inflation numbers to appease those who're worried about QE easing leading to rising prices.
What they're doing is basically denying that rising asset prices will ever find their way through the chain of the economy down to consumer goods like food/clothes/whatever. But the rising prices do find their way through.
Yes, it takes a good while but that's hardly surprising, because governments/markets/jurisdictions/societies/individuals/processes all have inertia and take time to react. But eventually they all react. Which means: inflation. Just a matter of time, not if.
> The inflation we have now has nothing to do with predictions from before the pandemic. We’re you predicting that?
I did of course not make a prediction back in 2015 that we would see significantly higher numbers of official inflation in 2021. But that's not the point. The point is that with continued QE, some time the inflation is going to happen. There's no way around it. That's what I am/was worried about.
> Cash is seriously small time. All the big crime syndicates, especially drug cartels, but also people traffickers, phishers and ransom ware gangs user crypto heavily.
Neither of us appears to have any numbers on this so this point is of little use.
> What you’re forgetting is that everybody is part of the same economy.
Not forgetting that at all. It's kind of synonymous to my claim that the monetary system is effectively a zero sum game.
> You can’t have a world where companies collapse and workers thrive. If companies go down, their employees go down with them, and companies rely on finance.
There are different kinds of companies. Some of which are quite far removed from the processes that actually generate the value. Say Blackrock for instance.
Kind of like the hydrocephali of the economy. (Yeah, they have employees too they'd take down with them.) With the central banks' support they've done a decent job at making the whole world economy depend upon them, so they're holding states and central banks hostage now.
If it weren't for that, they'd be pretty dispensable compared to the endless list of companies out there that produce actual value: fabric, food, plastics, metals, electronics, software, pharmaceuticals, and so on ...
I guess we disagree here ;-)
> That’s what QE is aimed to prevent happening.
Yeah, sure it is. It's not going to work in the long term though. Ever seen an exponential system retain its exponentiality through all time?
I say there's basically three possible outcomes for governments' increasing indebtedness:
{A} More QE --> inflation --> monetary reform (somewhat likely)
{B} Watering pot: central banks and governments supply money directly to people (not that likely)
{C} Governments turn 180 degrees and start financing their budgets by imposing wealth taxes and such (rather unlikely)
Hooray, let's see what'll have happened in 10 years :D
creates reminder in calendar (set to 10 years) with link to this post
I’m not going to persuade you now, so I wont try. Put a pin in your expectations for the future and revisit this in a few years or a decade’s time. Look at whether any of the extreme outcomes you are predicting now came anywhere even close to actually happening, and why they didn’t happen. Look back now at your opinions in the past of what extreme outcomes would have happened by now. Has any of it come to pass?
Crypto in particular was supposed to have taken over as the payment method of choice, with near costless micro transactions funding amazing new businesses previously impossible. Instead it’s turned into a ridiculous ponzi cult, criminal financing network, and a way for wealthy dilettantes and rich world teenage gamers to collect imaginary fashion statements. It’s an utter farce and a complete betrayal of its founding principles and goals.