I can't help but think that any monetary restructuring along these lines should be accompanied by a simultaneous fiscal restructuring along Georgist lines. There is really no reason to let landlords buy back in to their passively appreciating asset, whose value to varying degrees tracks and captures government improvements, so take this opportunity to buy them out once and for all.
Curtis has already acknowledged that the natural financial return on low-risk passive market investing should be very small when investment capital is abundant. Only investors/speculators with signal to add to the market should expect to make gains over and above natural deflation. The same should be true for land. You make gains on land when you identify the best use that it can be put to. Otherwise, you get to enjoy the natural deflationary returns to savings that everyone else does.
"A regulator is better than a teacher, but an explosion is still a good teacher. Uninsured bank runs are one path to a financial system that doesn’t have bank runs. Make sure the explosion isn’t bigger than the system, though."
Maturity transformation is profitable (compared to Austrian banking) in the short term (i.e. until the next bank run). So in the absence of legal prohibitions, it would remain ubiquitous. Anyone who learned their less would simply be driven from the market.
As bad as this blog is (recursive Moldbug), the comments are truly amazing. Concentrated, ultra-dense autism that leads absolutely nowhere. If only this mental force could be harnessed for something like organizing all extant pennies by color grading.
Has Curtis ever grappled with Milton Friedman (as elucidated by Scott Sumner)? Mises was pretty good, and Austrians have something to say (I think Hayek is great), but Curtis is overly fond of Austrian sleight of hand syllogisms, leading to a facile take on monetary economics IMO.
I mean “stable prices, fixed money supply…” only with utter stagnation.
I could be wrong about this, so if I'm missing something, please feel free to help me understand better.
So the underlying theory here is that stuff is always worth some specific value in dollars. However, if the amount of dollars in the economy was suddenly drastically altered, which is essentially what he was describing in the thought experiment, it's possible that it might just entirely detach the economy from dollars at all.
This is sort of what happened in England a few times, when the amount of gold and silver necessary for everyday transactions was flatly not available, paper money came into being to prop up the "lost" precious metals (usually loaned to a bankrupt sovereign). It's entirely possible that, to avoid the inevitable deflationary suck, an alternative method of ledger-keeping comes into being, essentially re-inflating the money supply.
In a sort of micro-example, imagine that a small community has no dollars in cash after teh suk. They still have stuff, and that stuff is not worthless. They *could* choose to start bartering with each other and coming up with some informal system of "cash", like cigarettes in jail. This might go a long way towards ameliorating the deflation.
But *would* it happen? Probably not. Hence the zombie apocalypse.
If anyone is interested in the very real dangers of a "Fedcoin" this conversation will make it very understandable. Not really a thought experiment but if you wonder how it might work, worth a listen:
Yarvin seems to have missed the solution to his own Selden Crisis, quite possibly because he is not evil enough to see it.
FedGov, having issued the FedCoin, should immediately declare it illegal to own and confiscate all of them -- offering at some fixed parity, in trade whatever "new dollar" denominated bank accounts are now contemplated, under changed institutional arrangements. 35 New Dollars per FedCoin.
This was more or less FDR's solution to a similar problem. Once you are in New Deal 2.0 territory, you now find whether there is a crisis or not is purely an institutional matter, and the bit about the currency not of the essence.
BTW, a more interesting thought experiment might be, what would happen if SDRs were replaced by BancorCoins, and some sort of globalist regime enforced upon the Fed.
"...tired, ineffectual imitations of the official press, without impact or interest...." Breitbart and Revolver should hire some unemployed Wes Anderson fan to do their fonts and graphics. Make it look like The Atlantic. This would force The Atlantic to change it's look. Keep up this process and keep them shifting until The Atlantic looks like those Rhodesian Selous Scout web pages Mr. Yarvin used to visit.
The ProPublica/Twitter privacy stuff is comedy gold, Mr. Yarvin. Nice one.
I like to listen to Harvard and Stanford law professors talk to each other on youtube, trying to place such exceptions within the nominal legal regime. They almost pull it off, it's pretty impressive. Like to see any of you try, it's not easy.
When I first subscribed to Gray Mirror, I wrote an email (probably never read) asking yarvin to write about maturity transformation again.
This is pretty close at least
I can't help but think that any monetary restructuring along these lines should be accompanied by a simultaneous fiscal restructuring along Georgist lines. There is really no reason to let landlords buy back in to their passively appreciating asset, whose value to varying degrees tracks and captures government improvements, so take this opportunity to buy them out once and for all.
Curtis has already acknowledged that the natural financial return on low-risk passive market investing should be very small when investment capital is abundant. Only investors/speculators with signal to add to the market should expect to make gains over and above natural deflation. The same should be true for land. You make gains on land when you identify the best use that it can be put to. Otherwise, you get to enjoy the natural deflationary returns to savings that everyone else does.
I usually think I understand Curtis, but I don't really understand this piece much at all.
"A regulator is better than a teacher, but an explosion is still a good teacher. Uninsured bank runs are one path to a financial system that doesn’t have bank runs. Make sure the explosion isn’t bigger than the system, though."
Maturity transformation is profitable (compared to Austrian banking) in the short term (i.e. until the next bank run). So in the absence of legal prohibitions, it would remain ubiquitous. Anyone who learned their less would simply be driven from the market.
As bad as this blog is (recursive Moldbug), the comments are truly amazing. Concentrated, ultra-dense autism that leads absolutely nowhere. If only this mental force could be harnessed for something like organizing all extant pennies by color grading.
Has Curtis ever grappled with Milton Friedman (as elucidated by Scott Sumner)? Mises was pretty good, and Austrians have something to say (I think Hayek is great), but Curtis is overly fond of Austrian sleight of hand syllogisms, leading to a facile take on monetary economics IMO.
I mean “stable prices, fixed money supply…” only with utter stagnation.
I could be wrong about this, so if I'm missing something, please feel free to help me understand better.
So the underlying theory here is that stuff is always worth some specific value in dollars. However, if the amount of dollars in the economy was suddenly drastically altered, which is essentially what he was describing in the thought experiment, it's possible that it might just entirely detach the economy from dollars at all.
This is sort of what happened in England a few times, when the amount of gold and silver necessary for everyday transactions was flatly not available, paper money came into being to prop up the "lost" precious metals (usually loaned to a bankrupt sovereign). It's entirely possible that, to avoid the inevitable deflationary suck, an alternative method of ledger-keeping comes into being, essentially re-inflating the money supply.
In a sort of micro-example, imagine that a small community has no dollars in cash after teh suk. They still have stuff, and that stuff is not worthless. They *could* choose to start bartering with each other and coming up with some informal system of "cash", like cigarettes in jail. This might go a long way towards ameliorating the deflation.
But *would* it happen? Probably not. Hence the zombie apocalypse.
I’m surprised there wasn’t a paragraph or two on fractional reserve banking.
When I first subscribed to Gray Mirror, I wrote an email (probably never read) asking yarvin to write about maturity transformation again.
This is pretty close at least
If anyone is interested in the very real dangers of a "Fedcoin" this conversation will make it very understandable. Not really a thought experiment but if you wonder how it might work, worth a listen:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-end-game-ep-6-lacy-hunt/id1508585135?i=1000487560045
Yarvin seems to have missed the solution to his own Selden Crisis, quite possibly because he is not evil enough to see it.
FedGov, having issued the FedCoin, should immediately declare it illegal to own and confiscate all of them -- offering at some fixed parity, in trade whatever "new dollar" denominated bank accounts are now contemplated, under changed institutional arrangements. 35 New Dollars per FedCoin.
This was more or less FDR's solution to a similar problem. Once you are in New Deal 2.0 territory, you now find whether there is a crisis or not is purely an institutional matter, and the bit about the currency not of the essence.
BTW, a more interesting thought experiment might be, what would happen if SDRs were replaced by BancorCoins, and some sort of globalist regime enforced upon the Fed.
"...tired, ineffectual imitations of the official press, without impact or interest...." Breitbart and Revolver should hire some unemployed Wes Anderson fan to do their fonts and graphics. Make it look like The Atlantic. This would force The Atlantic to change it's look. Keep up this process and keep them shifting until The Atlantic looks like those Rhodesian Selous Scout web pages Mr. Yarvin used to visit.
The ProPublica/Twitter privacy stuff is comedy gold, Mr. Yarvin. Nice one.
I like to listen to Harvard and Stanford law professors talk to each other on youtube, trying to place such exceptions within the nominal legal regime. They almost pull it off, it's pretty impressive. Like to see any of you try, it's not easy.
~sicdev, I was right