1971: The year they broke money

boing
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Happy happy day to you and yours!

6cf2da8392e657c2e0997b0eadb60667

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Thanks, brother. I’m Muslim but I appreciate the sentiment.

I hope you have a great holiday.

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The mess was created when people decided on the 1970s that neoclassical economics had more to say about the world than most fairy tales and decided to build an economic system around it. Throw in a touch of monetarism and we’ve got the (now thankfully but very slowly unraveling) house of cards that is the modern finance system.

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Welcome to Boing Boing :wink:!!

Your presence here in the comments and engagement with the community is a Wonderful Thing™️!

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Is it:

  • we moved off the gold standard
    OR we/Reaganonomics:

  • Introduced the myth of a balanced budget, instead of being comfortable with a gap between taxation & spends;

  • Removed the 90% top marginal tax rate? (We being USA in this case. Yes, this was the top rate at some points). But in general stopped using taxation as a method to stop the stupidly rich distorting the system with cash as power.

  • Dismantled the Keynesian stimulus spending that in the USA was known as the New Deal, which meant that whatever you did there was the fallback of a govt job, and the public got the interstate highways and stuff. [1]

I could go on, but the premise is flawed. Someone more enthusiastic than me can grab the BB link to a review of Debt: the first 10000 years, but money backed by precious metal is the exception not the rule in the 10k or so years of history. It’s so damn clear if you talk to a historian or someone working in the modern central banks that a “silver” penny from the medieval period (which gradually got less and less silver) isn’t valuable for its silver content (within the kingdom…) but for the fact that it can be used to pay taxes to the guy who has had his profile stamped on it.

Anti-inflation propaganda is good for:

  • People who hold debts. Inflation gradually erodes the value of debt.
  • People who hoard wealth. They tend to hoard some of it as debts owed.
  • People who want a “balanced budget”. This is bad for anyone who would benefit from a stimulating spend, so let’s say directly anyone who is employed. Through a pretty short chain of reasoning this mentality is bad for unions - if your option is wear a diaper packing shit in a Amazon warehouse as people are carted out in ambulances or starve, your union will struggle more than if your option is instead a well-paid govt job.

Around these parts we tend to be employed (rather than employers), owe debt rather than hold it, and be pro-union.

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Having owned 3 fiats, I recommend strongly against fiat currency. The rate of depreciation is dizzying.

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Until the Civil War, a huge amount of US capital was backed by the slave standard.

And no one talks about what happened when the plug was pulled on that capital, and who managed to cover their asses and how.

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Sounds like an instructive story.

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Worth a dive. Got a reference?

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I don’t know enough about anything to know when you’re right, but when I see your name, I always read your comments. Been reading BB since almost their first day online.

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Please don’t feel too bad about it. There is a lot of deceptive stuff on YouTube, and we all find ourselves roped in once in a while.

You’re doing great, and I am really glad to see you here in the comments as well. I’m looking forward to all kinds of dialogue with you and everyone!

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Welcome to BoingBoing, comrade! (sincere)

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Happy to be part of the crew/family.

You guys have all been very welcoming!

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Thank you so much.

I’m just happy to be contributing. I’ve loved BB for a while. I’ve been amongst you guys for years, but I’ve never made any noise. It’s great to see that you’re all so positive and kind. It means a lot.

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Huh, I wish. I never knew about slavery capitalism until I bumped into the Panic of 1837, with mortgages, and those bundled into bond issues.

Some notes:

Number Total Today $32.89 Notes
Slave mortgages 250,000 250,000 Ballpark number, probably undershooting
Price per person $750 $187,500,000 $6,166,875,000
Fractional Reserve Banking 5% $3,750,000,000 $123,337,500,000

(250K is too low, it could be 10 times that for all I know.)

Without any discussion of slavery capitalism, it’s like half the pages of the history of the Civil War are missing.

  • The Panic of 1837 destroyed southern financial centers like New Orleans.
  • How deep in hock were those palatial mansions?
  • When the southern states discussed succession, was the discussion really “what benefit do we get as part of the Union?” or was it “Damn, I am so tired of having to make those Yankee mortgage payments!”
  • Succession wouldn’t have freed them from dependence on northern financial centers, so what was their Plan B, a military victory and squeeze the north until the pips squeak?
  • Did the Emancipation Proclamation have to wait until 1863, because first the Confederacy had to repudiate northern debt, and then Wall Street needed a year and a half to weather the shock?
  • After the war, did those uncollectable mortgages suddenly become collectable again, and did debt collectors buy those mortgages pennies on the dollar, head south, and demand repayment at the head of Federal troops? (No good guys in a fight over slavery money.)

I could go on and on, with many questions, but I have to get back to Django Python.

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Came to make a point I’ve made before:

And welcome @dnealy!

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I was hoping for a video that explained the well-known de-coupling that occurred in the early 1970s.

This was not that video. I’m not positive, but I believe that the technical term for videos like this is “a pile of horseshit.”

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I agree. This is a batshit conspiracy nonsense at best, at worst this is weaponized propaganda to blame the gold standard changes instead of some very specific pro-wealth and pro-corporate policy choices made over the last 50 years. Inflation hurts careful savers and helps debtors, and encourages investment in assets. It hurts some people and helps others. Simple as that.

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So, so the dollar is a fiat currency, but Bitcoin isn’t.

or, stated differently:

  1. The Dollar is a fiat currency.
  2. Bitcoin isn’t.
  3. ???
  4. PROFIT!!! And all the problems of Humanity disappear!!!
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