True, true! And there are some rules and regulations guiding the stock market (though it’s probably less well-regulated since the 80s) that is supposed to level the playing field.
But we really need a return to G-S in commercial banking, more credit unions, and more secure means of saving for retirement that isn’t overly complex, but we’re not all investment bankers… I’d like to see pensions making a comeback.
Right - but then you just gave thugs for hire your Bitcoin and are somehow expecting thieves to just give it to you.
A return to defined-benefit pensions would make a huge difference. 401(k)s are the norm, with the defined-benefit plans now almost exclusively offered by unions (and it’s no co-incidence that they’ve been under attack simultaneously over the past 40 years).
As long as the funds have the same protections from employers as other retirement accounts!
That’s life in the Libertarian dream world, baby!
Not nothing, just nothing physical you can exchange it for. It’s backed by (in the sense of “has value because of”) the fact that the US government has a near-monopoly on use of force within US borders, and demands citizens pay it dollars in taxes. This obligates every citizen and resident, regardless of how they conduct their day-to-day economic affairs, to obtain enough dollars to do so. You will agree to abide by the collective opinion that dollars have value, or you will face punishment.
It constantly surprises me that almost no one talks about it this way. It puts a lot of things in perspective, like how other countries lending the federal government dollars in exchange for treasury bonds denominated in dollars is much closer to receiving tribute than to owing a debt.
Taxes is how we pay for shit like roads, education, social security, national parks, national museums, national archives/library, National Science programs, representations, federal courts, border control, immigration systems, cleaning up the messes private industry have made, etc, etc. If people are REALLY put out by paying taxes, they can move to Somalia.
Yet plenty of rich assholes managed to figure out how to pay very little compared to their wealth accumulated on the back of the rest of us.
Libertarians do. They rail against the society that has given them the ability to build wealth (or to imagine they can). The rest of us understand that living in a society with resources available to all us, rich or poor, is a great thing to have. As a society, we can build things that we can’t as individuals. If you dont’ like it, find a country that expects no taxes of you, but gives you no services. This is civilization and the one we currently have needs vast improvement, but starving it of a means to build and create ain’t it. Enjoy, I guess?
I certainly suspect bitcoin go the way of many failed currencies before it and turn into a steaming pile of shit. but before that happens I do believe that if not bitcoin some form crypto currency will become a force to reckoned with surpassing the market cap of gold. It does what it is supposed to do very well. and that is not buying a coffee or going shopping. it has a value placed on it by a consensus. it moves that value from where it stored to where it is needed (arguably the definition of banking) . it is easier to to and secure that value than it is to secure gold in vault , in fact the was service called e-gold that provided a service of trading digital gold-backed by gold in vaults it was deemed illegal and the gold in the vaults was seized by the fbi. then bitcoin came along compared to e-gold it was sublime in that it could not be physically seized or in any way cetrally targeted. back to my point about about it eventually becoming a steaming dung pile. it think its very old game that the haves take more than have nots and any system will gamed as long as that mentality exists . my personal theory is that financial institutions will continue to jump on board and and when nearly every pension fund and diversified portfolio has enough crypto in it that’s when the few with most will dump it and pull the plug. just a theory I’m probably wrong .
That’s enlightening. Thanks, Anthony!
Yes, they do, and I think it’s unfortunate that only libertarians talk about that. It’s not fundamentally a libertarian point.
Taxes is how we pay for shit like roads, education, social security, national parks, national museums, national archives/library, National Science programs, representations, federal courts, border control, immigration systems, cleaning up the messes private industry have made, etc, etc.
Absolutely true. And, again, that only works because the government can higher people to do those things, and pay them in dollars. Which works because people agree dollars have value, because… and so on.
It’s amazing what people get away with when they buy enough influence to write the laws, isn’t it? Definitely a major barrier for building any kind of better world.
Pretty much, yeah. Taxes aren’t oppression. They are the cost of having publicly funded projects that we all benefit from.
The state also helps to make those dollars have value, because they are US issued currency.
So, no taxes are not “oppressive”… they are part of the social contract, a part we all benefit from.
Yes it is. Meanwhile the middle class shoulders the burden of funding things that they absolutely benefit from. Wealth is flowing upwards when you don’t have a progressive tax base. Which is why we need to get money out of politics.
I think you forgot some parentheses there, maybe 3 sets?
Are we gonna hear about the Rothschilds or Bilderberg next? Or perhaps a problematic number of bankers? Are there 12 of them? Are they Majestic?
That particular phrase is hopelessly associated with dog whistle for various conspiracies, and especially when it comes to economics often explicitly anti-semitic ones.
The base concept of hidden groups controlling the economy or financial system itself originates in anti-semitic claims, having been a core part of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It’s relatively easy to be taken in by more cryptic, grounded versions of these claims. Which is largely the point of such dog whistle when it comes to recruitment or proliferating claims. It’s the approachable take that brings people in or bootstraps a broad claim into the culture at large.
The gold bug thing is shot through with these claims, often explicitly racist versions. And the bitcoin scene seems to have borrowed a lot of their ideas from the gold obsessives. Though I only occasionally see explicitly anti-semitic spins on bitcoin.
A big goal of promoting these ideas in general is aimed at eroding trust in public institutions and societal or political norms. Like say the rule of law. Or the validity of elections.
If nothing else it’s a common sales pitch or target for scams.
It would pay to be more critical of this whole idea and more careful in the language you used to discuss it.
Next you’ll try and tell me most of their business is conducted in public meetings and hearings that are broadcast live, daily on C-Span.
How would C-Span even get a camera crew to the Darkside of the Moon?
Ists! All kinds of Ists.
Well, yes, that’s how finance works under the Westphalian sovereignty system we’ve all been living under for almost 400 years (which does indeed recognise the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use violence to enforce laws as well as the right to issue its own currency).
A nation-state’s currency is more than anything else a standard, and as such has enough individual and collective benefits for the state and citizenry alike that most people are happy to recognise its value – even unbacked by physical assets – as long as they feel the government has some degree of accountability and competence in managing it equitably. The more oppressive and financially-distressed and corrupt states (e.g. China, Argentina, and Russia respectively) tend to roll out their monopoly on violence to enforce the standard, of course – enforcing tax laws as in the U.S. is positively quaint compared to brute force methods and outright theft of assets employed.
In one form or another, that’s how primary global reserve currencies – the GBP and now the USD and the EUR and the RMB (as well as older de facto ones) – have manifested themselves. They represent military and market power at imperial levels. Lesser reserve currencies tend to represent competent financial governance (and therefore stability and security) on the part of the issuing state.
I agree. I don’t think I ever said they are, and if I did, let me know so I can fix it. The libertarians do, sure. Personally I think US taxes ought to be significantly higher, especially on high incomes, with fewer loopholes.
That’s not an explanation. Being issued by a government is not sufficient for a currency to have value. If it were, it’d be much harder to explain reserve currencies, and many examples of hyperinflation. Being issued by certain specific governing organizations gives currencies value, but why? Today the obvious answers include things like trust that the governments will remain in existence, and the currency supply will remain stable, and so on. But keep tracing it back and it has to ground out somewhere. How did people first come to believe money had value at all? How did people come to agree on which artificial unit of account and medium of exchange they’d all use, and whether those should be the same?
You said:
That sounds as if you believe paying taxes is an inherently oppressive thing. 
Can it be? Sure. But in a democratic system, we have set up a system of rights and obligations to each other. As long as we all benefit equally from our taxation, it’s far less oppressive. Now, when you have a system where some benefit more than others, and yet all are expected to pony up (such as with wealth inequality, racist systems, misogynistic systems, etc) but where some are not accorded the same rights as others, then that’s most certainly oppressive… for the people paying in and not receiving the same rights/benefits as the elite. In America, it was a white, male christian supremacist society, and still is to a large degree.
That’s the whole point of fiat currency, though. It’s not backed by anything tangible, other than the government.
It offers more flexibility for a dynamic economy with a high level of division of labor.
Because there was a government that made it, which likely grew out of the growth of villages into larger communities of thousands that needed a way to ensure all had access to necessities for daily life. The growth of cities led to inequality where some benefited more than others, and people have been fighting over that ever since.
People who lived prior to the invention of money managed to figure out how to make a living that included other forms of exchange, such as gift economy, sharing materials communally, and trading goods of equal value.
Because 6x3 foot iron and bronze ingots and shiploads of wheat are hard to move and difficult to store. Which makes always swapping one for the other impractical. Requiring a medium of exchange and the ability to track who’s got what and where they’re sending it.
Money has value because it can be exchanged for goods and labor.
Discounting gold bug fantasies about money before so and so ruined it being rooted in things with intrinsic value, this is how it works. I can get stuff for money, I can store money instead of stuff and in different ways than stuff. And I can get paid for work in money instead of stuff. Those magic substances with intrinsic value usually aren’t. Like gold, which doesn’t really have much intrinsic value, or practical use. Wasn’t the original currency, and wasn’t always the go to currency. Salt, Iron, and before the development of cash just ledgers were incredibly common.
(ETA: Edited the above for clarity.)
What “backs” modern fiat currency (which isn’t a new concept at all) is it’s utility. That utility is ensured by a whole host of complex things, primarily rooted in the stability and total economic output of the entity that issues it.
At it’s simplest. A big, productive, stable country represents a big chunk of people and business entities who are willing and obligated to accept that currency. Which means it has utility now, and for the foreseeable future. Boom. Money has value.
Ultimately speaking it works, and does it really matter if you can eat money if it works?
This is all very well understood, the history is very well documented.
Much of this particular discussion boils down to stoner level “what if the apple isn’t real” deep thought combined with scaremongering and speculation about what will happen if or how it might stop working. With lack of some sort of alternative medium of exchange pegged as the big problem.
People often forget how many currencies, and how many nations failed and collapsed during the era of the gold standard. As if the Great Depression didn’t happen in the 30’s, and we didn’t move off it to help stablize things. None the less looking any further back in history.
Assuredly not who you imply that I am. Fair point on the use of language - we know who Mnuchin and Powell are and the institutions that they represent, they are not shadowy.
Maybe I’m just expressing myself badly. Everyone seems to think I am advocating a return to some sort of gold or other commodity backed currency, or something. So let me be very clear that I think that the idea that gold has intrinsic value is ridiculous and any return to a “backed” standard would be a complete disaster if anyone actually tried it. I’m very aware of the history of money, including fiat money as far back as ancient China and debt ledgers before coins existed going back to Mesopotamia and non-commercial money-like ideas and exchanges going back to hunter-gatherer tribes. I’m also very aware that in practice utility is absolutely a sufficient reason for money to continue to have value, indefinitely. And we would be insane not to keep using it and trusting in it. I just think trying to have a detailed description in mind of the underlying process of why the whole system works beyond thinking of it as some collective delusion (which is isn’t) is important to making sure it continues to serve us well (or ideally, better) in the future.
Fair enough, I see that. It’s probably too off topic to go into here, but personally I don’t think a monopoly on violence, or use of force, by a legitimate government is oppressive. There certainly isn’t anyone else I want licensed to use violence in this society, and someone has to be allowed to, to some degree, or the whole system would collapse because humans are human. In practice, when the system works (which as you know it only does very unevenly), the threat is never enforced, and becomes mostly theoretical. When the system breaks down, the threats get enforced more, but in the same process the government loses legitimacy until the citizens fix or replace it.
@gracchus You said it much better than I could.
I guess that’s the thing, it most certainly can be, provided it’s not tempered by healthy democratic practices. The problem in the US, of course, is that we’re still striving to be an actual democracy. This is probably the biggest test we’ve had in ages, and it’s still not entirely clear if we’ve passed.
I honestly don’t know about that. I think it presumes that humans are more prone to violence rather than cooperation. I think it’s the other way around, and our current economic systems encourage violence via individualization to the point of pathology. Humans are capable of violence in many circumstances, but more so when we live in a world that actively strips away our humanity, which is what we have now.
I think most humans are much more prone to cooperation than violence, and that if anything this is much more true today than in the past. It will be even more true if we do manage to make our governance and economic and educational (etc.) systems serve human needs better than they do now.
I don’t think this is true of all humans, at least not all current humans, and as long as there are circumstance where some fraction of humans will resort to violence, there need to be systems in place to manage that. And while I think we resort to violence in response waaaaaay too readily, I don’t believe the optimal amount is zero.
