Holy shit this is so funny.
Now I want to run a DnD campaign where the big bad is a QAnon Dragon.
One time someone told me that paper money is worthless, so I said, fair enough—I’ll take that worthless paper off your hands.
He, uh, didn’t take me up on it.
Paper money doesn’t have inherent worth. But that doesn’t make it worthless.
I feel like people hear “made up” and think it’s the same as worthless. But it actually just means it’s a social construct.
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The actual goal of political economy should be the well-being of the people. Price stability can be a means to that end, but it can also diminish standards of living. Certainly, price stability is not an end in itself.
To clarify what I mean, this current inflationary period is being caused by transient supply disruptions. They’ll clear up on their own. Apart from Japan, what are the central banks of the world doing? They’re trying to throw their economies into recession. Because of transient inflation that was not caused by runaway demand.
It’s tricky to talk about actual gold standard days, since economic data aren’t very reliable that far in the past, but historical accounts don’t exactly paint a rosy economic picture. Whether there was price stability, I’m really not sure, but I do know there was mass unemployment, frequent economic crises, and widespread poverty.
Finally, the Eurozone… Their recession following the global financial crisis lasted longer than other advanced economies, because the Stability and Growth Pact is the opposite of sensible economic administration. Indeed, Europe is in a downward binge-purge spiral of—crisis happens, better ignore excessive deficit rules and let the ECB buy sovereign debt at its discretion; well the crisis is over, time to fuck up European economies again; oh no there’s another crisis, better ignore the SGP again.
At some point I might have to leave the US, so it’s a shame that Europe isn’t a viable alternative.
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Nothing has inherent value. Inherent value shouldn’t be confused with practical value. Anyway, while gold has some practical value nowadays, being a corrosion resistant electrical conductor doesn’t explain why people wanted gold more than a hundred years ago. Thinking there’s something special about gold that makes it valuable irrespective of social beliefs or practical uses is just… the world’s least interesting religion.
The fact is, money has value because it’s the only thing that can be used to pay taxes. So for the next level, I’ve never quite understood what “social construct” means. Is being punched for cosplaying a Nazi a social construct? Not the justification, but the fist, is the fist a social construct? Is being harassed by the IRS because you’re a sovereign citizen who uses self-issued Freedom Dollars and doesn’t believe the Sixteenth Amendment was duly ratified so income taxes are illegal, is the harassment from the IRS a social construct?
Yes, those are social constructs. Except the fist, as a fist is a physical object. Consequences for cosplaying a Nazi are social constructs though.
What isn’t a social construct is food, and needing to eat it, as an example. I would then say that food has inherent value to humans. It is worth something to you no matter the society.
Something being a social construct doesn’t make it not real. It simply means it’s not based in physical reality, but in social reality.
Same vibes as this comic
The knight should talk to that dragon about Bitcoin.
Isn’t it strange how much the people advocating for gold standard saying it’s more stable overlap with crypto shills, when crypto is notoriously unstable?
They just want the government out of their money supply, and have no idea what they are asking for.
Faux news adverts have entered the chat…
Lol
