> Cryptocurrency as a political project has its ideological roots in the Austrian school of economic thought. It’s encapsulated by thinkers like Milton Friedman, with his infamous and overused axiom that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Austrian economic thought sees government intervention as the cause of all economic ills and phenomena like inflation
What? Milton Friedman isn’t an Austrian economist whatsoever.
Whether you agree with the thesis of this story or not, remember that Jacobin is virtually never reliable. Simple mistakes like this are ubiquitous in any Jacobin article on economics or business.
> Milton Friedman isn’t an Austrian economist whatsoever.
That, strictly speaking, does not contradict the article, which says that the ideological basis of cryptocurrency is in Austrian economics, and that that basis is captured by a particular saying of Friedman's. The statement is one i which Friedman is in agreement with the Austrian school, and modern American adherents to the Austrian school, IME, often quote it, and while the Austrian schools shares the view there is no equally famous articulation of it by a member of the school.
> Simple mistakes like this are ubiquitous in any Jacobin article on economics or business.
The only mistake I see there is you reading a false claim into the piece that isn't actually contained within it.
> So how exactly do cryptocurrencies, with their anti-inflation agenda, provide a solution to this issue? The answer is they don’t. In fact, inflation can be a useful tool for redistributing wealth.
Inflationary monetary policies are making the rich richer. Just look at what's happened to those that were already wealthy, since March 2020. If everyone does not have equal access to inflating assets then I don't see how inflation can be a useful tool for redistributing wealth.
the rich get richer in almost all environments especially over the past decade despite inflation and deflation. The only time they do not is when real interest rates are positive, which is uncommon.The rich tend to do worse when bank deposits pay a lot relative to inflation because it makes riskier assets like stocks and real estate less attractive.
how does bitcoin solve "making the rich richer", when it is in fact "making the rich super-richer" with its soaring price?
(along with its "throw off the poor one-shot chancers with extreme price instability)
In fact, bitcoin's anti-inflationary means there's no chance of wealth-redistribution, whereas for dollars, the US government can just redirect its cash-beam.
Here is one way: labor is in a better bargaining position than they’ve been in for a long time. It’s a good time to get a better paying job or, for unions, to go on strike.
Yeah, the entire piece reads like it was written by a who took AP Econ in high school, majored in Philosophy, then joined superbonk or whatever on reddit two decades later. This article is him telling the apes why they're wrong.
Inflation isn't making the poor poorer, but it is making the middle class poorer, while turning the rich into the wealthy.
Poor people don't have money, nothing to lose value. Poor people don't have property or stocks - nothing to hold/grow value. The rich got all their cash invested (percentage-wise), so their stuff isn't affected by inflation. It's that middle class, where half their savings are in mutual funds and half in cash type assets like a CD or a savings account - that's who get the shaft here.
But that AP econ class - I took that too, and I'm an expert in economics because I got edumacation in it, and have a schwab account for my 401k. So I'm a fully qualified expert on global economics, and I say inflation is great for a country, on a global scale. Other countries buy your bonds, your cash loses value, you now owe them less value. China does this a lot to screw other countries - artificially inflate their currency, and now their external debts are less. Now, the end result is who the hell would give them credit - that's like giving the orange clow credit. But they were at that level even before their fake inflation.
We have other tools for redistributing wealth. Laws, regulations, tax codes. We don't need that feature to be built into the currency. Especially the way it's built in to the currency in reality - redistributing it to the rich every time the fed prints more of it.
Crypto is crap for one simple fact. There's no large army with nukes making its value stable. All a crypto-rich person has to do to increase its value is sell a lot of it, to himself, at a high price.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 26.8 ms ] threadWhat? Milton Friedman isn’t an Austrian economist whatsoever.
Whether you agree with the thesis of this story or not, remember that Jacobin is virtually never reliable. Simple mistakes like this are ubiquitous in any Jacobin article on economics or business.
That, strictly speaking, does not contradict the article, which says that the ideological basis of cryptocurrency is in Austrian economics, and that that basis is captured by a particular saying of Friedman's. The statement is one i which Friedman is in agreement with the Austrian school, and modern American adherents to the Austrian school, IME, often quote it, and while the Austrian schools shares the view there is no equally famous articulation of it by a member of the school.
> Simple mistakes like this are ubiquitous in any Jacobin article on economics or business.
The only mistake I see there is you reading a false claim into the piece that isn't actually contained within it.
Inflationary monetary policies are making the rich richer. Just look at what's happened to those that were already wealthy, since March 2020. If everyone does not have equal access to inflating assets then I don't see how inflation can be a useful tool for redistributing wealth.
how does bitcoin solve "making the rich richer", when it is in fact "making the rich super-richer" with its soaring price?
(along with its "throw off the poor one-shot chancers with extreme price instability)
In fact, bitcoin's anti-inflationary means there's no chance of wealth-redistribution, whereas for dollars, the US government can just redirect its cash-beam.
Inflation isn't making the poor poorer, but it is making the middle class poorer, while turning the rich into the wealthy.
Poor people don't have money, nothing to lose value. Poor people don't have property or stocks - nothing to hold/grow value. The rich got all their cash invested (percentage-wise), so their stuff isn't affected by inflation. It's that middle class, where half their savings are in mutual funds and half in cash type assets like a CD or a savings account - that's who get the shaft here.
But that AP econ class - I took that too, and I'm an expert in economics because I got edumacation in it, and have a schwab account for my 401k. So I'm a fully qualified expert on global economics, and I say inflation is great for a country, on a global scale. Other countries buy your bonds, your cash loses value, you now owe them less value. China does this a lot to screw other countries - artificially inflate their currency, and now their external debts are less. Now, the end result is who the hell would give them credit - that's like giving the orange clow credit. But they were at that level even before their fake inflation.
We have other tools for redistributing wealth. Laws, regulations, tax codes. We don't need that feature to be built into the currency. Especially the way it's built in to the currency in reality - redistributing it to the rich every time the fed prints more of it.
Crypto is crap for one simple fact. There's no large army with nukes making its value stable. All a crypto-rich person has to do to increase its value is sell a lot of it, to himself, at a high price.