> The only reason food hasn't become too expensive is wealthy people don't have a reason to go out and buy up all the food
sometimes i get the idle premonition that if they started trying to do this tomorrow they could do a shockingly good job, to the point that you could almost claim that the only thing holding together social order at this point is that they are not. not saying i believe this-- i don't even really lean this way ideologically-- but it is kind of a sobering thought because it seems plausible (well, to me at least). maybe this has been true at other points in history as well and things have gone fine...
and i don't mean in the "hire people with guns" sense, but literally just people following the letter of the law
On the one hand, it's a bit of a cyclical argument - The only thing holding together social order is social order. On the other, the same is true of anything which is relied upon on for life and dependent on ongoing financial exchange - Food, water, housing (if you rent). If a lot of excess capital suddenly flooded into those markets and gobbled up stock/pushed up demand, joe average could be priced out.
All kinds of chaos manifests when that happens. Look at nations that experienced hyperinflation for examples of how it might go.
What's not so clear is what might prompt it to happen.
yeah that's the kind of reasoning that makes me feel better about it-- it's not really clear what kind of shock i would really be expecting to happen in the course of ordinary civilization that would cause this sort of run on life support / life-essential stuff that would also not itself be a bigger cause for concern than the system imploding (e.g. a proletariat uprising or world war would do the trick, but would be a bigger deal than the resultant economic shock alone)
I lived through collapse and dissolution of one state, civil war, disintegration, and (belated) birth of a new state, with its own currency. The monetary aspect (hyperinflation in the old, change of currency in the new) is only a small part of that. You are correct - in that scenario, there are other things to tend to, more urgent.
I also witnessed that gold did not replace the collapsing currency. Other, non-collapsing currencies took on that role.
USD is safe and sound for as long US is safe and sound. The fiat currency is creation of the state. In collapse, I'd say causality goes 99% state->fiat. Only a small (2nd or 3rd order) effect in the opposite direction.
For the parent - "Hyperinflation – It’s More Than Just a Monetary Phenomenon" by pragcap.com
reads right for me. Even general inflation (= increase in P/y) does not necessarily follow from the exchange equation (M V = P y) and money growth (M). There are other possibilities too, examples discussed in https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2011/05/14/money-gr....
To end on a more upbeat note: I also witnessed the hyperinflation tamed, the economy booming, without seemingly much effort and in short period of time. Looking back, I think the most important part is the right diagnosis: where is it coming from. Otherwise the cures end up worsening the disease.
We got very near this with the ethanol fashion at the end of the last decade. People with money got an extra reason to buy food and it did completely disrupt the social order all over the world.
sometimes i get the idle premonition that if they started trying to do this tomorrow they could do a shockingly good job, to the point that you could almost claim that the only thing holding together social order at this point is that they are not. not saying i believe this-- i don't even really lean this way ideologically-- but it is kind of a sobering thought because it seems plausible (well, to me at least). maybe this has been true at other points in history as well and things have gone fine...
and i don't mean in the "hire people with guns" sense, but literally just people following the letter of the law