This argument falls apart when you consider technology though. And even daily essentials. No one would not buy food and water because they can get more in future. They need it now.
The same goes for technology. We all know next year’s iPhone will be better than this year but we still buy them…because we need them now.
I’d argue inflation’s incentives are worse - the constant need to invest/spend so that your money doesn’t lose value. It means money flows into anything and everything like zombie companies, over consumption, property. Those on the poorest end are just trapped because as soon as they get any money it starts depreciating.
> We all know next year’s iPhone will be better than this year but we still buy them
Next year’s iPhone will not only be better, but also (even with the same price tag) cost more, inflation-adjusted. That factors into the decision to buy now.
> I’d argue inflation’s incentives are worse - the constant need to invest/spend so that your money doesn’t lose value.
It is a problem when it is at extreme, like in unstable countries where money can be a liability to unhealthy degree. However, I’d argue it should be a liability to a smaller degree.
What you highlight is the ever-present conflict between personal benefit and societal benefit. Obviously for an individual it is more preferable that the value of their money increases; I would never argue that. However, for society as a whole it is more preferable if the value of money decreases at a stable rate.
Perhaps this is why all major economies settled on the idea that an amount inflation is crucial to have.
I do not buy into the idea that “everyone did it then it must have been a good idea”.
We’ve already seen the negative side of fiat currencies in how they eventually collapse (Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina) and even in more developed countries wages have not kept up with inflation. Money is trending to zero People are trending to destitution.
We saw it recently in the UK - where public sector workers were not given pay rises because the government argued it would fuel inflation. So how does that even make sense.
Let’s continue this discussion when you show me a successful economy with a deflationary currency.
The only reason you can provide examples of failed states with inflationary currencies is because all currencies are inflationary. This is not a coincidence, perhaps because deflation does not correlate with things going well. For some famous examples of deflations, read on The Great Depression in US and Lost Decades in Japan.
A fiat currency is indeed just an accounting unit, but it has some floor against falling to zero, as it can legally extinguish any debt, and is needed to pay taxes.
Even so, sometimes they fall to basically zero. What chance does crypto have when sentiment turns against it?
Generally speaking it has been successful, more so than the gold standard. It's true that sometimes states fail, but that's not something a monetary system can prevent from happening, or insure against.
Sorry to say, but you're deluded. A blockchain is made of "information". Information has no coercive power. A blockchain can't enforce laws. It can't stop illegitimate violence. It can't perform any of the functions of a state. Not even remotely.
Leaving the gold standard has been so successful, as evidenced by the inflation crisis leading to rising cost of living and housing shortages in every western country.
Inflation and a rise in the cost of living are different things. Inflation means an increase in the (nominal) price level, whereas the cost of living is measured in real prices, specifically real wages.
Inflation is an increase in the money supply, which is why it's called inflation - the money supply inflates. I know a lot of government economists like to define it as rising prices because then there is no word for increasing the money supply which is very convenient for them and the governments they work for.
No, it's not just government economists. It's the standard definition in economics. But that's beside the point... the BIG mistake you're making is confusing an increase in nominal prices (inflation, or whatever you want to call it) with an increase in real prices (a rise in the cost of living).
…not in my understanding. The term would seem to originate from one or both of "a pot of honey" and "a cesspit or chamber pot"[1]. Both attract flies. the former attracts bears, while the latter attracts 'filth'; both attributes can be useful. The attractant need not be a decoy to function.
[1] Sidebar: a 'honeydipper' can be either a tool made of spaced circular disks on the end rod for the purpose of obtaining honey from a container, or a scooping tool used remove excrement from a septic system or storage container.
Are you talking from experience with DoorDash or Deliveroo? This has not been my experience with Deliveroo in London, UK. There’s just no way I could get the same food quicker, everyone is on motor/pedal bikes so delivery is usually about 20-30 minutes. Food is always hot on arrival bar the odd item (Nandos chips specifically, always cold).
Also I’m ordering Deliveroo specifically so I can get the time back, that’s the price you’re really paying - I had a long day at work and I want the time to relax and not spend it sourcing and making dinner.
Not my experience in London. In any zone that is not Zone 1-2, or other Deliveroo hot spots, my experience has always been not great with times that do reach also the 45 minutes to 1h for food delivery. We still do it occasionally _because we are lazy_.
However, we did draw some lines as some foods are not enjoyable in case one of those long wait times happens (e.g. pizza, burger, cooked meat dishes, etc).
Zone 2-3 here; Deliveroo is the only service that failed to even turn up, delivered to the wrong address then tried to blame me for "putting a pin in the wrong place" which I did not. Worse service ever.
I am in Spain and the only restaurants that these services propose are in a 5km radius so it is often easier/faster to walk, cycle or take the motorbike to said place. The apps hide all stuff on other sides of the city so I wouldn't be able to order from 50km away anyway.
In the US and none of the food delivery services deliver from some place as far away as 50km. I don’t know why you think that would be necessary in the US. That being said I have never received a food delivery that was cold or that wasn’t delivered in a timely manner.
I was poking fun at the fact that distances in the US tend to be bigger than e.g. in Europe, I figured that the delivery apps don't allow for that much of a range. Since I've read the complaint about cold food frequently, but like you have never received cold food, I figured it must be some US specific thing (but I guess not).
If the restaurant is 30 miles away it's also going to be cold if you pick it up yourself and drive all the way home. And you'll be driving roughly twice as far, assuming a delivery drivers was positioned close to the restaurant.
If you're going to be using an air fryer why bother with delivery then? Just put frozen food in there at that point for 10% of the cost of delivery+tip and you're eating sooner to boot.
French fries often don't travel well from the kitchen to the table. The hamburger/fries/related seems to be a pretty bad target for food delivery. Pizzas can at least be put in a warm oven which I do even if I'm just picking something up myself.
Do you not just write code that’s backwards compatible?e.g an api deployment should not break the front end. The api changes should work on the old front end and the updated front end that uses the api change.
Tech jobs, especially in California, usually hire you for all your time. If your work requires overtime, you work overtime without getting paid overtime. This is called an “exempt” job.
So the times you’re off on the weekends doing no work is valuable to the company because you’re recharging your mind and possibly also thinking about problems subconsciously.
I went to check my job offer, and it doesn’t mention anything about 40 hour weeks or 8 hour days.
> However, management bought 8 hours of your time and not 4 when they hired you.
Nowhere in my employment contract does it say that.
Realistically, I am allowed to spend up to 8 hours to work on goals that my employer says I should work on. It is also understood that if the goals are completed earlier, I am free to fill the "free" part of 8 hours with self-learning.
There's also an implicit understanding that certain life activities may happen/overlap with that free time, e.g. eating/picking up kids.
Only in the most pedantic bad take world would your statement be correct.
(If you have to fill out timecards): does your timecard reflect that implicit understanding? Or, alternatively, if your timecard doesn’t, could you be hit with timecard fraud?
Untrue. It's entirely their business how they use the time they bought. You don't get to renege on your contract just because you "feel" like they could have used their investment better.
It’s easy to put those two pieces of information together and arrive at crypto bad.
I think it’s worth noting that bitcoin uses a fraction of the energy required to mine gold for example.
It’s also a driving force in renewables, by stabilising energy grids (mining can use the spare capacity during quiet periods and switch off during peak hours).
So I don’t think it’s as black and white as “bitcoin uses energy = bad”
Bitcoin doesn't stabilize the power grid. Its stupid greewashing. There is no motivation for a Bitcoin miner to leverage 'overenergy' the only motivation is to get cheap energy as much as possible.
In NYC they bought a Gas power plant only for bitcoin. In Texas they had to pay millions to bitcoin miners for them to shut down. In china they stole power from normal people left and right.
It also allows to sell local limited energy globally and pushing energy into the trading/gambling area. Instead of giving local people cheap energy, some bitcoin miner will try to get as much of that cheap energy possible. It also incentivives using bitcoin miners to use flare gas instead of doing something to actually capture and use it as it is a limited resource.
Nonetheless PoW is stupid. its the worst scenario we can come up with in a society with scare resources and a very limited co2 budget by now ( have you watched the TED talk? ). And at the end bitcoins PoW system even still stand on our existing PoW system. Someone stole your bitcoins? You go to the police... Without our existing PoS System, you would need to keep your bitcoin wallet and address always anonyme otherwise you would trust our law and order (part of our PoS system) and you could literaly only send bitcoins around and nothing else. (Smart contracts are also not scalable and not stable solution to this issue).
Btw. yes gold need energy to be mined but its a one time cost YOU HAVE TO DO to use this material. Bitcoin is a Waste Resource all the time to use. And Gold has real value in science, manufacturing and in styling/model/art. Nonetheless we need to get the co2 production of Gold down and Bitcoin we just don't need. The best solution is to get rid of bitcoin and keep reducing co2 production for gold.
And yes i do have a lot more arguments on why bitcoin is useless.
I'm sure there will be some, but even if one takes most of the AI claims as exaggerated, current machine learning is orders of magnitude more useful than bitcoin ever was.
I suspect so. I've been seeing increasing amounts of outrage about it over the last several weeks, anyway.
This is the wrong moment in history to dramatically ramp up our power usage. We need to be doing the opposite of that, and we've already had a few big ramp-ups over the last several years.
Disagree, now is the best time to be increasing energy production and expenditure — it is the hallmark of development of a civilization. Using less energy means the stagnation of our civilization.
How are we going to advance our technology without spending more energy?
The scale of energy usage today are fractions of what it will be in 20, 50, 100 years…
The problem is that increasing energy usage has environmental repercussions. Until we figure out how to deal with that, increasing energy usage strikes me as being extremely self-destructive.
> How are we going to advance our technology without spending more energy?
Ignoring the question of whether or not advancing our technology should be our top priority, how are we going to do that if we keep pushing the world into a state that is hostile to human life?
The same goes for technology. We all know next year’s iPhone will be better than this year but we still buy them…because we need them now.
I’d argue inflation’s incentives are worse - the constant need to invest/spend so that your money doesn’t lose value. It means money flows into anything and everything like zombie companies, over consumption, property. Those on the poorest end are just trapped because as soon as they get any money it starts depreciating.