Dantev2 » 08 Nov 2017 12:50 am » wrote: Bad move, friend. Do not ask me to defend a system I don't agree with. I would gradually do away with money altogether.
I took issue with your criticism because your mortars are launched in the wrong direction - it is interest and not "printing money" that you ought to concern yourself with. Fiat money and commodity money both serve the same purpose - as media of exchange and storage of value. The only difference is fiat money is not intrinsically valuable and requires the users' faith in, or forced compliance by, the issuer (usually a political entity, like the US state).
Which brings me to a couple of points, and why the "out of thin air" phrasing is silly: what kind of currency in circulation isn't "created out of thin air?" If a country on the gold and silver standard mines gold and silver deposits, which results in inflation, how is that any different from a central bank printing money?
I know you jest about conjobs and fake libertarians like AteWedge sucking on banker cock, but you can't use that line on me.
Now let's examine your claim - counterfeiting. Suppose the total amount of money in circulation is X, and the total amount of goods and services produced is Y. The base case ratio is X/Y. One unit of X buys one unit of Y.
Using your logic, if a counterfeit operation or central bank (in your view, those 2 are no different) prints money and increases X by 20%, we now have 1.2X/Y. Each unit of X is devalued by 17% (1 / 1.2). What really happens is the money adjusts accordingly so that 1.2 X buys 1 Y, and each unit of X only purchases 83% of what it used to buy.
The value is taken from the existing pool of money and re-distributed to adjust for parity for the added money. In the real world, this "inflation" hurts those who hold/are lending out money, and helps those who owe money.
Let's take the inverse case - What if a currency deflates? Suppose a central bank takes 50% of a currency out of the money supply. We now have 0.5X/Y.
Is that "destroying money out of thin air?"