Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Criptfeind]

Let me tell you, 500 pennies make a much better weapon then ten bucks.

Now you know why the U.S. economic system is doing so bad!

[Lagslayer]

Know what's really bad? The raw materials used to make coins (specifically pennies and nickels) are worth more than the coins themselves. So the government had to ban melting the coins down for the more valuable materials they are made from. Talk about a wall banger.

[Zrk2]

As to fascism, it has lost any use as a term as I am a libertarian, and people accuse me of 'being a fascist', so it really can't be used in a discussion without invoking a shameless bias.

If I can explain that, it's because there's been a pretty strong bent of conservative politicians, in America at least but I have no idea about Canada, who drape themselves in the label "Libertarian" to get elected while legislating absolutely nothing of the kind.  So it's taken on a more temporal meaning than the dictionary definition.

We haven't had anyone really claiming to be a libertarian, we have social conservatives, and fiscal conservatives, and neither really claim to be libertarian, just on which issue they are more strongly concerned.

Of course people who insult me are also almost completely unaware of current events and just enjoy bitching and endorse communism because they think they can slack under communist role.

[fqllve]

That means nothing without price controls.  Price controls create thriving black markets when insufficiently enforced and a host of other problems with they are.
EDIT:  Without controlling the price of bread in terms of songs, the market price of bread would do as it will.  There's also the problem of maintaining the exchange rate between songs and dollars.  However you'd accomplish that must surely boggle the mind.

Songs would make a terrible form of money anyway.  The most obvious problem is they're not standardized.

It's similar to trying to use rocks as money without specifying their size, color, weight, or chemical makeup.  How do you then compare a granite boulder from assorted pebbles from powdered emerald?

I can't believe I am actually entertaining this idea, even if just for fun.

But say, you start with locrian mode and you give it the whole value. Then for each mode descending you remove 1/7 of that value. So songs in major are worth 1/7 and songs in minor are worth 6/7. Then you multiple that value by the number of measures in the song. Of course, songs composed in different scales would be worthless, and it's pretending that you can always definitively tell which mode a song is in.

It is perhaps the worst economic system imaginable. Mostly because it is ridiculously easy to write a song. Maybe not a good song, but a song. I hope you like inflation!

[Earthquake Damage]

Know what's really bad? The raw materials used to make coins (specifically pennies and nickels) are worth more than the coins themselves. So the government had to ban melting the coins down for the more valuable materials they are made from. Talk about a wall banger.

That was not always true.  We have inflation to thank for that.  They only continue to use the same materials (for the most part -- IIRC new pennies are mostly zinc and such now) so the new and old coins remain comparable.  There's been talk (how recently, I don't know) of abandoning the penny since it's all but worthless.  Most people don't bother picking them up off the sidewalk.

[Lagslayer]

Know what's really bad? The raw materials used to make coins (specifically pennies and nickels) are worth more than the coins themselves. So the government had to ban melting the coins down for the more valuable materials they are made from. Talk about a wall banger.

That was not always true.  We have inflation to thank for that.  They only continue to use the same materials (for the most part -- IIRC new pennies are mostly zinc and such now) so the new and old coins remain comparable.  There's been talk (how recently, I don't know) of abandoning the penny since it's all but worthless.  Most people don't bother picking them up off the sidewalk.

Ultimately, any material would surpass the cost of the coin/bill because the currency has a static value, while the materials and labor are subject to inflation. rather than banning lower value coins, you could just start using digital currency. The problem with this is it could easily be counterfeited (electronic security in general is really bad like this, but I digress).

[Phmcw]

We haven't had anyone really claiming to be a libertarian, we have social conservatives, and fiscal conservatives, and neither really claim to be libertarian, just on which issue they are more strongly concerned.

Of course people who insult me are also almost completely unaware of current events and just enjoy bitching and endorse communism because they think they can slack under communist role.

Hehe, slack under communism? A weird bet. Just rob something and slack under capitalism, selling drugs on something.
I cannot imagine someone overthrowing society as we know it to live of welfare. How is that easier?
"Hey guys, I'm totally bored by working so I'll engineer a gigantic revolution, fight of the tenant of the old world single handed to be able to live of food stamp! Who is with me?"

[Taricus]

We haven't had anyone really claiming to be a libertarian, we have social conservatives, and fiscal conservatives, and neither really claim to be libertarian, just on which issue they are more strongly concerned.

Of course people who insult me are also almost completely unaware of current events and just enjoy bitching and endorse communism because they think they can slack under communist role.

Hehe, slack under communism? A weird bet. Just rob something and slack under capitalism, selling drugs on something.
I cannot imagine someone overthrowing society as we know it to live of welfare. How is that easier?
"Hey guys, I'm totally bored by working so I'll engineer a gigantic revolution, fight of the tenant of the old world single handed to be able to live of food stamp! Who is with me?"

What do you think the gulags are for? 

[Earthquake Damage]

rather than banning lower value coins,

Who said anything about banning?  By abandon I mean stop minting new ones.

If you see no reason to stop minting low-value coins, consider this:  We have pennies worth 1/100^th of a dollar.  Why do we not also have a coin worth 1/100^th of a penny?  What about a coin worth one millionth of a dollar?  When you understand why we don't have those, you'll understand why some people believe the penny is no longer worth the trouble.

As for purely digital currency, it's unfeasible.  All monetary transactions, even casual ones, would require a secure connection to a bank.  Such connections would need to be available worldwide, since the dollar is so widely used.  By the way, worldwide does not mean only in advanced industrialized countries.

[Zrk2]

We haven't had anyone really claiming to be a libertarian, we have social conservatives, and fiscal conservatives, and neither really claim to be libertarian, just on which issue they are more strongly concerned.

Of course people who insult me are also almost completely unaware of current events and just enjoy bitching and endorse communism because they think they can slack under communist role.

Hehe, slack under communism? A weird bet. Just rob something and slack under capitalism, selling drugs on something.
I cannot imagine someone overthrowing society as we know it to live of welfare. How is that easier?
"Hey guys, I'm totally bored by working so I'll let others engineer a gigantic revolution, fight of the tenant of the old world single handed to be able to live of food stamp! Who is with me?"

More like that.

[Bobinater]

Basically my limited knowledge of economics:   

I think that both a total free market laissez-faire economy or a total planned economy are doomed to fail.  The trick is to find the best spot in between the two.  Almost all countries are some form of mixed economy.  A free unregulated market provides great expansion and economic growth but at the cost of security or any form of safety nets. Free markets will eventually over consume resources, lead to horrible work conditions for average workers, and high inflation.  A command economy leads to stagnation as it does not reward innovation or success but provides economic security by providing a lower limit for all citizens.  All countries fall somewhere in the gradient making certain trade-offs.  No one system is better than the other and how well they work out is completely situational.

Tl:dr

Capitalism<--------------------(most countries in here somewhere)-------------------->Communism
(increased growth, less stability)                                                                 (Stagnation, Stabile)

[Max White]

I'm so glad you guys are giving the suggestion of the song-conomy the serious consideration is deserves...

[Eagle_eye]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Basically my limited knowledge of economics:   

I think that both a total free market laissez-faire economy or a total planned economy are doomed to fail.  The trick is to find the best spot in between the two.  Almost all countries are some form of mixed economy.  A free unregulated market provides great expansion and economic growth but at the cost of security or any form of safety nets. Free markets will eventually over consume resources, lead to horrible work conditions for average workers, and high inflation.  A command economy leads to stagnation as it does not reward innovation or success but provides economic security by providing a lower limit for all citizens.  All countries fall somewhere in the gradient making certain trade-offs.  No one system is better than the other and how well they work out is completely situational.

Tl:dr

Capitalism<--------------------(most countries in here somewhere)-------------------->Communism
(increased growth, less stability)                                                                 (Stagnation, Stabile)

Planned economies can easily have growth surpassing capitalist systems, if you're willing to sacrifice profitability. Producing goods at a loss is completely unfeasible in a capitalist system, as the people making them would go broke. But with state control, other, more profitable industries can make up for it. China, for example, artificially inflates its GDP by a similar method, creating massive surpluses of goods. Of course, china is more state capitalist than communist, but the state is still a major driver of economic growth.

EDIT: didn't realize the thread was dead... ah well.

[Virex]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Basically my limited knowledge of economics:   

I think that both a total free market laissez-faire economy or a total planned economy are doomed to fail.  The trick is to find the best spot in between the two.  Almost all countries are some form of mixed economy.  A free unregulated market provides great expansion and economic growth but at the cost of security or any form of safety nets. Free markets will eventually over consume resources, lead to horrible work conditions for average workers, and high inflation.  A command economy leads to stagnation as it does not reward innovation or success but provides economic security by providing a lower limit for all citizens.  All countries fall somewhere in the gradient making certain trade-offs.  No one system is better than the other and how well they work out is completely situational.

Tl:dr

Capitalism<--------------------(most countries in here somewhere)-------------------->Communism
(increased growth, less stability)                                                                 (Stagnation, Stabile)

Planned economies can easily have growth surpassing capitalist systems, if you're willing to sacrifice profitability. Producing goods at a loss is completely unfeasible in a capitalist system, as the people making them would go broke. But with state control, other, more profitable industries can make up for it. China, for example, artificially inflates its GDP by a similar method, creating massive surpluses of goods. Of course, china is more state capitalist than communist, but the state is still a major driver of economic growth.

EDIT: didn't realize the thread was dead... ah well.

That's not quite true. Companies will often hold on to non-profitable departments because they expect them to start turning a profit in the future. This was especially common with the transition from CRT screens to LCD screens and it's happening again with, amongst others, electric cars and renewable energy sources. The new department doesn't produce goods of high enough quality or in high enough quantity to be profitable yet, but the company believes with further development it could become booming business so they keep pumping money into that department from the departments that do run a profit, sometimes going as far as to completely shut down R&D for the "old" technology. The result of this in the display revolution was that a lot of companies were too deeply entrenched in LCD at some point to switch back to CRT and went bankrupt or were bought by other companies in the same field. In the end a few large companies, who had the funds to hold out, came out victorious, but a lot of other initiatives crashed.

[PsyberianHusky]

What would the ramifications of simplified or eliminated stock market, or the removal of the ability to hold a company corporately ?
     I am told large protects would not undertaken because of the risk.
Would money made from trading without producing be shifted to the commodities market?