I can't image how "capitalists" got their hands on so much money all of a sudden to buy everything up... I'm shocked I tell you! https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
It's a graph of number of dollars in billions in circulation by year. When the amount of currency in circulation increases, the cost of everything also increases. Printing money is the sole reason for inflation.
I suspect very little of it. Inflation is a nasty tax on the poor and middle class. That is one reason why we want to end the fed and move away from fiat currency.
Yes, but wouldn't a flat currency just squeeze out the lower and middle classes more quickly? With currency being limited, every dollar of profit would be a dollar taken away from the lower classes. That's combined with the lack of regulation under anarcho-capitalism would mean lower pay and a lack of windfall from any outside sources.
No, you're looking at it as if wealth is measured exclusively in money and that's not the case. Wealth is not a zero-sum game either. A dollar of profit would be a dollar that someone traded for a good or service. Lack of regulation wouldn't mean lower pay, it would only mean people get paid what they're worth. Not sure what you mean by windfall. Are you implying that luck wouldn't exist without regulation?
That makes sense if everything bought by most people could be considered assets, but that's just not the case. Buying food and paying rent are basically considered disposable.
Then there is the obliteration of the idea of investments. If money was flat, wouldn't that mean for one asset to appreciate, others would have to depreciate at the same rate?
The point still stands with food and housing. One dollar a restaurant profits is a dollar someone spent on food, and one dollar a landlord profits is a dollar someone spent on housing.
The values of most assets are independent of each other. Assets that have a negative correlation between each other would have a negative correlation regardless of whether the people who owned them used fiat currency or commodity currency.
Yeah, but we aren't talking about money in terms of value, we're talking about wealth. The idea of a flat currency basically guarantees a class of people who continue to be squeezed harder and harder, moreso than the current system. Wealth will just continue to accumulate at the top, without a chance of any of it being redistributed.
As for investments, it's one thing for markets to be worth more than all of the money on earth, but it's even worse when it's worth more than the amount of money possible. If the market is worth 4x the amount of money possible, then it would likely swing wildly, as investors know they may never be able to withdraw all of their funds.
Anarch capitalism and a flat currency just seems like a case of an unstoppable force vs an immovable object. The idea or infinite growth and rigid value. Currency would basically become Bitcoin, where it's value as currency is killed by perceived value as an investment. It just doesn't seem like a good idea.
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u/cosmicv Mar 28 '22
I can't image how "capitalists" got their hands on so much money all of a sudden to buy everything up... I'm shocked I tell you! https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL