I use a x220 because it has a better keyboard. I'm limited to USB2 but honestly I never use them except for my mouse and iOS devices, which are limited to USB2 speeds anyway. But I'm able to hook it up to dual external 1080p monitors. Cost me less than US$100.
So if we let a bank manage bitcoin, perhaps the bank could issue paper receipts that are backed by said bitcoin, and those pieces of paper could circulate instead of using the blockchain.
What I don't understand is if fiat currencies are so bad, why do people express the value of bitcoin in a fiat currency (like USD)? They are just like the goldbugs, hoping and praying that the world will collapse back into the dark ages
> perhaps the bank could issue paper receipts that are backed by said bitcoin, and those pieces of paper could circulate instead of using the blockchain.
Feel free to use them, I won't. There's no point when Bitcoin is so simple to move.
> What I don't understand is if fiat currencies are so bad, why do people express the value of bitcoin in a fiat currency (like USD)?
Because it's one of the most practical things to measure against, because almost everything is also measured against it?
I don't get this argument, if I say a car is worth $20k that means the car is actually worthless because I'm measuring it's value in USD?
Or someone in the US saying that meters are actually a stupid and useless unit because before everyone gets used to using it you have to constantly convert it to imperial.
>why do people express the value of bitcoin in a fiat currency (like USD)?
Mostly because businesses do accounting and pay taxes in usd, so bitcoin is just used as a pass through gimmick to make sales. There is no path to the price stabilization of bitcoin, it's purely deflationary, no one is going to set prices in something that has no monetary policy.
There is a very important difference between fiat currencies backed by nothing and fiduciary media that is backed by a commodity like gold. You can't walk into the Federal Reserve with a thousand dollars and demand them to be converted into physical gold - that right was abolished in the 1930s.
I believe the "bottom part" should be interchangeable, like switching to a different CPU architecture, or switching to a different framework. The bottom part is an implementation detail. The API is important since that's what you interact with.
I think it's best to have as few dependencies as possible, try to keep everything independent and interchangeable. I like to view my code as a graph structure, try to keep the functions and its dependent functions as a Directed-Acyclic-Graph and avoid cycles.
Beware, he was using the term "bottom up" in a meaning that diverges from current mainstream usage of the term: the bottom is the language, not the architecture.
It definitely is not a naive question. Printing money is precisely what the government should do. Income tax should be eliminated, it is a relic of the past. The government should fund itself not by selling bonds, which essentially is printing money that pays interest, but by simply printing money which is more direct.
To put a finer point on it, most people still believe that (monetarily sovereign) governments are constrained by their income and by the willingness of lenders to accommodate government debt. But that view is incorrect: the real constraint to government spending is only the economy's real capacity for production. Another way to think of it is that the real constraint to government spending is inflation (because excessive government spending beyond the economy's supply capacity would lead to increased demand-pull inflation).
Whatever the reason, the empirical observation in these days of low inflation seems to be that most governments aren't even close to the true limit of spending.
Uh, this is a very interesting (and intriguing) perspective.
Couple of questions:
- Does this mean that there’s a case for QE to be made permanent under a low-inflation environment?
- Under this model, govermnents would be directly responsible for the allocation of the newly created money. How can this not lead to a depressed economic output over time?
QE: Not really. The problem with QE is that it's a purely monetary operation, so the only way it could lead to real economic growth is if it somehow lead to more lending. But arguably debt leads to instability, and besides it's like pushing on a string: it doesn't work when people don't want to borrow. It'd be better for the government to outright buy stuff or give people money.
Depressing economic output: Absent inflation, economic output is proportional to overall spending, so a policy like this can't depress economic output almost by definition.
However, I'd say there is a risk of directing that output towards useless things, plus there's the risk of favouritism that leads to hidden inflation via inefficiency (see also: military industrial complex). So it matters where the money is spent.
Personally, I'd like to try something like a "citizen's dividend": just hand out money to all citizens equally each month (or permanent residents, you can argue the details), no questions asked and no strings attached, but vary the amount based on current inflation. That is, increase the dividend when inflation is low, scale it back when inflation rises above some target.
So kind of like a UBI, but with a macroeconomic motivation rather than trying to replace the welfare system. It also appeals to me because it's a sort of direct democratic approach to macroeconomic management: people can literally vote with their wallet about how the money is spent.
Where to read more: modern monetary theory is a good keyword to start with. I found Randall Wray's book very interesting. Warren Mosler's "7 deadly innocent frauds" is less academic, but it's available online and interesting since it comes from a practitioner instead of a theoretician. Though I admit it's been many years since I read either.
My naive question is why so few governments or central banks tried implementing QE as helicopter money, rather than for bond purchases. It seems to my (undergrad-only econ) perspective that the person in the street is far more likely to put the money to use in the economy.
QE books purchases aren't about allowing the government to borrow more. In any rich country the government can borrow as much as it wants. It's about crowding out private purchases of those bonds so that those lenders will lend to businesses and people instead. I'd be willing to bet that a $1000 tax refund is more likely to be spent than an extra $1000 that banks may or may not lend to someone.
I've been wondering the same thing. A few points come to mind:
It's easy trot out the "but the bureaucracy!" argument.
Helicopter money is in-your-face money creation which brings out the gold bugs and inflation hyperventilators. QE as practiced is in comparison too mysterious for people to latch on to effectively.
Helicopter money was never really championed by anybody in the first place, so nobody really had to argue against it.
It's really unfortunate that a perfectly reasonable policy never got a fair chance. I do think it has a lot to do with ideological bias especially among central bankers, and with the fact that a lot of people on the left, who should naturally be in favour of such a policy, are too averse to studying economics and finance thoroughly enough to participate effectively in such discussions.
I also migrated away from MacOS. I'm currently running Linux (Slackware). I came to the conclusion that Linux works best for me on desktops, but MacOS works better on laptops. I don't use laptops much anymore, I prefer multiple monitors, I don't like the way MacOS handles multi-monitors.
I ended up buying a couple of used Dell Optiplex 9010's for a little more than $100 each. Also picked up a couple of Thinkpad X220's also about a $100 each. They all run faster than my Macbook Air.
Tried all of the Linux distributions, didn't really like any of them (I hated Ubuntu and all the variants). So I installed Slackware, I use a customized FVWM (as in I hacked the source code). Removed things like PulseAudio and NetworkManager. I use a customized version of Gnustep (just the Foundation part) because I need Objective-C. And I wrote a bunch my own UI using Cairo (not a fan of GTK or Qt).
I still use MacOS on my Macbook Air, but more as an appliance and not for anything serious. I feel much more comfortable with my computer now (I am no longer dependent on Apple!)
