/lit/ - Literature

>>17261764
Any economics textbook

>>17261786
That book by lord reese mogg was pretty decent

You should read Graeber's history of debt and embrace the abolition of debt, currency and economic thinking.

>>17261940
I have. He argues that helping a friend isn't for gain therefore everything should be like that. Of course there are things to gain, such as greater friendship and return of favour (debt) etc.

Debt hardly even exists anymore. They can’t even throw you in jail or kill you for not paying it like they could back in the day. I have six figures of payday loan debt that I’m literally never going to pay and it’s piss easy to dodge them. It’s hilarious

>>17261764
Chartalist gang where we at?

>>17261764

What we really need is a system where multiple currencies compete with each other. Crypto is our best bet in this regard.

>>17261764
The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton

>>17263060
Why?

>>17263060
You're literally describing forex

>>17261764
you ask parasites why parasitism must be abolished.

money is blood of economy, of motivation. debt is like injection of drugs. fact is, you borrow from your future. and if you cannot repay debt, you become drug addict.

somehow western capitalists decided that debt is the best motivator for lazy population.

>>17262655
Kek wtf what if you want to buy a house? You’re basically a Diogenes the Cynic of capitalism, which is based but hot damn son that’s hardly advice for the faint of heart.

Manifesto for Breaking the Financial Slavery to Interest - Feder

>>17261764
I found an interesting perspective on this from historian Lincoln Paine and his book The Sea and Civilization a Maritime History of the World. In it he posits that it was maritime trade which necessitated the rise of the credit system and abstract financial theories and this is why these institutions always arise in complex maritime civilizations (Mediterranean, China, India, and Japan).

Essentially it’s a tool that allows for merchants to be funded to purchase products before a sale can be made, but of course there is both a risk and an opportunity cost to the lender and that gave rise to interest. By understanding this we understand what debt really is; a bet or speculation on any number of social exchanges. There are billions of people placing bets on themselves and each other all the time. To attempt to outlaw finance and debt would be as dubious as outlawing gambling only to have men throwing bones in back alleys. The question is SHOULD debt exist but HOW should it exist and on this front I defer to Proudhon and the mutualists in that finance and debt is in the public good and interest and should be carried out by a network of credit unions that replace a singular central bank with a decentralized self managing network of local credit unions centered around larger regional credit unions that together form a board for equitable exchange between the people and progress of the good of the whole network.

>>17263799
I will have to give it a read. Nice.

>>17263576
Thr old testament is pro-debt yet Jesus is for a Jubilee. Bible as per usual: contradictory.

>>17261764
>>17261786
Principles of macroeconomics, Gregory N Mankiw. It has a very good treatment of the creation of money and debt. (Krugman’s book is okay too)

Reading any of these other books thrown at you in this thread are like trying to learn about astronomy by looking at astrology.

>>17265286
>Reading any of these other books thrown at you in this thread are like trying to learn about astronomy by looking at astrology.
>economists unironically believe this
>when their entire profession is literally just astrology for people in suits

>>17261764

>>17261764
THere's this anthropology book called DEBT with a red cover and a receipt on it, maybe it will be of use to you.

usterity: The History of a Dangerous Idea

>>17265985
A

>>17265239
How is that contradictory? Different situations call for different responses

>>17261764
Harari's "sapiens" has a section that argues in favour of debt and capitalism, which is what I'd expect from an Israeli

>>17261764
Most every economist will defend credit as being good (for different reasons). Obviously if everyone would "live within their means" everyone would be way poorer and growth would shrink. It comes back to how you conceptualize debt which is going to vary. Notice the most anti-debt people are schizoid libertarians who want to claim money should be hard assets like gold but want to make sure all debt repayment is enforced strictly.
Also your picture deals with the form of money and not individual debt directly obviously. Unless money is totally worthless (defeating the point) it's going to be rationed. Private fiat like crypto is voluntary so there's literally no floor on demand beyond the actions of private speculators, government fiat is based on government actions which would be illegal for private actors (taxes and such). Crypto basically failed as money and turned into a form of gambling for obvious reasons. No one in their right mind is going to take out a bitcoin loan to spend because the real price will probably increase radically. If there's no credit denominated in your "money" it's probably not really money.

>>17263060
But aren't you just describing what actually exists? Multiple money does exist and you can use what you want to privately settle payments.

>>17265239
>Thr old testament is pro-debt
That's questionable
https://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HudsonLostTradition.pdf

>>17265286
Mankiw is a neoclassical economist so he basically thinks money is neutral and the aggregate amount of loans out there is constrained by private decisions of savers.
>Reading any of these other books thrown at you in this thread are like trying to learn about astronomy by looking at astrology.
Except you're recommending someone more blatantly empirically wrong

>>17266643
This is interesting. Could you explain more why crypto failed as money and how it became gambling? Also what is "multiple money"?

>>17262830

>>17266643
>Crypto basically failed as money and turned into a form of gambling for obvious reasons. No one in their right mind is going to take out a bitcoin loan to spend because the real price will probably increase radically. If there's no credit denominated in your "money" it's probably not really money.

Completely factually incorrect, anyone with access to Google can tell you that Bitcoin price is being driven by institutional purchasing, traditional fiat money's value is being driven into the gutter by overprinting. In the past year the US treasury printed over 2 Trillion dollars and injected them into the economy.
The result? Countries that have used the USD as the bellwether currency for almost a century (Germany, China, Singapore) are looking elsewhere for value reserves. It just so happens that you CAN'T print or fabricate as much bitcoin as you'd like, and unlike gold or silver, there isn't a massive seam waiting to be found at the bottom of the ocean ready to cause a market crash.

>https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/bitcoin-price-near-highs/

If you had bought bitcoin at literally any point before about two days ago you'd be in profit.
That isn't a gamble, that's a rapidly appreciating asset.

Even the World Economic Forum is pushing for global adoption of crypto currency.
https://www.weforum.org/communities/gfc-on-cryptocurrencies

In post WW1 Germany anyone who used debt to accumulate hard assets like land, jewellery, or foreign stocks and currencies was able to survive the period of extreme hyperinflation that followed without ever having to pay their debts back because the lenders no longer existed. That hyperinflation was caused by unrestrained money printing.

Don't listen to me though, I've only made about 98,000$ this year from crypto currency investments.

>>17267352
Don't the Jewish overlords at the world economic forum want everyone to use crypto currency so they can track every single purchase

>>17265704
this one

>>17261764
Pretty basic explanation: it allows you to buy things before you are able to afford them, and earlier access to that thing provides advantages that are more significant than the disadvantages of the debt (ie interest, risk of defaulting).
For example, let's say someone has absolutely no money. They want to become a farmer. But they can't afford land. Without debt, the farmer would not be able to start a farm. As a result, he will have to work for someone else for, say, $5/hr. In 20 years, he can afford a farm and purchases it outright, and then makes $10/hr. But by taking out a loan and going into debt, he could purchase a plot of land immediately. As a result, for 20 years, he would pay $5.50/hr towards the debt, and would still make $4.50/hr on top of that. At the end of the 20 years, he would have paid off the farm, and almost have enough money to buy a second farm. The debt allowed the man to increase his output and thus value to the world, which increased his salary.

It also creates additional efficiency in the marketplace by removing the temporal component -- normally, you need a buyer and seller who are both ready to make the sale immediately. But with debt, you can make a sale with someone who can't afford the house till 20 years from now.

>>17267352
Are you a retard? He literally said that it's because bitcoin is ballooning that it makes for bad money.

Would you take a loan in bitcoin to trade in the real world if you knew it's dollar value you would have to repay could double in 1-2 years without interest?

It is used as an asset yes, but that doesn't mean it's money.

>>17262070
This is the argument of altruism.
Nothing is truly selfish.

>>17267475
>money shouldn't increase in value over time
You are the retard here friend, anyone with half an IQ can tell you that rapid inflation and unrestrained lending go hand in hand. In principle the idea of lending x to poor farmer so that he can develop his land and pay back x with interest of his own, it is good, but in reality unregulated banks charge extortionate rates to ensure market dominance while tricking lendees into loans that ruin them, or at least force them into bankruptcy or foreclosure. Look at where we are now, the Federal Reserve is at the point of charging 0% Interest to loans for major institutions, and there is even talk of dipping into negative interest rates in order to stimulate more (artificial) stock market growth. The reality is that out of control lending is crashing the USD with no survivors, Bitcoin wouldn't be booming so hard if the USD wasn't simultaneously crashing.

And you can get loans in Bitcoin, they're measured in satoshi's however since owning a single bitcoin is beyond the means of most plebs. The idea of digitally managed loans being distributed to subsistence farmers in places like Indonesia, India, and Southeast Asia is one of the primary drivers of institutional investment right now, decentralized finance is a vast untapped market that crypto gives access to, far smarter people than me have decided that this is the direction we're moving in.

Doesn't make a difference if you believe me or not, my bags are packed.

>>17267604
>>money shouldn't increase in value over time
I said that a volatile asset is bad as MONEY. I hold 30% of my portfolio in bitcoin because I treat it as an asset for savings, and I expect many other people will and it will appreciate. Maybe at some point it will stabilise and at that point it can be treated as money.

> rapid inflation and unrestrained lending go hand in hand
I agree. Debtors are more than happy to take loans and creditors know that the government will print them out of trouble. I am not arguing that the current state of the US dollar is good money, it's just better than bitcoin for know, but it is clear that the US is pushing the limit for hyperinflation after which the financial system collapses (and I don't hold US debt objects for that reason).

The US dollar had basically zero inflation (and zero depreciation) till the fed took over the dollar. The gilded age foundations of the US economy were based on a robust and decentralised credit system that was only possible because of the stable currency. The key requirement is that it remains stable; if it appreciates then credit creation just stops, which is worse than inflation.

> Bitcoin wouldn't be booming so hard if the USD wasn't simultaneously crashing.
> The idea of digitally managed loans being distributed to subsistence farmers in places like Indonesia, India, and Southeast Asia is one of the primary drivers of institutional investment right now
I think bitcoin is booming for a very specific reason, that you already mentioned... Inflated stock prices and low interest rates means that it is a good ASSET to store value. Again that doesn't mean that it's good money.

>And you can get loans in Bitcoin
If I took a loan in bitcoin to start a "productive" business I am sure that I wouldn't make enough profit to match it's rise in value over the next few years. The only reason I might take a bitcoin loan would be to speculate on some other similarly inflating asset like ChainLINK or something

> Doesn't make a difference if you believe me or not, my bags are packed.
I literally said that it's a decent asset because it's appreciating. Even I profited big spending two years in crypto.

>>17267352
>Completely factually incorrect, anyone with access to Google can tell you that Bitcoin price is being driven by institutional purchasing, traditional fiat money's value is being driven into the gutter by overprinting.
People primarily aren't buying bitcoin to settle transactions but because they think the price is going to go up and they can make a gain they can cash out. If the something for noting aspect came to an end you'd just be left with a very costly/inefficient system to settle payments. The basic principles don't scale well and trying to get everyone using that would be crazy

>Countries that have used the USD as the bellwether currency for almost a century (Germany, China, Singapore) are looking elsewhere for value reserves
Even if that was true the consequences wouldn't be what you think. Countries like Germany and China export more than they import, they couldn't export anywhere near as much as they do if they refused dollars.

>That hyperinflation was caused by unrestrained money printing.
You do realize Germany lost a war and had foreign liabilities placed upon them they didn't want to pay back? They could of expropriated the wealthy but that was something politically off the table so with a combination of idiocy and choice they went down that route, it wasn't just they printed a bunch of money thinking they found one weird trick.

>>17267604
>Bitcoin wouldn't be booming so hard if the USD wasn't simultaneously crashing
Don't use USD as a point of reference than. Price bitcoin in anything else and you see the same basic pattern.

>The idea of digitally managed loans being distributed to subsistence farmers in places like Indonesia, India, and Southeast Asia is one of the primary drivers of institutional investment right now, decentralized finance is a vast untapped market that crypto gives access to, far smarter people than me have decided that this is the direction we're moving in.
Microfinance was a big thing that was going to transform the world 20 years ago but it turns out lending money to poor people doesn't work out well.