Yabby and Pericles
Well if what you are both saying is true,then why not just keep printing fiat money, or lowering interest rates, until everyone in the world is independently wealthy and no-one has to engage in productive activity any more? We could then access capital without cost. You are admitting to your irrationality, there's nothing more to be said, and you are dismissed.

Pericles, data do not interpret themselves. There's no point discussing "examples" or how things work in practice if you do not know or care about the requirements of basic logic or of intellectual honesty. You can indulge your own invincible ignorance; it's far too tedious for me. If you honestly want to understand the topic, a readable introduction is "What Has Government Done to Our Money" by Murray Rothbard, but don't bore me with your dishonesty and ignorance unless and until you've read and understood it.

Arjay
Back to my original point, about the politicians don't understand it. Yabby's and Pericles' primitive superstitious worship of Kevin Rudd's arsehole, just says it all. According to their theory, there is a problem of natural scarcity of capital which affects human economic activity. But we can remove this scarcity without work or savings. All we have to do is ask the chief executive of a legal monopoly of coercion to wave his hand, and the scarcity magically disappears. When challenged to show reason for this belief, they evade, and shift, and pretend they didn’t see the illogic and untruth of their assertion, and glose, and divert, and side-track. So it’s hard to know whether you are dealing with invincible ignorance or deliberate dishonesty. But when it finally comes down to it they just assert as an article of faith "Yes, we can create real wealth by printing paper." Life is a cornucopia of limitless wealth just waiting to be opened by the magic sesame of government.

They remind me of the tribal Aborigines who believed that by rubbing a shell they could make it rain, or like the little child who asks why his mother doesn't just get all the money he wants "from the bank" by filling out a withdrawal form. They are reduced to arguing that economic life could not take place without government monopolising the money supply. Yet no-one will ever show *reason* for this belief except endless repetition of an open-ended double standard. They are intellectually literally at the level of unweaned infants squalling for the teat. And many politicians, like Barack Obama or Kevin Rudd, have perhaps not even thought about it as much as Yabby or Pericles, and openly make decisions by relying on advice from government-funded Keynesian economists, with bankers, one of the prime class of fraudsters and charlatans benefitting from the scam.

You really are scraping the barrel, Peter Hume.

>>You can indulge your own invincible ignorance; it's far too tedious for me... don't bore me with your dishonesty and ignorance unless and until you've read and understood it<<

Insult is a very poor substitute for discussion.

But it doesn't let you off the hook.

>>why not just keep printing fiat money, or lowering interest rates, until everyone in the world is independently wealthy and no-one has to engage in productive activity any more?<<

That, from someone who has just called me ignorant and dishonest, is a classic.

Because that simply isn't how it works.

Just because the support of a currency isn't immediately obvious (i.e. you can't turn all of it into gold bars overnight), that doesn't imply that it has zero value. Its value is determined by the market in much the same way as tangible commodities, namely supply and demand.

Obviously, if you circulate too much of the stuff, it will lose value. But there is a balance that exists between the various factors - trade, interest rates, economic growth, that sort of thing - that provides the "marker" for people to ascribe a specific value to it, on a specific day.

I know it is complicated. But simplicity - as in your "gold is a stable currency" fallacy - is no substitute for reality.

You do yourself no favours, either, by inventing other people's views.

>>they [Yabby and Pericles] just assert as an article of faith "Yes, we can create real wealth by printing paper."<<

You know perfectly well that neither of us has said any such thing. It can only illustrate the emptiness of your own argument, when you stoop to such tactics.

>>They are reduced to arguing that economic life could not take place without government monopolising the money supply<<

Nobody argues any such thing. It just happens to be a reasonable contemporary structure, that works.

Try writing something without the string of invective, Peter Hume. We know where your economic preference sits. Try defending it with reason, instead of polemic.

Peter,

You lost it on points – regardless of some of the good ones you landed.

I was enjoying, no – I was learning. Alas, you nailed it with:

<< You are admitting to your irrationality, there's nothing more to be said, and you are dismissed. >>

<< There's no point discussing ... if you do not know or care about the requirements of basic logic or of intellectual honesty ... you can indulge your own invincible ignorance ... >>

<< Yabby's and Pericles' primitive superstitious worship of Kevin Rudd's arsehole, just says it all. >>

<< They are intellectually literally at the level of unweaned infants squalling for the teat. >>

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Arjay, you lost it way back, the WTC stuff just blew my mind away. I was hoping you would acknowledge some of the good points landed by Pericles or Yabby, you didn't - it was your thread after all. What it boiled down to was your own personal slant on things, without conceding anything of substance.

If you were involved in my area of expertise (science) you wouldn't last 5 mins.

But, thanks anyway – it was/is an interesting topic.
_______

To the antagonists (Pericles and Yabby) - thank you too. We may not agree on everything, but on this I found your arguments more persuasive.

qanda,how can you judge that,which by your own admission don't have a handle on? 911 bet, qanda was from another spat that Pericles and I had recently.He backed out on that one too.

Peter I'm in total agreement.The banking cartels have taken the whole system hostage.The GFC has just begun and they think that doing more of the same will alleviate the problem.This emphasis on a monetarist system distorts and destroys economies.

Yabby and Pericles will never admit that it is seriously flawed.I've been there before with both of them.When yabby feels that he is out of his depth he calls to his mate Pericles for help.

On this I think we may agree: by repeating things that got us into trouble in the 1st place is just plain silly.

It probably has something to do with a fundamental flaw in capitalism. It would require a paradigm shift to overcome and given human nature, it ain't goin to happen.