(More.)
Corona Update #5
This has more to do with balancing Plague Economics against the threat of inflation. It is a very tricky road to navigate. As some of you know, I’m of a Cynic-Stoic background but also see the soundness of many of the arguments raised by The Austrian School of Economics, except for Hayek who sounds too similar to Sartre for my liking (seriously, you could lift whole sections of their respective books, adapting the terminology to the definitions of the other and put them in and nobody would be the wiser).
Basically the concern is more about maintaining the flow of goods and reducing hysteria. The classical philosopher who first examined this was Aeneas the Tactician, I’ve linked his surviving work already in this thread. It doesn’t matter if your communal or oligarchical or a outright dictatorship, the market flow of inflation on international trade is going to hit many temperate markets at the same time. A few such as China and Iran was already sinking fast prior to the plague.
The precise ratio within a state isn’t the same as international, but the international reliability of a currency is going to be set by the perspective of a rule of mutual recognition to balance the private property, preserving employability and the population remaining healthy and receiving goods, in ratio to everyone else.
This means:
A: Everyone is kept safe, fed and medicated with minimal long term risk to skilled and intellectual labor; they all have ample opportunity to return to the workforce once the plague is over. This gives a mere hiatus status to non-perishable good contracts, such as moving foods like vegetables or non seasonal manufactured products.
B: That the people aren’t being disproportionally gouged or enriched, and that businesses won’t be disproportionally gouged or crippled with debt that is unplayable, but still able to maintain bills during the hiatus, and will be given time to plan, recruit new employees and adapt to market change once the plague winds down on very similar time scales.
C: Overwhelming bulk of the money pumped into the market needs to be held by banks lending to businesses or inflating bank holdings. They are going to be doing the bulk of the loaning and economic restructuring. Government may have to do some, that’s how Austria ended up with so much residential property to rent out, it gained a accidental stake in the property.
If you get the ratio of C off too much, such as going full Kropotkin and just giving the money to the people and telling the banks and evil businesses they will pay for everything, socialist of the world unite… then the international investors will become scared shitless and will not invest in us, and the motivations to maintain corporations and large businesses goes down the shittube within the US. We will go from richest to poorest society overnight.
D: So that international balance in inflation needs balanced out. If Turkey or Argentina in isolate inflated their currency (and they do, it is their national pastime) then nobody else has incentive to pump in good foreign wealth or trade mediums like gold into a thieving system of socialist animus when you can invest most anywhere elsewhere in a striving and thriving economy where you have a reasonable chance of not having your investment taken away. But when everyone goes down universally, like the temperate climate nations in the northern hemisphere, we have the potential to go down at the same rate and go back up at the same rate, if our currencies are effectively pegged to one another and we recognize our currencies are in the same boat.
Under that condition if everyone’s currency universally inflated and devalues at the same rate, then there really wouldn’t necessarily be inflation in terms of official bank notes.
Note this puts economies like India in a odd position as it is gaining more market share but at a loss in currency if it decides to recognize currency inflation in everyone else but itself since it isn’t plague ridden and still producing (Don’t worry Zinnati, locust are coming). It is likely to take the policy of devaluing it’s goods in ratio if enough of it’s foreign trade in certain goods have universally devalued- Euro and Dollar and Pound Sterling all down at similar rates, and if they haven’t started madly printing money then India and Brazil might not want to rock that boat as it is more likely to hurt them. However, trade between India and other tropical countries can result in wild inflation popping up there, as they are more a satellite to India or Brazil and want foreign currency but lack it save through trade with India or similar country. So Rwanda might see the worst of this in a year and economist won’t know why. Also in the short term most people who’ve been investing their retirement into the stock market likely have gotten wiped out. It isn’t just Cambodia getting raped long term, it is individual investors. They will not be getting a bailout beyond basic social pension plans like Social Security once old enough. Hence why I don’t recommend most playing the stock market, Benjamin Franklin didn’t design our property to work inflation values inherent in our currency to be funneled through everyone playing the stock exchange. It was meant for large plantations and businesses to take out loans from state banks in fiat currency to pay workers and purchase equipment like food stamps do (farmers can purchase equipment with it, and that is exchanged for regular currency). Franklin thought people would be hesitant to take loans as every loan devalues the currency and everyone becomes collectively poorer as wage and purchasing costs would drive up as more currency abounds, because foreign products would float against our inflationary currency.
Everyone thinks Hamilton set up our system, no Franklin did, Hamilton just did cosmetic changes to model it closer to the British System, but it is more superficial than modern Capitalists or Socialist understand.
The trick is to get enough foreign currencies to inflate at the same rate. A state too greedy in terms of socialism can easily bankrupt themselves when investors see they are still riding the cash hog of Corona Virus without having any obvious increase in trade value. That’s a investment and admin tax. Has to be done in unison, balancing the psychological values of avoiding hysteria in conjunction with maintaining the payments of business debts in such a way the population accepts quarantine.
If that succeeds then there will be little (still some) damage to large businesses and cottage industries like repair men or people running small shops from locally manufactured items or stuff already mass produced sitting in warehouses.
If the ratio is off even a little inflation will strike. Luckily it won’t ever get as bad as Zero Sum demands it will get, we went though similar inflationary events like two world wars. We have a absurd number of mechanisms in place he hasn’t ever seen put into motion. Also his plan of moving to a desolate island doesn’t involve women. He never mentions women, just a sausage fest of guys being in isolation. That’s basically a prison without walls. It seem the two jail birds of the forum have been institutionalized into accepting the idea of living in duress and sexless poverty, just so long as the walls go away. Not even the mention of a shared whore everyone bangs in a biker gang sort of set up, just sexless men in misery away from society. That’s like a prison island tax payers don’t have to pay for, so I support them going, just everyone should pitch in and buy them a blowup doll to share or else they might start poking one another. Just a observation.
Oh, if you take D3 avoid calcium, they don’t react well. And Zinc needs a catalyst to be productive in attacking Corona. It can be gotten via prescription cheap but isn’t of use if you are devoid of zinc. Have a good Plague, and never forget, Kill All The Nietzscheans.
And please keep the economic talk Dasein Free, we need the focus on real stuff and not Iambigious’ refusal to fix his ideas and make them coherent by reading the Sanmati Tarka, which was written precisely to explain to guys like Iambigious why they make no sense, and why it isn’t worth it to anyone to debate them. The text is all Iambigious needs, nobody will debate him until he reads it and makes obviously adjustments, and nobody will explain why, just stop hugging and puffing like a corona patient and read the fucking book. Just read it, just fucking read it, it literally is aimed at you. It mahout as well be called The Iambigious Sutra. Shut up… no shut up, go fucking read it… stop. Just read it. Shut up, stop typing, just fucking read it, I left the link for you a few updates back.
Oh… I also wrote a Eulogy for Tab, to be read at his corona funeral:
“There once was a old man from York,
who moved to a land without Pork.
Try as he may, to his utter dismay
He could never get any on his Fork”.
phoned my mum and told her I was a millionaire. Proud days.