> who wants to get paid to destroy another person's life (the rich guy says to the IRS agent)

admittedly
i can understand being a copblob :comfypolice:
i can't really understand the appeal of being a tax man

@icedquinn I was friends with a tax man. He turned out to be a POS but I can maybe shine some light on their thinking.

They think they are doing a public service. They arent really anti-rich usually or anything like that. But they do think they are making america a better place by doing a necessary service.

@freemo harassing the poor for pocket change to bomb arabs is a necessary service?
@freemo i mean the modern monetary theory literally only taxes to remove inflation from their infinite cash printing, so thinking you are doing anything other than terrorism by being a tax man means you're an unironic retard. :blobcathuh:

@icedquinn @freemo Keeping the money printer going. That's what causes inflation. Taxes won't stop inflation.

@posrev @freemo the theory is if they print 1,000$ to spend on bullshit, that will filter in to the economy eventually. which causes the economic penalties. if you "tax" 1,000$ back out from the poor, the supply in motion doesn't change.

which amounts to a very elaborate reverse robinhood where the state continously issues loans for more money than exists and seizes it to pay off ever increasing debt loads.

@icedquinn @freemo The debasing of currency didn't work out well for the Roman Empire. They did it to fund their endless wars.

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@icedquinn

100% of people who eat spinach eventually die. Therefore spinach must be unhealthy.

@posrev

@freemo @posrev that's nonsense. gold/silver have retained trade value for >500 years.

@icedquinn

Not even remotely true. Gold has widly changed in its trade value over the years. In fact just in our lifetime gold has swung considerably.

@posrev

@icedquinn

To give you an idea as to actual numbers, the buying-power of gold today is 10% of what it was in 1980 and 20% of what it was since 1720.

@posrev

@freemo @icedquinn @posrev gold is fiat too, and it's only a good hedge against guvment collapse and nothing else :l_wink:
@romin i don't really get why people care about gold. i think solely *because* it is shiny and largely useless for anything else.

@posrev @freemo

@icedquinn

Gold has value for the same reason fiat has value... The qty is relatively fixed and cant be easily fabricated.

@posrev @romin

@freemo @posrev @romin fiat is imminently fabricated. it comes out of a printer. :blobcathuh:

you have to be trolling me right now

@icedquinn

When did I say it cant be fabricated... I said **easily** fabricated... is it easy to get one of those printers? No, in fact only one specific authority in the whole universe has one.

@posrev @romin

@icedquinn @freemo @romin Gold and silver is fungible. It has many uses including industrial as opposed to fiat that is just paper or digital.

@posrev

Both gold and money have utility and are fungible.

The utility of money is being able to transport large amounts of value/wealth with very little weight, and in a way that is tracable. Gold on the other hand is quite heavy but more importantly if stolen is untracable so is also much harder to retrieve and much easier to offload when stolen.

@icedquinn @romin

@freemo @icedquinn @romin You don't need alot of gold to move alot of money at $2000 USD per ounce. The fact it is hard to trace is actually a plus.

@posrev @freemo @romin that post is trying to sleight of word "money" while forgetting gold certificates came between boullion exchange and the toiletpaper we use now.

there are literally zero advantages to fiat for everyone but controllers. it lets authority spend capital it doesn't have because it takes the populace a comical amount of time to finally correct (hyperinflation.)

the USD is literally just backed by "proof of bombs" as it were.

@icedquinn

And yet .... nothing remotely like the great depression has happened since.

Always funny when people argue from points where we have monumental evidence of history showing the contrary.

Its the same thing you hear from communists about how great it should be theory yet ::Gestures to every communist country in history::

@posrev @romin

@freemo @icedquinn @posrev @romin

Do anarchists trade via barter? Or do they just rape and pillage? Since there's no order in true anarchy, there's no currency...

@lucifargundam

Sure.. remind me again which society had no fiat currency and a stable economy, I dont remember one.

@icedquinn @posrev @romin

@freemo @icedquinn @romin I think captalism is actually good with little or no manipulation by government. Austrian economics.

@posrev

On that we agree, but I was using communism as an example of similar way of thinking.

@icedquinn @romin

@freemo @icedquinn @romin Yes, most communist countries are run by tyrants. China is abit different in that they embrace capitalism.

@posrev

To pay for a project like hyperloop someone would have to move 740,000 kg of gold to pay for it. Just moving that if it sunk or was stolen would destabalize whole economies. Now imagine projects that cost trillions.

It also would be slow to move, taking upward of a week if its across the globe (with huge risk for theft)

Now compare that to fiat which is mostly digital as you point out. It is nearly complete safe, and moved instantly.

@icedquinn @romin

@freemo @icedquinn @romin That's why fiat should be backed by gold. But I think the horse has already bolted.

@posrev

Sure except as we covered last time we tried that we had the great depression (and quite a bit of instability before hand).

Economic theory knew the instability would happen and new fiat would solve it. We moved to fiat and the theory turned out to be true, things have been **significantly** more stable ever since.

When the science and data very clearly shows economic theory is right and that backing money with gold leads to poverty and instability why would you or anyone argue to go back to that? Its already been demonstrated to be a bad idea and the solution has consistently demonstrated to be better.

@icedquinn @romin

@freemo @icedquinn @romin When people see that inflation rises by the week and the cost of living keeps rising. It's hard to agree that this economic system is working for them.

@posrev

Thats because Trump violated the process we had established (and earlier Obama did something similar but to a lesser extent)... namely, Quantitative Easing.. Which totally circumvents the usual process for producing new money.

@icedquinn @romin

@freemo @icedquinn @posrev >keep using different unstandardized and uncalibrated measuring tapes on a thing
>"the thing's length has widly changed over the years"
@hakui wittgenstein's ruler is not lost on me, i just got bored of the conversation.

@freemo @icedquinn The US currency used to be backed by gold bullion.

@posrev

Yea, thankfully when we learned just how unstable that made our economy we changed it. In fact the great depression was a huge reason to get off the gold standard as it was a large contributing factor

@icedquinn

@freemo @posrev :blobcathuh: we changed that because the government went bankrupt (and very significant backroom shenanigans went in to the creation of the Fed, which was widely thought of as a terrible idea)

@icedquinn

yea no, not what happened. The fiat being gold-backed was well established as a problem not a boon.. and while yes some people object to the fed and im not saying the fed and the way it structured is a good idea by any means, but not backing money with gold was absolutely the right decision.

@posrev

@freemo @posrev No, it wasn't. It's not even constitutional to do so (no state shall make any Thing but gold and silver a currency)
@freemo @posrev every sound money government ditches gold for one reason: they overspent their shit in trade deficits and endless wars.

every fiat currency fails for the same reason: the government catastrophically implodes and the money has no intrinsic value.

spot price on gold and silver varies but it has remained above zero for a significant period of recorded human history. fiat currencies don't outlive the political implosion. i'm partial to trading actually useful goods as a store of value but nobody asks me.

@icedquinn

Being above 0, yet wildly varying in buying power is not an indication of success quite the opposite.

Just as fiat money which is demonstratably more stable, usually over long periods of time, and then failing when the government fails is likewise not an indication it was a failure overall. Sure eventually it may fail in the end along with the nation that backs it, but the rest of the time it is wildly more useful than gold due to its stability.

@posrev

@freemo @icedquinn I thought it was caused by the Fed and the crash of the stockmarket.

@posrev

Not the federal bank, the fed hadnt existed yet. It was created as part of the solution.

It was a stockmarket crash, and the full details are rather involved, but the gold backing the money was a central part of the problem and removing that fixed it, which is why we have never seen a crash remotely likely it since.

@icedquinn

@freemo @posrev Funny how "stock market crash" is always caused and solved by literally anything that doesn't involve financial instrument engineers.

i have a feeling if we gunned down wall street it would have had a more impactful effect :blobcatwhistle:

@icedquinn

That is tangental at best whether wall street itself has value.

@posrev

@freemo @posrev not tangential at all. the USA has experienced numerous massive economic crises which are directly associated to financial instrument collapse.

some retard gambled too hard on corn futures and now the entire food sector collapses.

so the solution is ... oddly, pretty much never to maybe stop letting people do that.

@icedquinn

Yea and? WE arent discussing stock market crashes or their effect on economies as a whole. We are talking about crashes in economy related to how we back our money. Crashed from other sources like the stock market is another matter.

@posrev

@freemo @posrev
> retards cause financial collapse
> government steals gold
> government then declares currency as fiat
if the gold was soooo volatile and useless why did they officially steal it and replace it with the new fiat notes?

:ablobcateyeroll:

> this is gold's fault somehow though and it was morally good

:neocat_gun: wrong

@icedquinn

and yet we have never seen a financial collapse like it since... the theory explained it would happen, the theory explained by not backing it with gold, and now it doesnt happen like it used to.

Proof is in the pudding.

@posrev

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