RE: Universal Basic Income through cryptocurrency mining
Hi @littlejoeward. I commented on one of your comments regarding this on one of @scottsantens posts. Here's a copy pasta of my comment:
I can't help thinking that the consensus/popular view of economics and monetary systems is arse-about. This idea that money flows from economic activity, when it is actually money in the first place that defines economic activity. It's actually a self-perpetuating system, as far as I can see. Yet this is one of the criticisms people make of cryptocurrencies. It seems to me that what Grantcoin is doing (literally creating money to meet a need) is no different to how regular fiat money systems work. And a Grantcoin-like system seems to me to be less potentially ponzi-ish than the regular monetary system, because it doesn't generate ever growing debt in its production. The regular monetary system we run now can never repay world debt (without governments either cancelling it, or just printing an amount of money equal to that debt and then repaying it), as the interest charges on debt mean that more money needs to be created to meet the debt obligations.
I agree completely. I wish more people realized how our current monetary system worked. It is pretty messed up! It is interesting because the way money has value is if people value it but people don't value it unless other people value it, so it really is a self-perpetuating system. I think the only competitive advantages money can have are ease of transfer, fungibility, stability, and popularity.
Thanks for your comments
An economy and a monetary system are mind-bending concepts. We are essentially indoctrinated by sloppy thinking/reasoning in this sphere. We all know the maxim - "money doesn't grow on trees". It's supposed to represent the idea that there's a limited supply of money. But money supply isn't limited. It's continually being created. And I think this simple point is something most people probably don't realise or at least stop to consider. Money essentially does grow on trees. It's going to keep appearing year after year, and harvesting that production of money is perfectly normal behaviour. Currently, the majority of money is harvested for non-economic growth (mostly financial and real estate speculation). And Joe Citizen is perfectly fine with this. The reason that he is fine with it is because it doesn't actually matter all that greatly that a chunk of money is created and spent on stuff that doesn't add economic growth. Yet when you present the idea that we can just create money and give it to people to help them survive for nothing in return, he somehow thinks this is unsustainable. I mean, WTF Joe? In this case, these people are definitely going to contribute to economic growth (basic survival is economic growth), and the money created via central bank printing (or cryptocurrency say) is debt free, unlike normal commercial bank money creation, and therefore could be repaid (system-wide) if we so wish.