Bitcoin as a Catalyst Towards John Nash's Ideal Money
The great Keynesian mistake lies in the belief that Ideal Money can be inflation targeted (whether 0% or 2% or whatever). We learn about this mistake through the works of Hayek who warns his audience about the folly of central planning.
If we take the correction of such a misunderstanding as the premise of our inquiry to the nature and problem of our global economy we then turn to the problem Satoshi faced in deciding bitcoin's money supply.
Nash's definition of Ideal Money is a money that holds a stable value over time.
Does bitcoin's money supply render it to be/become Ideal Money?
I think to understand this question we need to remember our premise, that Ideal Money cannot be targeted by central planning.
However we CAN change the question/inquiry and ask the question of whether or not bitcoin could be constructed such that it holds the same SIGNIFICANT parameters of GOLD from certain times.
Nash's often remarks about the different histories of gold from different times and different empires:
It is easy to illustrate cases of “revolutionary” reform or change in systems of money. A good example came in 1717 when Isaac Newton, supported by George II, fixed the value of the local UK currency to a precise amount of gold that defined the value of the currency (the “pound”) in such a way that it was immediately recognizable throughout the Continent (of Europe) as of a fixed value in relation to generally accepted standards (of the time). (And this was the origin of the “gold standard”.)
Satoshi might have wanted to ask “What are the valuable qualities of Gold?”
These qualities have changed over time, and although gold was the basis for some empires at some times, eventually we replaced it with a Keynesian/floating currency system. Nick Szabo explains:
Those supply/demand curves in the first chapter of your Econ 101 textbook assumed that goods are sold for some fix standard of value, a currency. But under floating currencies, which the world has had since the U.S. went off gold in 1970, there is no fixed standard of value. When trading commodities, supply and demand for the currencies they are traded for must now be taken into account. A long commodity position is also a short currency position, and vice versa. Furthermore, expectations about future supply and demand for currencies must be accounted for. Under floating currencies and a free market in commodities, commodity prices, especially for commodities like oil and gold where the stockpile (whether below or above ground) to production ratio is very high and storage costs low, are highly volatile – a small change in inflation expectations causes a very large change in commodity prices.
Our global financial system is one big problem we have collectively been trying to solve since the dawn of civilization. Hayek describes it as solving the optimal distribution of resources.
Inflation targeting our currencies alone does not solve this problem-given our premise, inflation targeting is insanity.
If Satoshi would have consulted Nash on the optimal parameters that COULD be in bitcoin's design Nash might have suggested Satoshi implement bitcoin as a digital gold.
Imagine a bunch of parts to a machine, software, design, experiments etc. and scientists from around the world are all gathered around trying to figure out how to put this machine together. They are VERY certain there is a solution here and this machine will work, but they can't quite figure out how everything fits together yet.
Nash simply started his meditations with such a machine as his premise.
This is the scene Nash seemed to observe from his perspective. He knew a digital currency would arrive, in fact I think an argument could be made that he knew this in the 50's, and he began to philosophize in lecture and writing about the implications starting in the 90's.
Nash took the concept that was eventually realized as "bitcoin", or the levation of an internet currency not controlled by any government, and extended the implications as far as he could, until his meditations became valuable to our (future) society.
It is my conjecture that Nash's works is built contingent on bitcoin as a digital gold/settlement system, which is also in contrast to bitcoin scaled as a low fee coffee money.
The block size debate then becomes a debate of whether or not Satoshi intended bitcoin to compete with our present day currencies, or whether he intended it to bring our CURRENT global financial system into order as the CATALYST to a new age standard which might eventually allow us to realize Ideal Money.