Mercrom posted:

money is made up

Inept posted:

i feel like there's about a 30% chance someone starts advocating moving back to the gold standard on this page

quote:

When involuntary unemployment exists, the marginal disutility of labour is necessarily less than the utility of the marginal product. Indeed it may be much less. For a man who has been long unemployed some measure of labour, instead of involving disutility, may have a positive utility. If this is accepted, the above reasoning shows how “wasteful” loan expenditure[8] may nevertheless enrich the community on balance. Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if the education of our statesmen on the principles of the classical economics stands in the way of anything better.

It is curious how common sense, wriggling for an escape from absurd conclusions, has been apt to reach a preference for wholly “wasteful” forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict “business” principles. For example, unemployment relief financed by loans is more readily accepted than the financing of improvements at a charge below the current rate of interest; whilst the form of digging holes in the ground known as gold-mining, which not only adds nothing whatever to the real wealth of the world but involves the disutility of labour, is the most acceptable of all solutions.

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.

The analogy between this expedient and the goldmines of the real world is complete. At periods when gold is available at suitable depths experience shows that the real wealth of the world increases rapidly; and when but little of it is so available, our wealth suffers stagnation or decline. Thus gold-mines are of the greatest value and importance to civilisation. just as wars have been the only form of large-scale loan expenditure which statesmen have thought justifiable, so gold-mining is the only pretext for digging holes in the ground which has recommended itself to bankers as sound finance; and each of these activities has played its part in progress-failing something better. To mention a detail, the tendency in slumps for the price of gold to rise in terms of labour and materials aids eventual recovery, because it increases the depth at which gold-digging pays and lowers the minimum grade of ore which is payable.

In addition to the probable effect of increased supplies of gold on the rate of interest, gold-mining is for two reasons a highly practical form of investment, if we are precluded from increasing employment by means which at the same time increase our stock of useful wealth. In the first place, owing to the gambling attractions which it offers it is carried on without too close a regard to the ruling rate of interest. In the second place the result, namely, the increased stock of gold, does not, as in other cases, have the effect of diminishing its marginal utility. Since the value of a house depends on its utility, every house which is built serves to diminish the prospective rents obtainable from further house-building and therefore lessens the attraction of further similar investment unless the rate of interest is falling part passu. But the fruits of gold-mining do not suffer from this disadvantage, and a check can only come through a rise of the wage-unit in terms of gold, which is not likely to occur unless and until employment is substantially better. Moreover, there is no subsequent reverse effect on account of provision for user and supplementary costs, as in the case of less durable forms of wealth.

Ancient Egypt was doubly fortunate, and doubtless owed to this its fabled wealth, in that it possessed two activities, namely, pyramid-building as well as the search for the precious metals, the fruits of which, since they could not serve the needs of man by being consumed, did not stale with abundance. The Middle Ages built cathedrals and sang dirges. Two pyramids, two masses for the dead, are twice as good as one; but not so two railways from London to York. Thus we are so sensible, have schooled ourselves to so close a semblance of prudent financiers, taking careful thought before we add to the “financial” burdens of posterity by building them houses to live in, that we have no such easy escape from the sufferings of unemployment. We have to accept them as an inevitable result of applying to the conduct of the State the maxims which are best calculated to “enrich” an individual by enabling him to pile up claims to enjoyment which he does not intend to exercise at any definite time.

Inept posted:

i feel like there's about a 30% chance someone starts advocating moving back to the gold standard on this page

comedyblissoption posted:

comedyblissoption posted:

Ford's profit plummets by almost half, cuts 2018 outlook

Fleetwood Crack posted:

It is funny, but it's probably fake. From the crypto thread:

Inept posted:

i feel like there's about a 30% chance someone starts advocating moving back to the gold standard on this page

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

https://twitter.com/4G5/status/1022194376636809216

Peanut President posted:

That'll happen when you get a $1 Billion tv deal.

hobbesmaster posted:

yeah, the market had to reset with the new fact that people, or at least TV networks, apparently care about WWE in 2018

Taintrunner posted:

Taintrunner posted:

Saudi Arabia, actually, needed a propaganda platform to legitmize them while they committed active, American-assisted genocide in Yemen. Hence the reformist Prince that The Rock was sucking the loving dick of on social media. They refused to let women perform, and banned Sami Zayn because he is Syrian, also one of their commentators got punished for this on Instagram:

Peanut President posted:

more importantly (to tv execs) it's live. sports and other poo poo people won't just pirate/dvr is worth a gently caress ton of money

hobbesmaster posted:

probably why overwatch is on ESPN now

Taintrunner posted:

I know it's very woke to yell about how the Lord of the Rings was white nationalist and whatever but rewatching it now

hobbesmaster posted:

probably why overwatch is on ESPN now

Tubgoat posted:

Inept posted:

#ifYugeTitYugeTit

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

lol

Taintrunner posted:

i'd rather die charging into an infinite and unending evil screaming DEATH! than pretending that electing a corporate democrat in 2020 will make our nightmares go away

Zil posted:

Colleges are even starting up their own leagues and some offer scholarships for gaming.

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

when people criticize lotr for racism they’re typically tolkien about the books fyi

C-Euro posted:

This is pretty doomsday right?

https://twitter.com/EPN473/status/1022692238176870400

Finicums Wake posted:

to tie this into economics:

either the leading economically developed countries will band together to address climate change in a meaningful fashion or they won't.

if they do, it's likely that tens of trillions of dollars worth of carbon-based assets become worthless, plunging the global economy into a depression.

if they don't, well lmao

comedyblissoption posted:

[Goldmines]

Larry Parrish posted:

california fires really only affect rural towns and rich people's stupid rear end developments on top of ridges (aka, the most fire-dangerous place you could possibly build)

Somaen posted:

didn't see thius posted

https://twitter.com/EconguyRosie/status/1022134803779526656

Larry Parrish posted:

i don't even get why there was a referendum on it. is the hope that EU regulations being gone would allow naked russia-style oligarchy or what