hexi [they/them]

  • 0 Posts
  • 14 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: August 23rd, 2023
  • hexi [they/them]@hexbear.nettoMemes@lemmy.ml•Hasn't happened yet
    8·
    1 year ago

    Ted started off as a smart guy, but the MKULTRA abuse he experienced left him with a broken ideology.

    Many parts of his manifesto are problematic, and I hope people don’t think it’s good theory.

    Some excerpts:

    The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

    The leftist seeks to satisfy his feeling of inferiority by cultivating attitudes of superiority. He is not the only one to do this, but he is the one who goes furthest in this direction.

    Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good, and successful.

    The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person is too eager to seize the initiative and too insensitive to feel guilty for his aggression. The leftist is as prone to manipulating others as the more right-wing person, but his main goal is to avoid straining his own conscience.

    Ted also has some jabs at reactionaries, but he’s not a leftist for sure. There’s better literature out there, from an actual leftist perspective that people could be reading instead.

  • hexi [they/them]@hexbear.nettoUnited States | News & Politics@lemmy.ml•Thanks to Inflation, Gen Z and Millennials Will Now Need $3M in Retirement Savings To Live Comfortably
    1·
    1 year ago

    The intrinsic value of fiat currency is 0.

    That’s the entire reason reason it’s value is dependent on the amount in circulation. If it has no intrinsic value, then it’s value is dependent upon it rarity and acceptedness.

    Double, halve, quadruple 0 all you want makes no difference.

    It makes all the difference. If it’s only value is in how rare it is to get, then more of it means each dollar is easier to find and it takes actual wealth to get money.

    It’s function and value is as a medium of exchange.

    Yes, which means if suddenly there’s more of it going around, and it has no instrinsic value to act as a “floor” to it’s value, then it will drop in how much you can exchange it for.

    Imagine a copper based currency. If supplies of copper increase, the intrinsic value of copper falls, so the total value of the currency falls. The extrinsic value is not affected.

    That’s not what intrinsic value is. Intrinsic value is the value it has regardless of the rarity or market price. Copper can be used for electronics and other applications, even it is abundant.

    If I buy a widget for $1 and my labor is $2, I can be paid in 2 widgets. The money supply doesn’t change that my labor is 2 widgets. If prices are increased on widgets by a capitalist, then I would expect an increase in my labor price (in dollars), regardless of the money supply, because money has no intrinsic value.

    The fact that is has no intrinsic value is what allows it to drop in price.

    If prices don’t adjust, there will be shortages because more money ey is being spent buying widgets, or other things that take up the same inputs to make widgets (land/labor/raw materials).

    I’ll state again that this difference (capitalists choosing to raise prices vs blaming external factors like “money supply”) is not just pedantic. Capital mentions it few times, the fetishization of money and capital accumulation/hoarding cause this belief that money has a function outside of exchange.

    Except I’m saying it has no intrinsic value and that’s what allows it to lose value.

    You’re acting like there’s some force that would prevent that, despite more money circulating making the money less rare.

    Money is a credit in the economy that allows the holder to demand resources from the economy. If you double the claims to resources, without increasing the resources, you either get shortages or price increases.

    Intrinsic value refers to the inherent worth of something, usually based on its fundamental qualities or attributes. Copper has intrinsic value because it possesses useful properties for various industrial applications, such as electrical conductivity, heat resistance, and corrosion resistance. This value is not dependent on any external factors or perceptions. On the other hand, paper money is not valuable on its own. Its worth is derived from societal consensus and its function as a medium of exchange, making it reliant on people’s faith and confidence in its purchasing power.

  • hexi [they/them]@hexbear.nettoUnited States | News & Politics@lemmy.ml•Thanks to Inflation, Gen Z and Millennials Will Now Need $3M in Retirement Savings To Live Comfortably
    2·
    1 year ago

    fiat money has no intrinsic value. Doubling or tripling the supply doesn’t change it’s value. Halving it doesn’t make it suddenly more valuable.

    If you double the currency, and each dollar has the same value, then you’ve doubled the total value available to each person

    Of course that’s nonsense, money printing doesn’t create value.

    So the only way to actually make it make sense is that the total value stays the same, and doubling the currency means each unit has half the value it did before.

    How do you think each dollar can have the same value if there’s twice as much? That would mean there’s more value just from money printing, which again, is nonsense.

    Have you read Capital? It goes through money and velocity pretty thoroughly early on and I think addresses some pretty big assumptions econ classes tend to present.

    I’ve read volume 1, and Marx doesn’t imply you can print more money and keep the purchasing power the same after.