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cantstopthesignal ,

As the amount of currency approaches infinity, the value of the currency approaches zero

Nemo ,

Which is bad if you have a lot of money, but not so bad if you have a lot of debt and can still sell your labor and its produce.

cantstopthesignal ,

But also bad if you have pay for things like food and shelter. Then you are just bartering which is less efficient than having actual currency. You can’t buy or sell someone half a haircut.

unfreeradical ,
@unfreeradical@lemmy.world avatar

If wages rise with inflation, then workers gain relative to those with accumulated fortunes.

davetapley OP ,

So, what hadn’t clicked until I watch this video, is that federal taxes don’t ‘pay for things’, they are just the mechanism by which federal government ensures the currency has value: They compel us to pay taxes (via courts, police, etc.) and those taxes must be paid in the same currency, and so we have to do work to acquire that currency, and so it has value.

marcos ,

Money existed before the government started using it.

The idea that taxes remove money form the economy and government spending prints new money is an abstraction created for macroeconomics to simplify its models. But it’s a lossy abstraction, so don’t go thinking this is exactly what happens on the real world.

Bartsbigbugbag , (edited )

Centralized, minted currencies definitely did not exist before states started using them. Minted currencies were invented multiple times independently across multiple cultures, but one of the biggest through lines between them is that they required a centralized state who held large reserves, and that they were, in every known case, used to support standing armies for those states.

unfreeradical ,
@unfreeradical@lemmy.world avatar

Fiat money maintains its value largely because the government will purchase labor, goods, and other assets without any concern for gain versus loss.

The state therefore generates demand even when and where private entities will not or cannot hire workers, make purchases, or invest.

emberwit ,

No, this is not how currency gets or keeps its value. The work itself is what creates value, which is paid back in currency. If you pay taxes, you transfer some of that value you created to the state. The money would not become worthless if the state did not collect taxes. Money is a way to transfer value, not to create it and taxes are like any payment just that, a transfer of value.

unfreeradical ,
@unfreeradical@lemmy.world avatar

Value is generated by work, but valorization is based on processes of use or exchange. Generally assets have intrinsic value. Fiat currency has no intrinsic value. Its value derives from the state assuring a demand for goods and labor, which will be purchased in the currency, from assuring the availability of investment assets, which will promise a return above an original value, and from regulating the supply, to assure that the values of ordinary goods will remain generally stable.

goo ,

Not really. The US dollar is taking longer hit rock bottom because other countries are forced to payback their debts in dollars. Eventually all FIAT currencies go to zero.

Nemo ,

Well, and also by removing currency from general use, raising value by decreasing availability.

Steve ,
@Steve@communick.news avatar

That’s not how infinity works. It’s not a number you can ever reach. It’s not a number at all really. It’s more a set of all numbers.

The value of the currency will never approach zero.

cantstopthesignal ,

It’s called a limit and it is very much coneptualized in math.

Steve ,
@Steve@communick.news avatar

A limit isn’t infinity though. Infinity has no limit. Its the oposite of a limit.

However high you may count, there is still infinitely more you could count. And an infinite number of fractions between each and every number you counted. And all of that is included in infinity.

cantstopthesignal ,

That’s the technical language used to refer to a limit. Take it up with a calculus book

NightAuthor ,

Well, the books just going off of Sr Thomas Calcula, so really you should blame him.

jon ,

In mathematical terms it’s perfectly acceptable to talk about the limit of an expression as some value tends towards infinity. E.g.:


<span style="color:#323232;">limit (1/x)  = 0
</span><span style="color:#323232;">x→∞
</span>

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_(mathematics)…)

Steve ,
@Steve@communick.news avatar

Okay. My last try.

That’s a way of saying there is no specific value that is the end. The “Limit” is endless.

If we created a currency with 10^100 units. There would me more units than the atoms in a billion universes. And it would still be infinitely far from infinity.

So if the currency’s unit value is inversely proportional its proximity to infinity, the value of every unit of currency we could ever make is infinite. Even if we made 10^100 of them.

jon ,

Try again, you still don’t understand the concept.

unfreeradical , (edited )
@unfreeradical@lemmy.world avatar

The term limit is used in mathematics differently from how you are understanding it from vernacular usage. A mathematical limit expresses directionality toward an unreachable value.

The meaning of the statement is that every marginal augmentation of the money supply carries some marginal diminution of the currency value, without any possibility that the supply may be exhausted absolutely or the value annihilated.

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