I suppose it would lead to inflation and as long as the inflation is controlled, that's doable.
Effectively, the government is being funded by all dollar holders at that point. It's a wealth tax of sorts imposed on those who hold their wealth in dollars.
The idea would be that the government is being funded by the fact that $100 today, is worth only about $90 last year, and that loss in value is what's funding the government.
This might explain why the idea is more popular on one side of the political spectrum. What's interesting though is that thus far it doesn't seem like the expected inflation has been happening in the US, despite significant deficit spending. Any idea why that might be? What I've heard is a lot of, "Current levels of deficit spending are sustainable because we're not yet seeing a resulting increase in inflation." Which makes sense. But.. what's the mechanism for that? Like, taken to an extreme, if a government did indeed stop taxing and pay for everything with deficit spending, but there wasn't inflation as a result, how would that be?
The only explanations I can think of are that 1) many other countries are also doing significant deficit spending, so all major currencies are being devalued together, and so they're not actually being devalued at all, and 2) in as much as (ie) the US currency is being devalued faster than others, there are other, strengthening factors that are counteracting this. (Such as higher interest rates.)
I'm not an expert and expect this to have flaws but here goes:
Fiat currency is backed by value (not gold, but also not nothing like some people say). It's worth what we all collectively think it's worth and that's going to depend on the underlying assets of a nation.
Lets say there are $1T dollars floating around the economy and this year the Fed wants to print another 100bn. That's totally ok (and necessary) so long as there was that much value created this year. New factories have been built, businesses created, etc. This has created more underlying value in America and so it's ok that we print some more money. Your $1 bill still holds the same amount.
There is nothing to hack to meaningfully affect an election outcome at the national level. Plus Election Commission of India takes no chances around it.
Very much so. Clinton trimmed the welfare rolls, cut the number of federal employees, deregulated finance, deregulated telecom (though Carter was also a major deregulator, having deregulated airlines, trucking, and beer), signed NAFTA, signed DADT, signed DOMA, signed RFRA, passed aggressive violent crime legislation, etc.
Primaries are not elections. They are private intra party affairs.
Also, as far as I am aware, other than 1 district in Brooklyn whose votes were not counted in time in the Dem primary, there was hardly anything "corrupt" about either party's primary (and even that district went towards the winner anyways, and wouldn't have made a difference if every vote went in the opposite direction).
While not corrupt, or illegal, caucuses in US primaries are extremely undemocratic instruments, however, that is the exact opposite of what is considered the best method of voting in a democracy (secret ballot).
That wouldn't stop them from being elections, but primaries are public affairs carried out by the State. (Caucuses are more like you describe, but even they often have state involvement.)
> caucuses in US primaries
Caucuses are not in primaries, they are an alternative to them.
> Caucuses are not in primaries, they are an alternative to them.
Are you familiar with U.S. elections? Caucuses are very much part of the primaries. They are how certain states perform their primaries. Iowa, for example.
> Caucuses are very much part of the primaries. They are how certain states perform their primaries.
No, caucuses are a (formerly, universally used—primaries are a newer thing) alternative to primaries still used in a minority of states (and sometimes, by some parties but not others in a state) to select delegates to Presidential nominating conventions.
Because primaries have over time displaced caucuses as the main candidate selection mechanism, and because the campaigns are somewhat nationalized, and because there isn't a handy name for the whole process, the whole national process of selecting such delegates is sometimes sloppily referred to as “the primary” of each party.
This is a disconnect on jargon. Primaries mean elections. Caucuses are an alternative to primaries. Both primaries and elections constitute the process by which American parties select delegates for their party conventions. The whole delegate-selection and convention assemblage is loosely referred to as the "primary" in the popular press.
Taking that statement out of context reverses its meaning.
The author clearly believes they know why it hasn't taken over the market. That's the entire point of the article, and they start explaining immediately after the sentence you quoted.
I can understand why something happens and still be amazed by it. That's what the author is saying. They understand why, but it still amazes them.
The Fed can easily replicate the benefits of cryptocurrency in seconds. They simply need to come out and say "We will only print X number of dollars, every Y number of months".
There you go. All the benefits of Bitcoin replicated in the USD, which is a far more widespread and versatile currency?
So why doesn't the Fed do it? Because it really is a terrible idea. It's like pegging your currency to gold, which was a terrible idea (although good for its time) and the delay in moving away from it probably cost tons of money and lives.
The comment you were responding to was about electricity, which is clearly a highly linearly correlated marginal cost. I am not sure why you're bringing up average costs at all.
And the comment you replied to did not even mention the other marginal costs that Bitcoin faces (employee costs, land rental, networking costs, etc).
I was restating what they were getting at in a way that could be easily traced back to widely studied economic theories. It was an elaboration, not a disagreement.
I agree the statistics we have are pretty terrible. However, in this case, I think Waymo's statistic is actually quite useful. It's likely that Waymo's x miles driven statistic is largely driven by the fact that Waymo has tested their cars on a small number of roads, in fairly safe settings. But that paints Uber in an even worse light. Waymo is supposedly ahead, or at least on par with Uber in self driving technology, and they have chosen to limit their testing and driving to safer and a limited number of roads. Uber has not. That seems to underscore the fact that Uber has pushed beyond their tech's capabilities even though their competitors have determined the tech isn't there yet.
Also, if someone had posted a poll a day ago as to which company's self driving cars were likely to be the first to kill somebody, I think the vast majority of people would have predicted Uber. I don't think that's a coincidence.
Note that Waymo was the loudest about how they shouldn't be forced to have a steering wheel in their cars, already, and that they're also massively ramping up in Arizona, because of the nonexistent regulations. In Arizona, Waymo won't be forced to disclose statistics on disengagements, for example, which California does require they hand over.
Waymo is already using autonomous vehicles in AZ without a safety driver behind the wheel. There are fully autonomous Waymo vehicles driving around in parts of AZ.
Which is why I am only a little bit surprised Uber beat Waymo to killing a pedestrian. Waymo is way too arrogant about it's capabilities, moving way faster than is reasonable or safe, and they use misleading statistics to insinuate their system is more capable than it is.
Note that they already know their cars will need help driving still, which is why they've assembled a call center for remote drivers to take over their cars in Arizona. Of course, those remote drivers likely can't intervene at nearly the speed of an onboard safety driver.
Effectively, the government is being funded by all dollar holders at that point. It's a wealth tax of sorts imposed on those who hold their wealth in dollars.
The idea would be that the government is being funded by the fact that $100 today, is worth only about $90 last year, and that loss in value is what's funding the government.