/lit/ - Literature

>le pop culture reference

>>18425143
What are you babbling about?

Now read Hazlitt, Sowell, Böhm-Bawerk, Mises, Hayek et al.

>>18425258
What do these books add to Adam Smith's work? I'm currently reading The Intelligent Investor.

>>18425123
>Isn't this proof that capital does not flow into the most productive channels of its own accord? Shouldn't it be possible to do better as a society?
Crypto is largely Chinese government. And no one ever claimed that a free market is 100% efficient and always does what is best for society (whatever that means).

>>18425123
>Isn't this proof that capital does not flow into the most productive channels of its own accord? Shouldn't it be possible to do better as a society?
Define productive. Capital goes into the most productive channels in the sense of what is most likely to grow said capital. If you look at it like that, crypto investment makes perfect sense.

>>18425269
Hazlitt and Sowell is basic economics. Böhm-Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard etc will teach you about business cycles, economic calculation, money & credit, interest rates and why socialism doesn't work

>>18425271
>Crypto is largely Chinese government
A lot of mining is done in China, yes, but that's only because of the huge hydro power plants they have.
>And no one ever claimed that a free market is 100% efficient and always does what is best for society
I think this is what Adam Smith is saying. He says that capital naturally goes towards maintaining productive labour, because that's how it can be most efficiently grown. Incidentally, he believes that this growth of capital is in the best interests of society at large as well.
>>18425273
>Define productive
Capital that goes towards maintaining productive labour. Though I suppose Ponzi schemes probably hadn't been invented back in the 1700s, so Adam Smith didn't take them into account.

>>18425258
Midwit take. Next up should be David Riccardo.

>>18425271
A lot of libertarians frequently do make the sort of claim that the free market is ultimately the most efficient solution and therefore should not be question or hindered, even when the person doing so isn't suggesting a strictly legal intervention.

>>18425676
That's really market fundamentalism. Classical economical liberalism is much more pragmatic and serves essentially as a relatable conceptual framework.

>>18425676
I think it's more like "the free market can do it better than any government". It's not that the free market is perfect, it's just that government is always shit.

>>18425123
>capital goes into the most productive channels of its own accord
Like Tulips, right?
The only thing dumber than people is people who think they have it all figured out
Any world system is a scam, and you are a sucker

>wasting your time with Adam Smith

Should've just gone straight to Capital. Smith is good but he's flawed, and his ambiguities have led bourgeois economics into deep, illogical holes that still affect us to this day.

>>18426149
Until the "free market" crashes and everyone screams about needing government bailouts, of course

>>18426456
>Should've just gone straight to Capital
kek
Marx is the biggest clown in economics. His ideas were BTFO by the Austrians a long time ago.

>best book youve read is by a complete schizophrenic
hmmm

>>18426871
>complete schizophrenic
what?

Smith's life.

Born in Scotland to Scottish parents.
Hates Scotland and Scottish people eventually.
Goes to England for tutors so he can get an English accent.
Met his best friend because they both hated Scotland.
Most of his publications were about how Scots should all become Englishmen and the best ways to avoid being Scottish.
Disliked by all women other than his mum.

>>18426959
>He never married, and seems to have maintained a close relationship with his mother, with whom he lived after his return from France and who died six years before him.
He's just like me!

>>18427039
except he managed to convince people to pretend the economy was a science and you didnt

>>18427049
>implying he was wrong

>>18425123
Could people like Smith ever have predicted something like crypto?

>>18426654
t. has read neither Marx nor the "Austrians"

>>18427051
economics is a part of philosophy and CANNOT be seperated from that without dire consequences

>>18425123
It’s Ricardo next then Marx mate.

Just remember as a political economist you’re always better than economists.

>>18426654
>by the Austrians
who were btfo by anyone with commonsense

>>18427082
>t. butthurt marxist
Your hero was a fraud and a clown.

>>18427111
>implying I'm a Marxist
You don't have to be a Marxist to read Capital m8

>>18426456
>a communist
>claims capitalism has deep illogical holes
only on /lit/ can you get front row seats to such retardation

>>18427105
>Ricardo next then Marx
OP here. So many books and so little time. Marx is intimidating to me because of the length of his work. Das Kapital is 3 books of 1000 pages each correct? It took me a year to get through Wealth of Nations. I have read a little about his ideas however.
He seems to believe that the owners of capital defraud the workers by making a profit off of their labour, and that if we ever want to put an end to the cycle of revolution nations face, we must eliminate the profit of capital by giving the entirety of the production of any factory to the workers. He seems to be ignoring the contribution of the factory owner, who gathers all the workers together, who gives them the means of production by which their labour is magnified, and who specializes in increasing the efficiency of production. Have I understood the essence of Marx correctly or is he much more complicated than this? Because if that's all he's saying then I don't really see the point of reading 3000 pages of his work.

>>18427181
You don't even have to read Marx to see that this shit doesn't work.

>>18427196
Vol. I is very readable if you can get through chapter 1. And no, you haven't understood the essence of Marx correctly, that's why you should actually read him.

>>18427221
Fair enough. I'll probably get around to it at some point, if only to understand why he's so famous and influential.

>>18426456

Marx is directly informed by Smith, you idiot. A reading of Capital can only be massively improved by already having read Smith.

>>18427097
>economics is a part of philosophy
No, just no. Economics cannot is not philosophy because, unlike philosophy, it is useful to humanity.

>>18427097
>economics is a part of philosophy
No, just no. Economics is not philosophy because, unlike philosophy, it is useful to humanity.

>>18427791

Reverse that and then you'd have a true statement.

>>18427221
>You don't even have to read Marx to see that this shit doesn't work.
But I see that it works well.

>>18427221
>this shit doesn't work
What shit? If you mean capitalism then it has worked much better than communism.

>>18425123
The issue with classical economics is that what applies for local markets does not work for scaled market systems, which require financial and regulatory control apparatuses and also necessarily involve strategic and political decision making.

This is also what Marx got wrong in assuming that the market is directing the state system, as the opposite is true; the state has to actively manage and build the market system according to its geostrategic ends

>>18427835
>>18427942
Both capitalism and communist are trash but in capitalism I don't starve.

>>18425123
Smith doesn't claim there's no need of government intervention? There's the pretty implicit idea that agriculture is the political backbone of a commonwealth and merchants aren't really reliable people.
Also "most productive" is kinda unfalsifiable in the way you're using it there, any lolbert would just say if savings are being directed there than it's ipso facto therefor so.

>>18427196
Marx claims workers are exploited collectively because labour has to be sold in the aggregate (individually this might not be true) for less than it's worth, there's some winners but the majority have to be cut short. Capitalism itself is doomed because of its own productivity, everything becomes more and more capital intensive and the deprecation costs add up in that process and the basic institution tends to generate all kinds of contradictions e.g. the marginal costs of software is literally zero after the initial investment but for profit to exist you need to create artificial scarcity with intellectual property laws or there's no capitalist logic to make the investments. Of course if you just drop some laissez faire premises there's no reason revolution is unavoidable/necessary like he thought.

>>18426464
Nothing is stable, everything fluctuates. Free market crashes recover far better than government induced crashes and subsequent government interference.

Government bailouts is the sole reason we live in clown world today.

>>18425468
>A lot of mining is done in China, yes, but that's only because of the huge hydro power plants they have.
Doesn't change the fact that most crypto is in the hands of the Chinese government.

>He says that capital naturally goes towards maintaining productive labour, because that's how it can be most efficiently grown. Incidentally, he believes that this growth of capital is in the best interests of society at large as well.
And one look at the world and reading basic economic history proves this to be correct. Now of course, what is best for you, may not be best for me, but on the aggregate free markets perform much better than non-free markets. This is what the invisible hand is all about, each individuals selfishness turns into something that is better for society compared to a centrally planned economy.

>>18428543
>Nothing is stable, everything fluctuates.
Without stability you can't have exchange. That's why you want a standard of value, which traditional schizoids insisted was gold, thankfully cryptotards have disrupted that narrative

Austrian is the correct school of economics to learn.

Fuck the state. Privatize everything.

>>18427196
Profit is from the difference between the cost of a labour and the value of their time. It takes six hours to remake a labourer. The boss withholds two hours of wages. These are surplus value. Wages are political in capital. Value price and profit is a simplified summary. You’ve got 70 years.

>>18428634
When everything you believe is a purely schizoid morality narrative you kind of lose track of reality. Austrotards spent decades teaching the unviability of floating currencies and how governments would be forced to return to a gold standard any day now and than some autistic retard unleashed a cryptographic fiat currency and remarkably leaped frogged Austrotards practically and now the majority are insisting floating currencies can work after all and an infinite amount of them can compete.

>>18428615
>which traditional schizoids insisted was gold, thankfully cryptotards have disrupted that narrative
If anything crypto has done the opposite. Gold has remained the same for 5000 years, meanwhile crypto is just a ponzi, where fucking Elon Musk that decide what goes up and down with a few words on twitter.

Stay seething.

>>18428704
The absolute degree of Austrotard idiocy. The price of gold has little impact on individuals so can move up significantly without impacting people (outside of the small effects on electronics and such) unlike the bulk of commodities people buy.

>Gold has remained the same for 5000 years
No, the real price of gold has fluctuated significantly especially after the influx of gold to Europe after the discovery of the Americas and such.

> meanwhile crypto is just a ponzi
Sure but it may effect the price of gold which is artificially inflated by outdated ideas and conspicuous consumption of it could decrease over time as zoomers demand shift to other luxuries

>>18428695
>crypto
>fiat
what the fuck are you babbling about

>>18428809
Cryptocurrency meets the definition of fiat since it's created out of noting material algorithmically. Blockchains are obviously user generated. A lot of lolberts just use "fiat" as an insult against government issued money but private fiat is still fiat if it's designed to have a fixed supply or not, the point is it's not a materially unique physical property which can't be duplicated. I can't just create something like gold or uranium out of noting on my computer to compete with them.

>>18425123
/lit/ is not very knowledgable about economics, don't take what is said in this thread seriously.

>>18425468
>A lot of mining is done in China, yes, but that's only because of the huge hydro power plants they have
No its because they have large ore deposits and don't give a fuck about destroying their country

>>18425258
>>18425561
This.

Also Keynes eventually. And Marx, just the Manifesto and a summary though because most of it is pure bullshit.

>>18425123
Young Padawan, I felt this way too. But you are a little baby
Watch
https://youtu.be/5Xkb4lEFghg

>>18425123
Cool, it's great to have insights like that. I felt the same way starting both economics and neuroscience/cognitive science/evolutionary psychology, and later with Kant.

It's a path that keeps on changing and building on itself, as a seed becomes a stem, which becomes a bud, which becomes a flower. No step refutes the former, but is a transformation of it.

In my experience to date, this sense of building has culminated in Hegel, but who knows if it will end there.

>>18425258
Sowell first with Knowledge and Decisions. Masterpiece my favorite reading experience

>>18429185
The last 10 minutes finalists best of Academic Agent's suggestions are the highlight. My favorite video on Econ.

>>18425123
Read John Nash's works

>>18427196
>the contribution of the factory owner
> gives them the means of production

Who created the factory, the owner or construction workers lol

>>18428054
what really is the state?? and what are its ends

>>18425123
OP you're looking for answers in the wrong place. The majority of people responding to you have read less than you have (i.e, they literally don't know the difference between productive and non-productive labor).

The short answer to you is that Smith was a man, not a prophet. He was not correct about everything. You don't even need to go so far as to talk about the Austrian econ people because even Ricardo and Marx have criticisms of Smith and elaborate/critique/expand his system. Just keep reading what interests you. Come here for color commentary, stupid jokes, and the 1/100 chance someone will say something significant.

I wish I could give you a more detailed answer on the crypto OP, but what I can for sure say is that at least in WON books 1-3 Smith thinks manufacturing is the highest stage of an economy. Subsequent economic development has revealed that service based economies (esp. Financial services, i.e some of the most non-productive labor you can imagine) are more valuable than manufacturing or any other sort of productive mode. A big absence in Smith is any discussion of product marketing or "brand", probably because these things had yet to emerge in their developed form. Worth thinking about. If you want a philosophical perspective on this, you should read Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno. Some post-modern stuff on the reign of the sign would be good as well.

>>18425123
Too bad its all bullshit and the elites who actually run the economy have figured out MMT actually works, while this autistic shit is only believed by libertarians who never influence anything.

>>18429805
The so called elites rely on Joe Shmo to sit a doctorate in economics and act as an adviser. They don't know shit, they employ academics to crunch the numbers. And a new generation of economists can lead to a new approach to policy.

>>18425258
t. retard

>>18425561
in my opinion ricardo is even more important than smith
it's pretty useful to read also Marx's Theories of Surplus-Value while reading classical economists like smith and ricardo

How comprehensible is Adam Smith for someone who's only taken an introductory course in economics?

>>18428137
>Both capitalism and communist are trash but in capitalism I don't starve.

>>18429948
Adam Smith will not supplement your study at that level but will hopefully advance your understanding if you intend to study further.

>>18427196
I am exactly the same, took 7 months to read Wealth of Nations, now it's been about 6 months and I just finished vol 1 of Capital by Marx. It's been really good to read different perspectives, as Marx references Smith A LOT, sometimes to agree, sometimes to disagree.

The most important take away for me has been the fact that technological advancement creates better tools, and with better tools you can create more production with less labor, which drives down the value of labor. There needs to be a concerted effort on behalf of labor to ensure the gains of society (which include technological advancement) actually result in gains for the majority of the members of society, and not the tiny minority of large scale capital owners.

Left to purely market forces, labor would be forced to accept worse and worse standards of living as technology gets better and better, and that's just psychopathic.

>>18429963

One of the stupidest posts I've seen on the website this year so far.

Before you misconstrue things, my point is not that Smith is not the most wonderful (political) economist ever, or anything along those lines. Rather, it is obviously stupid to say that that reading major historical economic works is unhelpful, does not meaningfully "supplement" modern methods. I forget the radio program (no, it wasn't conservative talk radio, something on NPR), but there was some economist or other wonk who rightly bemoned the fact that history is a marginal subject in economics departments.

>>18430014

for "is not the most wonderful", read "the most wonderful, that is, a single negative (ooh what a Freudian slip!)

>>18427791
B-B-B-B-BASED

>>18425123
I'm glad you liked it OP. It's the best book written about economics ever. It's logical and informative, but it does drag on at some points. It's pretty funny that almost every question people have towards the economy can be answered with: "just read wealth of nations bro". According to the crypto part, Smith believed that the capital would flow to where it would grow the most, not necessarily "productive" as in does a lot of good for everyone. For further reading I'd recommend you read Keynes then Friedman. It's important you read in that order since Friedman is a response to Keynes so it's good if you know what Keynes stood for. You can read marx if you want, but I wouldn't say it's necessary. He is obviously wrong about everything, but considering his time period he is not as extreme as people try to make it.

>>18425269
Austian economics are not a continuation of Adam Smith's works, but rather a continuation of the Salamanca School's thought. Carl Menger was heavilly influenced by late scholastics.
Check out these articles:

What is autsrian economics:
https://mises.org/what-austrian-economics
The Spanish Roots of the Austrian School: An Interview with Jesús Huerta de Soto:
https://mises.org/library/spanish-roots-austrian-school-interview-jesus-huerta-de-soto

test

>>18425123
>t finished this. Holy hell /lit/, what a read, what a read. It is by far the most informative book I've ever read. I feel like Neo after he finally understands the Matrix at the end of the first movie. I know what wealth is, how wages and rent are determined, the different classes of society, what money is and so much more. Why is this book not taught in every high school in the world?
>One thing concerns me though. How much of this feeling is a result of actual understanding and how much is a result of the Dunning-Kruger effect? For example, I've read that Austrian economics disagrees with Smith on many points.
I'm making saving this

>>18429805
MMT is just layer 2 taking from makers and saying "huh if they run out it's not my problem. Huh if this Civilization collapses then musical chairs restarts and I keep my stack lmao goyim"

>>18430452
>He is obviously wrong about everything
[Citation needed]

>>18429156
Retard

>>18428137
>but in capitalism I don't starve
You don't, but plenty have and still do.

>>18427111
Actually i've read Marx, i applied his vision to practical economy, and it benefited me quiet well.

>>18428137
You don't know what's Capitalism, and you don't know what's communism.
You misunderstand State Capitalism for communism.
You are an uninteresting bot.

>>18431110
>citation needed for why communism is retarded

>>18430503
>Austian economics are not a continuation of Adam Smith's works
this.
the tradition of economic thought closest to Smith nowadays is the marxist, the majority of austrians are retards
>inb4 neo-Ricardians
they are compared to marxists irrelevant

>>18431270
>i do not have any arguments

>>18431393
>actually thinks that people should waste their time explaining why they are retarded online.
Don't you have some brains to blow out tranny?

>>18431425
>i still do not have any arguments

>>18431450
Maybe you should learn to read faggot

>>18425123
>crypto bashing
Midwit detected. 70% of btc power is green, go away with you environmental fud babble. If you don't think crypto is or will be useful that's your own lack of understanding. So yes be more worried about dunning Kruger I'd say.

>>18428783
>Flunctuated significantly
It didn't, this is a meme with no actual historical proof
Spain never properly modernized and racked up massive amounts of debt
The whole silver meme literally only happened in the heads of historians who are hellbent on rehabilitating every state that's ever existed in the history of ever
We do have a few short crashes when a massive influx of supply happened but they are hundreds and hundreds of years old
Gold is by far the most stable commodity in world history

>>18431462
learn to reason faggot

>>18429219
The construction workers were handsomely paid for building it I assure you. You are mixing up construction workers with people who will be waging in the factory day in and day out as well. I pour half a million into a business, I took the risk, I gotta pay back the loan, I take home most of the money. It only makes sense.

The usage of bitcoin is more productive than the entire economy of Argentina times 5, I don't see where your problem is
Also, you didn't actually read Smith because Smith never actually says that
Smith says that market usage is more effecient than state usage of the same resources which 9/10 is absolutely true
The state could in theory be more effecient
If it was governed by the infinite mind
But it isn't, it's governed by hundreds of very limited minds with conflicting interests between themselves and with the people that they govern
>Shouldn't we do better as a society
Oh no it's retarded

All the marx mentions in this thread are pathetic. He's nothing in the realm of great economists. Only low iq leftists will tell you otherwise.

>>18431510
Exactly. Marx is a critic of political economy. Not a marginalism fucktard.

>>18428783
>No, the real price of gold has fluctuated significantly especially after the influx of gold to Europe after the discovery of the Americas and such.
False. Gold has kept its value relatively stable over time, hence why it has been considered and used as money for thousands of years.

Gold is artificially suppressed, not inflated.

>>18431484
>believes in communism
>learn to reason
Kek you can't make this up

>>18431525
I mean, he's still wrong
Consumption does lead to growth
No amount of class based education leads to great revolution
He got religion backwards
Crisis seems just go on happening without following his supposed trends
Profit does not drop off

>>18431525
Fuck off leftoid. Any thread about economics where Marx gets so many mentions is a pathetic one. Nothing useful here. Just the typical leftists trying to indoctrinate.

>>18426959
1700s Scotland would largely have been a small, mountainous, backwater full of poor, rough, rural Calvinist barbarians to the South and East, and even more brutish, impoverished, Catholic Highlanders to the North and West. Hardly a place for a shy intellectual to appreciate.

England at that time was literally becoming the first global world power, I can imagine the attraction.

>t. Scot who is expected to love SCOTLAND and hate ENGLAND above all else, but actually enjoys the comfy Anglican country lifestyle

>>18431548
You’re a Maoist playing a role to recruit aren’t you? You know that the contradictions among the people are the vital contradiction right? Not bourgeois reasoning. Pretending to be a stupid cunt online to discredit right line bourgeois isn’t useful propaganda activity.

>>18431558
>William Wallace died for this
Shame on you.

>>18428137
>but in capitalism I don't starve.
not yet, anyway. you realize the west mostly imports their food supply, yes?

>>18431537
>still any argument

>>18431467
>Midwit detected. 70% of btc power is green, go away with you environmental fud babble.
Even if that were true (it's not) it's still energy basically being wasted that could be put to better use.

>>18431476
>Gold is by far the most stable commodity in world history
"World history" is very long and people didn't even use gold for most of it. Think about the relative prices of weapons and food or something to go back farther. The uses of gold has changed. Gold throughout the history of civilization has been legal tender/money as well as served for conspicuous consumption. Today it has usages in electronics but it's monetary role has diminished and will continue to and hopefully people stop caring about its superficial uses and let the price collapse.

>>18431534
Yes gold has been used as money for thousands of years because of it's properties but its real value has been subject to shocks over time and space. You can just look over the past 100 years to see how variable gold has been, just look at the cost of goods in gold terms and you'll see stability/spikes/collapses. Look at what an ounce of gold could of bought you in America in 1950 and compare it to 1990.
Also you can't "suppress" the price of a physical commodity easily without eventually creating shortages and rationing.

>>18431725

>>18431725
>>18431766
>"no u" for hours on end.
Neither of you have made a single argument. This is why commies and capitalists aren't treated like equals to us high iq 3P.

>>18425123
>I've read that Austrian economics disagrees with Smith on many points.
Those guys are pure ideologues, so that shouldn't matter much.

>The problem is that he originated nothing that was true, and that whatever he originated was wrong; that, even in an age that had fewer citations or footnotes than our own, Adam Smith was a shameless plagiarist, acknowledging little or nothing and stealing large chunks, for example, from Cantillon.

crypto=scam

>>18431108
Worked out pretty good for the Nazis until three jewish empires joined forces to destroy them.

>>18431548
>Any perspective other than mine is useless
You are unironically retarded

>>18425123
Which version did you read? I saw a Wordsworth classics for cheap but without notes. Any recs?

>>18425258
>read retard, retard, big retard, even bigger retard, and biggest retard

>>18425123
Now read Marx

>>18433930
>muh feefees

Every book on investing, economics and wealth in a few bullet points:

>You absolutely must pay taxes, until you reach a level of wealth where you don't (you'll know when because lawyers and accountants will tell you)
>Buy low (when the charts are red and going down)
>Sell high (when the charts are green and going up)
>Buy interest/dividend producing assets and hold long term (stocks and real estate)
>Dollar cost average (buy a little bit every month)
>Some people take too much risk, others risk manage too much, a balance is optimal for wealth building.
>Above all else, avoid working yourself and make your wealth from the blood, sweat and tears of others. This can take many forms like a business with wagecucks, land with rentcucks, etc (be creative). Nobody got rich through "honest, hard work", career focus (wageslavery) or saving for pensions and mortgages.

And since most of these books where written before the 80s cultural revolution of tolerance:

>Fuck women
>Fuck homos
>And FUCK niggers

>>18433931
Marx is about as autistic as it gets prior to econometrics.

>>18425123
>How much of this feeling is a result of actual understanding and how much is a result of the Dunning-Kruger effect?
Almost entirely the latter. Smith is an okay starting point at best for grasping the basic concepts, akin to learning the alphabet of a new language. Wealth of Nations was written well over 200 years ago, and there's been plenty of refinement and refutation of the ideas expressed in it in all that time.

>>18428558
>but on the aggregate free markets perform much better than non-free markets
Yeah that's almost certainly true based on the track record of communist nations. It's just that Smith never even mentions, as far as I can recall, the possibility that many people do not have the necessary knowledge or ability to invest their capital in a way that maintains productive labour. In my country, gold, or as he puts it, "dead capital", is the main investment of the working class. It's a monumental waste.

Nice thread.

What do you guys think about bitcoin?

>>18434323
You never read WoN so why are you even posting?

>>18427074
No.

>>18433406
Huh if the LGBT+ racial strangers and underachievers run out then it's not my problem and I'll print myself more Chadero and I'll play musical chairs with enough chairs for the white guys who own and built chairs wew

Any active intelligent agent will repurpose a system even a flawed system with skill and good utility better than a subversive agent intent on parasitizing and antagonizing.

>the part where Adam Smith lists the expected wages in relationship to keeping women and children fed and how fucked you are if you can't afford that and how this should be the expected health baseline of an economy to see how well work can feed families
>that part when Adam Smith finally starts talking about Military defense incentives and you can see the guts of armies in crunchy detail better than any military academy service would show you

>>18433406
Mariner Eccles and Adolf Hitler had the same idea but they are on opposite teams.

>>18425561
BTFO by Marx in Das Kapital

>>18435009
It's a blatant pyramid scheme.
https://www.ft.com/content/aee87c1d-b00f-4c22-ab97-97bb2b042342

>>18426654
Ask me how I know you can’t actually read and have cobbled together a mishmash of words that constitute a rudimentary vocabulary

>>18425123
>For example, I've read that Austrian economics disagrees with Smith on many points.
No one takes austrian economics seriously apart from complete retards.
Smith or Keynes is where it's at

>>18425123
>But look at the crypto craze; right now, more electricity is used to mine bitcoin than the entire power usage of Argentina.
Sounds pretty productive to me desu

>>18427835
Have sex

>>18437188
Why are marxists always so butthurt?

>>18430452
>Keynes then Friedman. It's important you read in that order since Friedman is a response to Keynes
Friedman complete Keynes work and was a keynesian

>>18425123
Brandon?

>>18437192
bend over buck

>>18431510
based

>>18431510
Marx is the ultimate filter. If you're view of a person's work can be so poisoned by preconceptions that you cannot even recognize the contributions they have made to a field then you are a confirmed brainlet.

>>18438110
This. Traditionalists have a completely warped vision of Marx. They haven't read him.
Truth is, most of them don't have the intellect, nor the willpower, to read and understand Marx.

>>18437208
I hate the fact that I share this board with retards like you

>>18434183


>>18434183
>>Fuck women
>>Fuck homos
>>And FUCK niggers
so heart warming

>>18431493
>I pour half a million into a business, I took the risk
Workers don't support risk? Loosing their jobs in case of a bankruptcy is not risky for their living conditions? Also, risk is only valid until you get back your initial investment. Then it's all profit. Often many order of magnitude more than your initial investment.
>>18427196
>He seems to be ignoring the contribution of the factory owner, who gathers all the workers together, who gives them the means of production
Who made these means of production, the factory owner, working alone in his garage?

>>18439928
>Who made these means of production, the factory owner, working alone in his garage?
If you pay for something then you own it. How does the fact that the factory owner's machinery was made by others nullify his contribution? Are you arguing against personal property?

>>18431135
>You don't, but plenty have and still do.
sure, but in commieland the number of starving goes up.

>>18425123
>Ordinary people have put billions of dollars of their savings into unproductive 1s and 0s. Isn't this proof that capital does not flow into the most productive channels of its own accord?
Capital flows where the highest return of investment is, which isn't always good for society (although it usually is)

>>18425676
lolberts are retards. The vast majority of economic professors aren't market fundamentalists for a reason

>>18441278
>Capital flows where the highest return of investment is
Unless I'm mistaken, Smith believes that the highest return of investment is gained by maintaining productive labour with that capital. He says that a minority of people will waste their capital by excessive consumption, but most will try to grow it as best they can by maintaining productive labour. What's odd is that bubbles weren't uncommon in England (e.g. the South Sea bubble), but he never touches on the subject.

>>18441371
I just remembered that he actually does talk about the South Sea company, but only to bash monopolies.

Bump just cuz I'm an economics major

>>18425676
That's chicago school economics not Austrian school you fucking retard. Libertarisnm is not an economic school though it relates directly to Austrian economics through Rothbard and if you take that route. Chicago school thought is freidman and that is neoliberalism larping as lolberts.

>>18443073
Is Smith required reading for you guys?

>>18444191
Smith is a political economist not an economist. He’s read in political economy departments, all four of them. You’d want marginalists as the foundational authors of economic.

>>18433188
what's with the austrians always claiming that their opposition never came up with anything original? it's like I would claim that Rothbard just plagiarized Stirner.

>>18425468
That's when they got big

>>18431558
>people in the highlands were Catholic
>the only regions in scotland are Highlands and non-highlands
Argument not worth anything

>>18425123
You actually believe the government FUD against crypyo? No wonder you are that astounded by Wealth of Nations.

>>18444495
The fact that crypto is a Ponzi scheme becomes quite clear if you accept Smith's explanation of what money actually is. He says money is a means of trade, worth exactly what is necessary to distribute among the people the different amounts of the produce of the land and labour of the nation that they are entitled to. So the worth of a currency is directly tied to the amount of goods that are annually exchanged with it. Now think, how much goods are traded with the entirety of crypto? The answer is almost nothing, except for what I assume is a negligible amount of drugs. So does the current worth of crypto reflect its actual value? I don't fucking think so.

>>18444552
Bitcoin, POW coins, are labor theory of value, put into practice.
It's crystalized electricity, crystalized by the POW mining process, and then secured into the blockchain. It's the equivalent of Gold, value storage, but here, with Bitcoin, the labor crystalized is not literal miners work, but more human labor in electricity power stations, who sell the electricity to the Bitcoin mining farms, as well as coal mining, which is then sold, in the form of dead labor, to the electricity power stations, transformed into electricity, which is then sold to Bitcoin mining farms, which crystalize all this dead labor (coal, power station work), into what is called a Crypto. Block reward.

>>18444552
>He says money is a means of trade, worth exactly what is necessary to distribute among the people the different amounts of the produce of the land and labour of the nation that they are entitled to.
Bitcoin is traded for dollars, and dollars can be traded for Bitcoins.
Your point is irrelevant.

>>18440541
>How does the fact that the factory owner's machinery was made by others nullify his contribution?
How did he get Capital, inheritance? Was he friend with a banker? Speculation? Previous Capitalistic venture (factory), where he already exploited surplus labor?
To gain large amounts of Capital, you necessarily have to exploit it from other. No one in the world can "earn" dozens of millions by himself.
> Are you arguing against personal property?
Not against personal property. Against private property of the means of production. I don't give a shit if you personally own a toothbrush, a personal computer, or a pair of sneakers.

Marxism is completely dead as a movement and has been so for quite some time. The self proclaimed Marxists and Socialists today are not egalitarians at all, they want to give ownership of the means of productions in a class of career politicians and bureaucrats, which is essentially a Capitalist class as the privileged controllers of industry. They don't want equality, all they care about is to alleviate the conditions of the workers and eliminate poverty through bureaucratic regulation. Could there be a better sign of the decline of Marxism as the association of the name with Statism and the advocacy of politicoeconomic monopoly?

>>18444552
Money is the value of a nations labour
Any other attempt at money causes disaster

>>18441287
And the reason is that they suck government tits.

>>18444624
I get what you're saying. To create a bitcoin requires a lot of energy and therefore, human labour. However, I think you're ignoring something important, that there must be demand for something for it to have value on the market.
For example, say I spend 5000 hours over many years creating a gigantic machine that can peel a single banana a day. If the components of the machine cost me $10,000 and the hours I put into it, say at $8 an hour come to $40,000, then would I be correct in judging the value of the machine at $50,000? No one would buy it from me at that price, or probably any other price higher than the worth of the components as scrap. My point is, just because a certain amount of labour goes into creating a good, doesn't mean that the good has at least that amount of intrinsic worth on the market. There must be a demand for that good, at the price for which it is profitable to produce it, otherwise production must cease.
Now consider bitcoin. Right now it's profitable to produce because there is a demand for it in the market. But what is the source of that demand? Do people want to buy and sell goods with bitcoin? No, the demand comes from people speculating that its value will go up. That's it. But we know from experience that speculative demand is not sustainable, so the moment enough people lose faith in bitcoin as a money maker, the price will plummet to whatever is enough to circulate the goods that are priced in bitcoin. The difference between gold or national currencies and bitcoin, at least in my uneducated opinion, is the sustainability of demand.

>>18444633
>Bitcoin is traded for dollars, and dollars can be traded for Bitcoins.
The dollar is not a consumable good. The fact remains that bitcoin is not used to trade goods, and that is what gives a currency value.

>>18426456
Dilate.

>>18444968
The classical economists basically assumed demand for simplification and thought more about supply issues.

>No, the demand comes from people speculating that its value will go up. That's it. But we know from experience that speculative demand is not sustainable
You don't necessarily "know that". If a continuously growing amount of people are just using secure inflation adjusted fixed income to bid up the prices that could keep going on but if people are using borrowed cash or taking on different forms of risk obviously that's where the problems come in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsky_moment#Description

>>18425123
The amount of money in crypto is peanuts compared to the money supply of the world. The majority of the crypto currencies which solely function as "currency" will probably lose traction in the next 20 years. The innovation of the blockchain will eventually enable people to provide all kinds of services with lower costs as now. All the big projects are allready working on validation systems which consume less energy. To conclude, resources are indeed wasted, but it is rather temporary.

>>18438264
Friedman was the star pupil of, successor to, and completer of Keynes work. I ain't joking anon.

Keynes theory was incomplete, his was a theory of employment, interest, and money. It was not a theory of prices. To Keynes’s framework, Friedman added a theory of prices and inflation, based on the idea of the natural rate of unemployment and the limits of government policy in stabilizing the economy around its long-run growth trend limits beyond which intervention would trigger uncontrollable and destructive inflation.

People are often surprised when I say that I am both a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, because they view Friedman as the anti-Keynes but Friedman finished Keynes work.

>>18446248
>The amount of money in crypto is peanuts compared to the money supply of the world.
You can't even quantify that. No one can give a clear definition of "money" so these metrics are all worthless. If you want to take cryptotards at face value however adoption and real value of crypto will relatively continue to grow.

> To conclude, resources are indeed wasted, but it is rather temporary.
Most of the resources being used aren't renewable so the effects aren't temporary. If you use oil or coal or whatever it's gone for good now. Maybe crypto growth can speed up the destruction of all none renewable energy resources. Instead of moving those resources around you can just directly set up crypto mining facilities right there so you don't need pipelines or anything which are controversial.

> The innovation of the blockchain will eventually enable people to provide all kinds of services with lower costs as now.
Using a blockchain to store information is always going to be more expensive than alternative approaches by design.

>>18446365
>Friedman was the star pupil of, successor to, and completer of Keynes work.
Nah that's kinda total bullshit. He just revived old ideas about inflation, it doesn't matter the method he used to do that he got datasets to make a persuasive case but you couldn't do the same thing if you update that. Friedman insisted any nominal fuckery couldn't have real long run effects contrary to Keyenes and went against his idea workers/investors were radically irrational and tricked by nominal trends.

>>18446365
I said that Friedman was a response to Keynes, not that they don't agree on anything. How can you possibly say that Friedman was a Keynesian when he believed in government staying largely outside the private market (whereas Keynes believed in the government being a major player in the private sector). Friedman was against the government subsidizing downtimes by increasing demand (which is probably the most important element of Keynes theories).

>>18446541
Not that guy but I guess Friedman used aggregate macroeconomic data to make points. Extreme Austrotards will say CPI or GDP or whatever is dirty Keynesian ideas and using anything but pure logic is one step to far.

>>18446599
No you idiot, we say that macroeconomic data can "show a point" only to clueless morons like you whose opinion don't matter anyways.
Look at the "macroeconomic data" of the USSR and tell me WHY it crumbled.
Then fuck off.

>>18446666
>Look at the "macroeconomic data" of the USSR and tell me WHY it crumbled.
Basically in every category it was in the toilet by the 1980s and all growth had stalled (obviously a collapse happens for more political reasons and you have Gorbachev for that, the Soviet military was still useable)

>>18445652
>If a continuously growing amount of people are just using secure inflation adjusted fixed income to bid up the prices
This is basically how speculative bubbles are formed is it not? The issue here is that the underlying "asset" being bought has no intrinsic value or use. I think this is why the amount of people investing will eventually decline.

>>18444968
>The dollar is not a consumable good. The fact remains that bitcoin is not used to trade goods, and that is what gives a currency value.
Gold isn't either. Gold isn't a currency. But was a currency. And can be, if someone accept it as paiement, a currency. However, gold still is mined. Why is that? Value storage. For people and central banks.
>>18444968
There is a social demand for Bitcoin, otherwise miners wouldn't consider to mine it. It's not only speculative, but for value storage purposes. Dollar loose it's value through time. Gold and digital gold do not. When speculation will cease in 10 years, if the network is still solid, and unhacked, there will be less speculation, but the value storage element will stay.
And the value of a Bitcoin in 10 years, will be... The cost of production of a Bitcoin (plus a small profit).
As long as the network is safe, there will be a social demand for it, as value storage.

>>18446707
>This is basically how speculative bubbles are formed is it not?
Sure but the speculative aspect will tend to bring in more money than people actually have which makes things unsustainable.

> The issue here is that the underlying "asset" being bought has no intrinsic value or use.
That's not an issue per se, if a large enough group of people have a vested interest in just seeing the price keep going up than that's the value itself. The mechanism of how that works is the problem. If every normie is taking out loans to buy something because they think it can only go up in value than you know something's going to give.

>>18446756
>And the value of a Bitcoin in 10 years, will be... The cost of production of a Bitcoin (plus a small profit).
This is why you shouldn't take investment advice from imageboards. Something can be worth less than what it costs. There's no reason the value of all satoshis can't be less than the cost of running the network, it's just obviously buttcoin would fail at that point.

>>18446806
As long as production is maintained, and that there is demand for something, the value of this something gravitate towards production costs.
/biz is mostly against the labor theory of value by the way. Satoshi Nakamoto himself, on the other hand, understood the labor theory of value.
https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/65/

It's only the plebs that don't get it. Sometimes because of cognitive dissonance (muh Marx is for trannies), or because they can't accept the fact that they are plebs. Cognitive dissonance again, a different sort of.

>>18446756
>However, gold still is mined. Why is that? Value storage. For people and central banks.
1. Gold is a physical commodity.
2. Gold has industrial and ornamental uses, crypto doesn't.
3. Gold has thousands of years of human history backing it, crypto doesn't.
Don't even try to compare your memecoins to gold.

>>18425123
>But look at the crypto craze; right now, more electricity is used to mine bitcoin than the entire power usage of Argentina. Ordinary people have put billions of dollars of their savings into unproductive 1s and 0s. Isn't this proof that capital does not flow into the most productive channels of its own accord? Shouldn't it be possible to do better as a society?

We can't know everything all at once, there will be fuck ups until we know more. Time will favor shit that makes sense

>>18446666
>Austrian economics
> 2021
Praxeology is pseudoscience anon

>>18449096
You've got it backwards - the current mainstream modelling approach surely isn't science - it's financial _engineering_ at best. We've got a scientific, logical *theory*, they've got a "monkey do monkey see" kindergarten level tinkering - and experimenting on the living, human organisms.

>>18450013
Time to read Feyerabend.

>>18444274
Except that would be baseless.

>>18425258
You're glowing

>>18425123
You don't understand Bitcoins value proposition.

>>18425273
Explain some twitch bathtub thot who nets 50k a month

>>18450365
>baseless
>assertions about bourgeois idealism
>not fundamentally rooted in the relations of production

I see what you did there. NOW FUCK OFF BACK TO FRANKFURT YOU HORRIBLE BOURGEOIS IDEALIST

bamb

>>18448547
>1. Gold is a physical commodity.
Yes and? The internet is not physical, but it's here to stay, at least some decades.
>2. Gold has industrial and ornamental uses, crypto doesn't.
Industrial use is negligeable (around 10% of total gold extraction). Ornmental use of gold is considerable, but it probably conflate with value storage.
>3. Gold has thousands of years of human history backing it, crypto doesn't.
Sure. Books also have thousands of years of human history backing them. That doesn't mean the internet is useless.

You are trapped into cognitive dissonance. Crypto is, in your mind, on the negative side. It's only a matter of time for you to reverse your opinion, according to the principle of polarity.

>>18450405
Unproductive labor. This example is close to the rock concert example. It doesn't create value, and cannot accumulate Capital. It just eat value, without creating any surplus, any accumulation. Some service industry can be analyzed as faux frais of production. Others, not even faux frais, but still necessary services. Like garbage disposal, for example.
Some services are totally useless, and eat value, without creating anything, without Capital accumulation. That's rock concerts, or Belle Delphine. In the end, they are damaging the whole society. Because they take Capital, which would be necessary in productive labor branches.

>>18450402
It's just one more step in the simulation.
>Tangible wealth in the form of land and commodities
>metal coins that had equal worth to commodities
>paper bills that had equal worth to metal coins that have equal worth to commodities
>paper bills that have agreed-upon worth
>non-tangible coins that have variable worth

What's the next step in this masterplan? Didn't you notice that with each step, people, except for a minuscule minority, simply lost more and more tangible wealth?

>>18425123
You are retarded. You are cherry-picking an example from a sea of opposites.
Bitcoin is the most effecient payment process in the history of human kind. Yes, you heard it right.
If i wanted to send you right now 100$, i would need 4 days by bank, the bank has to have an affiliate in my and your country and the government can record the transaction. The adress could be blacklisted you could be stopped
Add to that the federal reserve can print trillions of dollars, makikg money worthless and making everything expensive for the common man.
Crypto has limited supply, it cannot be tracked by the government (transactions are public but adresses are hidden, meaning they can only know you if you reveal your adress, monero even goes beyond that offering complete anonymity) add to that the extremely low fees and speed of transactions

The crypto system is ny far the most effecient system in the hidtory of human existance.
And as we see now money getting thrown at useless altcoins, same happenes with the Tech boom a few years back, everybody invested in stupid internet companies that have long disappeared now YET WE HAVE THE BEST TECHNOLOGY EVER!

And its thanks to those same people who bought the early extremely expensive pc's and phones, by pouring money in, they might lose it and suffer but in the long run the technology get better, faster and more efficient...

>>18425123
Read Piketty
Adam Smith is completely outdated and autistic

>>18451262
>If I wanted to send you right now $100 it would take 4 days
I would get to spend it instantly within the minute because the BANK would take 4 days to clear its fractional reserve juggling while allowing me to use said amount in the mean time. Now try to haul anything business sized and you finally see how insane fractional reserve banking is because the liquidity congests transactions it's like having 18 wheelers crimp through residential roads with all high ways having VIP tolls.

>>18451262
Given that Crypto is a survival of the fittest capitalism where the Federal Reserve has competition as a currency managing entity, but the Fed is still kicking major ass by cheating and more compounded prep time than anyone else, what technical details could possibly help me? I don't see TRADING or HODLing as worth a damn. I feel like someone has to physically explain a smart contract to me so I can finally shake hands on one and get something done with my own eyes and my own reputation.

>>18451094
>Some services are totally useless, and eat value, without creating anything, without Capital accumulation. That's rock concerts, or Belle Delphine.
Any economists/theorists who talk about that? I want to see all the jobs which they include in this category

>>18451699
Adam Smith, Ricardo, Marx.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_and_unproductive_labour#Neoclassical_economics
Neoclassical economists are probably wrong, because they include money printing, as well as financial products, and service industry, as economical branches which create value.
To me, neoclassicals are Capitalism lackeys. They are not neutral. They work at elitist universities, are invited at prestigious lectures, and eat with the Capitalist elite. That is my opinion.

>>18451262
>If i wanted to send you right now 100$, i would need 4 days by bank, the bank has to have an affiliate in my and your country and the government can record the transaction. The adress could be blacklisted you could be stopped
There's no reason that couldn't be instantaneous and central bank digital currencies will make that the case in the future. Also crypto doesn't solve that... if you want to send $100 dollars to someone overseas you can't do that with bitcoin, you can only send them bitcoins which they'll have to find a way to exchange for dollars (which involves time and has costs). The only thing you're right about is transactions are none reversible and censorship proof.

>Add to that the federal reserve can print trillions of dollars, makikg money worthless and making everything expensive for the common man.
But the exchange rate for the dollar is empirically massively more stable than with any private crypto coin. It seems like everyone looking for "stability" is trying to peg against the dollar.

>Crypto has limited supply, it cannot be tracked by the government (transactions are public but adresses are hidden, meaning they can only know you if you reveal your adress, monero even goes beyond that offering complete anonymity) add to that the extremely low fees and speed of transactions
The supply will tend to decrease over time when you have a fixed supply since access to wallets will be lost. Bitcoin, the most notable crypto, obviously isn't anonymous and the government is all over that in monitoring the public blockchain (and the fees are high and it's not that fast).

>>18451690
The Federal Reserve sets monetary policy for the united states, crypto isn't "competing" with them any more than any other asset class. If bitcoin goes to $1 trillion or $0.01 isn't that relevant per se compared to the price of food or oil or anything in a typical consumer basket (obviously there's a relation but bitcoin can freely float without much consequences still).

>>18451125
Wow it's almost like centralised currencies with mutable economic qualities attenuate and lose economic integrity over time as their keepers progressively amend the technical aspects to fit the context of whichever goal they have in mind in any given decade. If only there was some sort of an immutable system of accounting, with a fixed scarcity model built in, that was decentralised, open to anyone and secured by SHA-256 encryption.... That would be pretty cool.

>>18452044
https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=pfcJ9_C6SOM

>>18452044
>Why yes, I do love the idea of storing my wealth and completing transactions with a currency that is fully subjugated to the pumping and dumping of much richer people who have entire armies of shills, media, and bots ready to raise or lower the value of any currency they like.
>Sure sounds like a bright future to me.

>unproductive
Filtered.

>>18452402
>pumping and dumping
>implying the dollar value of buttcorn is relevant when bread is priced in satoshis

>>18452402
>subjugated to the pumping and dumping of much richer people who have entire armies of shills, media, and bots ready to raise or lower the value of any currency they like.
That's not Bitcoin only. That's society as a whole.

>>18452044
>mutable economic qualities
Except that's an essential feature. Trying to constrain an economy around some fixed arbitrary monopoly doesn't work without government enforcement.
>with a fixed scarcity model built in, that was decentralised, open to anyone and secured by SHA-256 encryption
Except there's an infinite amount of those possible and no reason outsiders need to play along with yours.

>>18452497
>bread is priced in satoshis
Which it isn't anywhere and there's been no progress in over a decade to get people to price things in that

>>18452415
>all these zoomers getting triggered by OP's correct observation on the nature of crypto

>>18425123
So you read Adam Smith huh? If that's true then how much was corn in the province of Normandy in 1683? checkmate faggot

>>18427791
Economics, in its current form as it is being tought on universities, has absolutely zero use for humanity.

>>18444954
This. If someone studied and actually understood economics, they would go and actually do something in the economy. "Professors" nowadays are mostly socialist or interventionist because they never worked a day in their life and had too big of an ego to understand free markets.

>>18425123
bump

>>18452840
>Except that's an essential feature. Trying to constrain an economy around some fixed arbitrary monopoly doesn't work without government enforcement.

Economic autonomy is a basic human right. Only a slave needs a master to denominate values and regulate their ability to freely transact on the open market. If you lack the capacity to recognise the value in open economics, that says something dire about you.

>Except there's an infinite amount of those possible and no reason outsiders need to play along with yours.

One has stood the test of time. All quasi decentralised venture capitalist shit coins average toward 0. There will never be another Bitcoin. You had 10 years.

>>18452402
>Measuring wealth in USD valuation

Ngmi

>>18451856
>Muh asset
A currency cannot be an asset because an asset must be more than a defined store of value but something that invites value into your pocket. I know I'm breaking pharisee denotata here with some Kiyosaki obnoxiousness but an asset has to DO something on a balance sheet more than occupying space or fudging numbers. You can't depreciate and appreciate or amortize a bitcoin. Crypto will be a far off fever dream since it doesn't enter the universe of GAAP and any agreed upon actual transactable conceptual framework. That's beyond just boomers being retarded it's an ivory tower circle jerk casino.
The rhetoric of guys like Charles H of Cardano is that crypto IS competing with fiat. That's the whole point of Cardano: "banking the unbanked". Right now in /biz/ and wallstreet and American parlance crypto is a gambler's funny stock button floating in lala land exchanges and NFTs but there are several African nations defaulting to the Crypto gods who basically printed their fancy counterfeit meme fever dream into buying their whole economies indirectly and covertly.

>>18426456
pretty sure Marx builds on Smith

>>18456967
Critiquing isn’t the same as building on. Marx is more intimate with Ricardo. Someone put a red bandana on Ricardo.

>>18457030
He didn't critique his theory. He accepted most of the premises, and then said you need to kill the burgeoisie in order to initiate the historical stage where the proletariat is dominant.

We should have more economics threads on /lit/. Dabbing on marxists and communists is fun.

>>18457038
Marx is deeply hostile to smiths views on value (theories of surplus) and sees Ricardo as less wrong. Jesus fuck read capital before opening your oral sewer.

haven't read a single economics book and i can't help but feel like everything about the economy including all analysis of it is fake and gay

>>18425123
>Isn't this proof that capital does not flow into the most productive channels of its own accord?
Cryptocurrency is valuable to many people (especially criminals). And at any rate if a mistake has been made, the bubble will burst and the market will correct itself. It won't be painless and some people will probably lose lots of money but that's their fault for buying up tulips even though they had no need for tulips.

>>18457071
>reading garbage
no thanks

>>18457071
I haven't read much of Marx, I'll admit it, but from what I've read, he completely agrees with Smith that the bourgeoise is the manufacturing class of the middle ages who usurped the military class that came before it through superior means of production. From there he adds his own talmudic arguments, but that's neither here nor there. Without Smith there would be no Marx.

>>18457081
>i can't help but feel like everything about the economy including all analysis of it is fake and gay
You're probably right, but skepticism won't get you anywhere. In the end you have to accept nobody will offer you the whole truth but you can try to see through everybody's lies and make an educated guess about what the truth may be. You can either resign yourself to ignorance and do nothing or you can struggle (possibly in vain). Not sure which alternative is better; I think it comes down to personal temperament.

>>18457081
Smith's ideas are incredibly simple and logical. Give it a chance and you might be surprised.
For example, he says that in established trades (that have been around longer than 20 or 25 years, I forget), the rate of profit is generally the same. Why? Because if it were anything else, capital would flow from the trade with lower profits into that with higher profits, increasing the rate of profit of the former and decreasing that of the latter through competition.

>>18457100
yeah you're right on the money there, i've resigned myself to ignorance. i'll leave it to better minds than me
>>18457115
yeah but just because something is logical doesn't mean it's true, that's my problem
i see no reason that this example you've given should be axiomatic. so much shit can interfere with a trade at any one time

>>18457081
Mainstream economics is about justifying the rape of the citizenry by some some privileged crooks; no wonder that it doesn't make sense because you cannot *honestly* justify this so they obfuscate things to no end (btw, so does Marx).
Read Hazlitt's "Economics in one Lesson" to start seeing the light in this swamp - and immune yourself against politicians' bullshit.

>>18457158
Why would this Hazlitt guy tell the truth though? What's in it for him? Why should he not peddle whatever lie is more convenient to him and his friends like other economists may do?

>>18457174
It only up to you to tell which side is lying, hear them both and be the judge.

>itt
>seething retards who still don’t understand bitcoin in the year of our lord 2021
censorship
resistant
digital
scarcity

recommended reading:
Ari Juels, Jacobsen “proof of work and bread pudding”
Adam Back, Hashcash

>>18457229
bitcoin has network effects just like Coca Cola. There will never be another bitcoin. It is unique, super fairly launched. Cannot be attacked without the combined mobilized resources of super powers.

>>18457238
*cannot be successfully attacked

https://youtu.be/ZY-BzPDj868
https://youtu.be/3V_SkLxgQjQ
https://youtu.be/l1si5ZWLgy0

I understand he advocates a free market, but how Liberal would he be perceived today? Has "free marketism" become more radical since Smith?

>>18457090
>I haven't read much of Marx
You haven't read Marx, stop fuffing.

>>18457337
I've read like 50 pages.

>>18457229
>censorship
>resistant
>digital
>scarcity
You're so cute, anon.
Value is perceived from the majority. If you have a diamond mine, but everyone thinks that diamonds are worthless and cant find a use for them, then your mine is effectively worthless.
All the people clamoring that bitcoin cannot be compromised, fail to realize that:
1- It's valuable right now simply because the big players and the rich whales are pumping its price. If they were to collectively dump it (say through laws, since they also control the laws), then it would become worthless overnight simply because they own the majority of the fucking pool.
2-Even if there was no real owning majority, you are relying on everyone owning equal amounts in order to not become a majority and manipulate the market. A literal ticking time-bomb
3-I havent read much into other coins, but from what I know, Monero is the only actually anonymous crypto. Every other currency uses open ledgers and transactions in its designs and, so, is very easily traceable. Just look at the constant hacker busting happening currently.

>>18457350
>say through laws, since they also control the laws
All it would take for bitcoin to crash to 1 cent is for the Fed to ban trading with it. That's it.

>>18457373
Exactly.
For some fucking mystery, all these people who are so anti-government, anti-establishment, anti-elites are hailing bitcoin as if it's the government killer. Conveniently not realizing that governments are most likely not banning crypto because the elites are the ones getting the richest with bitcoin.
And once they get tired of the crypto games, will they find it hard to "conveniently" find that bitcoin is used for money laundering and for financing terrorism? And that we should ban it for the greater good and all the people using it are just kiddie fiddlers?

>>18457347
"50 pages."

Go read contribution to a critique of political economy, then Value Price and Profit.

If you'd actually read Marx regarding political economy, those 50 pages could have been well spent on these two texts. Instead you're going to claim you read Manifesto, which you didn't, and if you wanted to read what you thought Manifesto was about you should have read Theses on Feuerbach and Critique of the Gotha Programme.

A fuck boy like you should honestly read Anti-Duhring and believe it, rathern than being capable of showing how Engels should have stuck to history and anthropology.

>>18457400
Stop pretending like communism is cool. I read 50 pages from das kapital and proably half of manifesto. In the latter he sounds like Smith, but more retarded.

I definitely want to get into Marxist theory more though, but I'm now reading Mao, then I'll move to Lenin, then Stalin, then Kotkin's biography of Stalin, then Marx, then probably Trotsky.

I'm more interested in the historic, psychologic and ideologic aspects of these great men than I am about economics, which failed miserably.

>>18457412
>of these great men
Just go back to wanking over Durant fuckwit.

>>18457425
>Durant
Is he a great-manfag?

>>18457429
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Durant

Enjoy his extensive fanfiction.

>>18457472
>On April 8, 1944, Durant was approached by two leaders of the Jewish and Christian faiths, Meyer David and Christian Richard about starting "a movement, to raise moral standards." He suggested instead that they start a movement against racial intolerance and outlined his ideas for a "Declaration of Interdependence".
Thanks, I hate it.

>>18457480
I find it incomprehensible that you consider one of the most right wing cunts in history to be too "liberal" for you. This isn't Austria (pre Dual Monarchy), reaction won't turn back 1793 (note not 1789).

>>18457071
Capital is essentially Marx expanding on Smith's assertion that wages fall to bare subsistence. Marx agrees and disagrees with Smith on different things, but you've over simplified here.

>>18457507
I'm a racist communist. I hate niggers and I don't like to work.

>>18457587
>I don't like to work
Well at least you're honest.

>>18457572
>Smith's assertion that wages fall to bare subsistence
Only when society at large is declining.

>>18457298
Smith would be viewed as positively left wing by today's standard. He warned repeatedly about how a function of the free market is that since there is a tangible benefit for those who have centralized capital to rig the system ("deceive and oppress the public" is the verbatim quote Smith said in reference to businessmen) that there will always be a push emanating from the normal function of the free market to corrupt and close that market. He cites a range of examples from artificially long apprenticeship times (to reduce the number of masters in a field, thus benefiting the masters already established), to outright monopolies.

Just read "The Road to Serfdom" by Hayek to see how absolute some economists became in the stance of disempowering governments (and thereby allowing the centers of capital to restructure the market as they see fit). The Gadsden snake seems to only care about government tyranny, corporate tyranny is just fine apparently.

>>18457605

>>18457611
That's where Marx expands by observing that the advance of technology means that more production can be done with less labor, therefore, as society advances, the price of labor will necessarily fall over time regardless of whether the overall society is declining or ascending.

>>18457587
The most ethnically pure communities, are communist. See the Huterrites. Also, Israeli Kibbutzim. The closer you get to pure Capitalism, the closer you are to the globohomo village. See Manhattan. London.
When you understand how wage labor work, in correlation to profits, and the necessity to constantly hire lower wages, which are third worlders, it's obvious why. Traditionalists don't understand the basic function of Capitalism. They get the fed money creation, but the basic mechanism of Capitalism, profit, Capital accumulation, rate of profit, they don't get. So they don't understand why Capitalism is responsible for mass immigration. They are lost in their minds.

>>18457572
One of the ideas that I found striking in Smith's work was that humans are somewhat like any other product. When there is a demand for them, wages will reflect that and population will increase. When there isn't, then wages will naturally tend to contract and population, if wages are left unregulated, will be reduced. So why then are we fighting so hard against population decline in Europe? Yes, pensions are an issue, but blindly increasing the population to unsustainable levels isn't going to solve the problem. That's more like a band-aid than a solution.

>>18457643
One of the most traditionalist critiques of capitalism is in the communist manifesto, and it's more accurate and cogent than anything evola ever wrote. It's downright spiritual.

Basically, these bourgeois faggots have to constantly shape and reshape society due to the nature of their profession. It's an intrinsic characteristic of their class, as inextricable as a nigger's laziness and stench.

>>18457642
That only follows if you assume that the total amount of production will stay stagnant.
>more production per worker + same amount of total production = the same production performed by reduced number of people ---> less competition for labor ----> lower wages
But the total amount of consumption per person is continually increasing is it not?

>>18425123
Economics is mostly bullshit retarded ideologues saying this or that oversimplified near meaningless principle or concept is infallible.

Instead study what you can of something with good empirical and mathematical backing. In other words the specifics, in context. Leave the trash to lying politicians and propagandists.

>>18457699
>Instead study what you can of something with good empirical and mathematical backing
but general economic models are garbage as well

>>18457653
Baby strikes are a common issue for historians of labour or the working class.

>>18457572
>Marx expanding on Smith's assertion that wages fall to bare subsistence
No he doesn't. Marx claims that labour power is priced politically. Marx suspects that this means bare subsistence. Actual history shows labour power priced below the cost of reproduction (sugar islands), or well above (1950s white US).

Jesus fuck cunt read marx. I'm not saying Marx is right; and I'm not, I'm Engelsian. But fucken read him before asserting.

>>18457667
>It's downright spiritual.
Tradcucks think spirituality has to be done in the church, on their knees, sunday morning.
In reality, all that is mysterious, all that is holy, find it's solution in the material world. It's right here, on the material plane, that the solution for the holiness has to be found. The key our social relations.

>>18456285
A larger proportion of bitcoin transactions a decade ago were to actually clear transactions for goods, most of what's going on now is searching for capital gains priced in dollars. There are better alternatives to bitcoin already for basically every use case. If you're to stupid to see why bitcoin failed as money keep holding I guess.

>>18457229
Bitcoin literally went backwards in the direction of unit of account or medium of exchange. No one wants to use it for that. The corrupt government in El Salvador just legalized bitcoin as legal tender, watch as no business is going to play along and price things in it or pay taxes with it and keep pricing thing in dollars and paying taxes in dollars like every other business that "uses" crypto.

>>18457238
>bitcoin has network effects just like Coca Cola
There's a problem with that idea e.g. something like the internet becomes more effective the more users it gets but with bitcoin it becomes more costly and slow (not to mention eventually harder to pump which is drawing people in) as it grows.

>>18425123
based. only the classical political economists are worth reading.
stay away from the cancer that is economics.

>>18425123
I recommend reading this next. Hudson references Smith extensively. His main concern is to revive the Smithian classical understanding of rent--which is not just land rent, but instead is today mainly Jewish financial rent.

>>18457782
Read some real philosophy before making a fool of yourself.

>>18459184
Does the book name the jew?

>>18459259
No, but he comes close.

>>18458564
people won’t spend bitcoin on goods because they believe it will increase in value more. eventually the incentives to hold will decrease as bitcoin halvings have less manic price moves and people will begin to use it to trade for goods more

>>18459841
it’s plainly obvious that everyone in this thread only pays attention to bitcoin at a very specific part of it’s 4 year life cycle when retail dog piles in

>>18458564
also, I flat out disagree that high fees are bad. high fees demonstrate high demand for the network, if people actually have an issue with fees then they will stop using it and fees will go back to equilibrium, which is what we just saw with Ethereum when the DeFi trade unwound earlier this month

>>18459841
>people will begin to use it to trade for goods more
lol and you think the central banks will just stand by and watch while they lose control of the money supply?

>>18459851
as of right now, the only real argument against buying bitcoin is
1. 95% of new holders will capitulate during the bear market and exit at a loss even though they will almost certainly have the same real value they have on purchase in 4-8 years
2. if bitcoin becomes genuinely successful governments will simply ban it like what we saw with gold or increase taxes high enough to make using bitcoin impossible. personally I think too many Americans hold bitcoin and the governments legitimacy isn’t high enough to ban bitcoin but it’s clear from warren and co’s bleating about bitcoin’s energy consumption in an attempt to verify OP’s seething opinion of bitcoin that they might try

>>18459851
besides, with the maturation of L2 networks such as the lightning network and Arbitrum, real fees will decrease considerably in the coming years. though this brings us to jensen’s paradox

>>18459944
*jevon’s paradox

>>18459888
bitcoiner’s are much more ideologically determined than you give them credit for, there would be terrorist attacks if that happened. and we’re already seeing game theory at work as republicans like ted Cruz who are desperate for young voters now openly supporting it

>>18459964
>there would be terrorist attacks if that happened
kek
The sheer delusion of memecoiners is astounding.

>>18459964
bitcoin has martyrs like Ross Ulbricht now. I genuinely think there would be a lot of domestic turbulence if the fed tried to retain their seigniorage

>>18459971
you can choose to listen to me or not. don’t underestimate these people they are much more determined than the goldbugs and there has been a lot of things going on behind the scenes since silk road

>>18425258
Who is this et al. and why did he write so many books?

>>18459991
the memecoin fad will die out just like tulip mania did

>>18459841
No one (except the biggest retards) is buying bitcoin because they need it for commerce, they're buying it only because they think the price is going to increase. The price stabilizing would kill it given time since competition exists. Literally anything you want from a currency there's going to be a better to use alternatives for legitimate (or criminal) use.

>>18459892
>2. if bitcoin becomes genuinely successful governments will simply ban it like what we saw with gold or increase taxes high enough to make using bitcoin impossible.
What do you mean by "successful"? For crypto to be successful there would be no need for stuff like exchanges to exist which can be regulated. Government "banning" crypto would make it actually have to work more like its supposed to when people can't "cash out".

>>18460084
> No one (except the biggest retards) is buying bitcoin because they need it for commerce, they're buying it only because they think the price is going to increase. The price stabilizing would kill it given time since competition exists. Literally anything you want from a currency there's going to be a better to use alternatives for legitimate (or criminal) use.
that’s literally not true. it’s censorship resistant and based on mathematical guarantees. Bitcoin is fundamentally sound money in a completely different way than any other existing currency and will always have use cases for this reason. It also has a permanent monetary policy that will never change
>>18460084
>what do you mean by genuinely successful
used as a medium of exchange/unit of account in 5-10% of global transactions

>>18460068
Memecoins theoretically serve several real purposes, eg. privacy, prevent inflation/escape ctrl bank fuckery. The government will just shutitdown.png if it actually ever threatens the dollar though, a nuclear power would have to back it up which would really just reintroduce the same problems of control. Problem isn't type of currency it's the people controlling it

>>18460181
>it’s censorship resistant and based on mathematical guarantees
All blockchains are, bitcoin doesn't have a monopoly on that.

>"sound money"
Meaningless lolbert buzzword.

> in a completely different way than any other existing currency
It introduced some novel concepts but those features are duplicable without costs. Any value you get out of using any particular blockchain just comes from a highly manipulatable social consensus.

>It also has a permanent monetary policy that will never change
Which is totally arbitrary and in no way corresponds to any real world economic dynamics... this is the exact issue with any system that works like the gold standard where you try to constrain things to arbitrary limits like aggregate spending to gold mining.

>used as a medium of exchange/unit of account in 5-10% of global transactions
To function in either of those roles you need stability which bitcoin can't achieve by design since it's held by a bunch of speculators who want to maximize capital gains.

Leftism doesn't work. Leftists don't understand economics.

Stop arguing with people who are mentally ill brain damaged subhumans.

>>18457627
>Smith would be viewed as positively left wing by today's standard.
No he wouldn't you dishonest piece of shit.

>>18457653
I agree, this is also why enforcing social standard which kept women out of the work place was a positive thing for workers in general since it kept the labor supply low giving more bargaining power to the men who went to work. Thankfully society had enough sense to take children out of factory work, but we should never forget that capital owners had no problems whatsoever in keeping small children in horrendous working conditions for long hours simply because they could pay them next to nothing. It's basically only through public outcry and government action that children were saved from this fate, and I'm sure you could go around the world to places where governments are far more corrupt and find that child workers are still employed in much the same awful conditions as during the industrial revolution.
>>18457683
It's a matter of scale. Technology is increasing at such a rapid pace that personal consumption can increase and still not keep pace with it. Marx himself acknowledged that one of the hallmarks of capitalist production is the proliferation of commodities, but the real problem is that even though the commodities become cheaper, it becomes harder for workers to actually grow their wealth. Take for example the housing market today. Private equity is capable of coming in and offering 100k+ above asking price, in cash, thus pricing out first time home buyers and forcing them to become renting serfs instead of being able to build their own equity in their home. In regard to your initial point, I think the growth of other sectors of production (thanks to new technology) HAVE offset the decline in wages, however it's difficult to say for sure because if you take something like the World Wars, you have a large amount of the male populations of these different countries being killed, leaving huge open opportunities for the survivors to make their careers in any industry because of the huge demand for labor and the relative shortage due to war deaths. The bottom line is that these factors are limited, whereas is seems like the effect technology has on improving the efficiency of labor seems to be indefinite, and all that extra efficiency causes the holders of capital to reap more value, and workers less because of their diminished bargaining position they must accept less compensation.
>>18457734
What are you on about? Wages tend to fall to bare subsistence over time, that's not to say there can't be events which postpone that. In fact, your example of the 1950s is very good, since that's basically the height of union membership in the USA, meaning the higher wages were as a direct result of workers combining into collective bargaining entities to combat the power of the owners of capital. You need to calm down friend, you seem quite rustled.

>>18460727
Have you even read him?

“In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest.

Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

“Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.”

“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”


“The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public”

“It is the industry which is carried on for the benefit of the rich and powerful, that is principally encouraged by our mercantile system. That which is carried on for the benefit of the poor and the indigent, is too often, either neglected, or oppressed”

>>18460820
How anyone could ever translate this to leftism is beyond me.

Seek help unironically.

>>18427196
you can read marx but dont become indoctrinated by him. do not become indoctrinated by any particular school only because others have said it is le 'based'

>>18460864
If you think a progressive tax policy isn't left wing, or that believing the system itself neglects and oppresses the poor isn't a left wing position, or that businessmen need extra scrutiny because they will attempt to deceive and oppress the public isn't a left wing position then you are either wildly ignorant or wildly dishonest.

>>18460953
>wow he wrote one thing that could be tied to modern day brain damaged leftism he was totally a leftist
jesus christ

>>18460953
Not him, but the left is associated with revolutionary ideals and quick remedial action that disrupts the status quo. The right is conservative, and wants any reform to be slow and well thought out. Smith was generally disapproving of quick change, in politics and economics, which puts in squarely to the right.

>>18461000
>>18461018
>The right wing is just the left wing going the speed limit
Quite a hot take you have there boys

What's the bump limit these days?

>>18460707
>it’s censorship resistant and based on mathematical guarantees
>All blockchains are, bitcoin doesn't have a monopoly on that.
network effects
>sound money
>meaningless lolbert term
there are almost no incentives to hold the dollar precisely because mainstream economists hold this view, and that’s exactly why bitcoin is able to extract such a massive monetary premium currently
>It also has a permanent monetary policy that will never change
>Which is totally arbitrary and in no way corresponds to any real world economic dynamics... this is the exact issue with any system that works like the gold standard where you try to constrain things to arbitrary limits like aggregate spending to gold mining.
not an issue thanks to bitcoin’s fungibility and ability to be divided into satoshi’s. Though I own a lot of AMPL because I think this criticism has some merit
>used as a medium of exchange/unit of account in 5-10% of global transactions
>To function in either of those roles you need stability which bitcoin can't achieve by design since it's held by a bunch of speculators who want to maximize capital gains.
volatility will decrease over time and speculators will gradually leave as diminishing returns limits are hit, eventually leaving us with a stable bitcoin that is worth a relatively fixed % of the total economy

>>18461370
note that a relatively stable bitcoin is at least 1 decade away, probably 2

>>18461375
the most valuable scarce resource is legitimacy, which bitcoin holds massive amounts of thanks to it’s compelling, essentially religious, myth and fairly distributed nature of it’s original release. That legitimacy will likely only increase over time

>>18461370
Gresham's law bro

>>18461056
kill yourself you brain damaged leftist

>>18425123

This is objectively the most beautiful chart in the entire history of open market trading.

>>18462967
I actually feel sorry for the people who saw a chart this beautiful years ago but were too weighed down by their own middle level intelligence to buy. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity and you blew it. It's the digital equivalent of living in a gold rush town, but being too "smart" to prospect because "gold is a worthless rock". You will regret this decision for the rest of your life.

>>18462967
>high and low lines only align with the first two peaks and lows
Only a fool would try to predict the market like this.

>>18463508
>high and low lines only align with the first two peaks and lows

And what does that tell you about which direction the price is going in the short term? Do with this information what you must...

>>18463515
It doesn't tell me anything except that whoever made the chart, fit the lines those data points.

>>18463544
Ngmi.

>>18463595
Remember you were warned and chose to ignore it.

>>18463596
When we hit 100k later this year, remember you had 10 years but were too "smart".

>>18463608
I'm not saying it will or won't hit 100K, it could. I'm just saying that it WILL crash to almost zero at some point in time, maybe next year, maybe in 20 years.

>>18463630
You aren't the first to make a claim like that and you wont be the last. However I can guarantee you this: that within in the next 20 years you will transact in crypto currencies and you will have no choice in the matter. If you don't know this already, you weren't supposed to.

>>18463654
>that within in the next 20 years you will transact in crypto currencies and you will have no choice in the matter.
There's no road to this because every private business that tries to use crypto for transactions finds out why it's a bad idea, companies accepting "crypto" actually just use services to exchange it for real currencies. The only national government stupid enough to try is El Salvador and they're either going to back off like every private business has on the idea or end up in disaster. What you really want to watch is how central bank digital currencies are going to play out which China will be the first to deploy.

Also FYI that Krugman quote is right but you're probably to young to remember the "New Economy" the Clinton administration hyped up in the 1990s which was supposed to unleash a revolution in productivity growth (China actually grew way faster based on old fashioned manufacturing instead thinking coal miners could become coders), the internet wasn't the magic solution to all economic growth problems people thought it was going to be

>>18464750
>he doesn't know about the crypto fiat china has already released and is transitioning into use

>>18464750
>What you really want to watch is how central bank digital currencies are going to play out which China will be the first to deploy.
That thing is a central banker's wet dream. It's scary how complete a government's control will be with digital currency.

New thread
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