One thing I have found about HN in general is a refusal to ponder the meaning of money itself.
1 Why is a small amount of inflation considered a "good thing"? In just one generation, inflation targets reduce the purchasing power by nearly 50%. What if you knew that assumption lead to all kinds of terrible outcomes, but they only surfaced after 7-8 election cycles?
2 Why is a gold standard considered impractical? After all, today, the technology actually exists to at least make this a worthwhile pursuit (that is, a digital gold standard which doesn't involve the actual movement of physical gold)
3 Why is there so little discussion on the "amount of currency units your central government printed this year"? I find it remarkable, and somewhat amusing frankly, that there could be so many intelligent people on a forum (compared to the average online forum) and how few of these folks have asked themselves this question.
4 Why is there so little discussion on the possibility of currency deflation being a very good thing for the people on the margins of society?
It certainly doesn't help that 99% of the folks who ask these questions happen to be both male and white, which just makes people auto-associate these ideas with racism, privilege etc. I don't think the core ideas themselves have been given sufficient thought for a few decades.
And as for Patrick Collison, I am willing to bet he hasn't read a single book written by Thomas Sowell (whose books will at the very least force you to ask these questions, even if you might come to different conclusions to others who read his books).
As a counter point, there are always some business oldsters who remain attached to their old technology stack, don't really contribute anything to moving innovation forward, and arrive 5 years after a tech has matured with wisecracks which are technology's equivalent of "If you wait long enough, everything reverts to the mean". Sure, but I think we already know that.
Besides, I am not sure how anyone can argue that the level of churn is bad, considering that it is usually proportional to the volume of new ideas and an eventual winner emerging (albeit not always in a meritocratic fashion).
1 Why is a small amount of inflation considered a "good thing"? In just one generation, inflation targets reduce the purchasing power by nearly 50%. What if you knew that assumption lead to all kinds of terrible outcomes, but they only surfaced after 7-8 election cycles?
2 Why is a gold standard considered impractical? After all, today, the technology actually exists to at least make this a worthwhile pursuit (that is, a digital gold standard which doesn't involve the actual movement of physical gold)
3 Why is there so little discussion on the "amount of currency units your central government printed this year"? I find it remarkable, and somewhat amusing frankly, that there could be so many intelligent people on a forum (compared to the average online forum) and how few of these folks have asked themselves this question.
4 Why is there so little discussion on the possibility of currency deflation being a very good thing for the people on the margins of society?
It certainly doesn't help that 99% of the folks who ask these questions happen to be both male and white, which just makes people auto-associate these ideas with racism, privilege etc. I don't think the core ideas themselves have been given sufficient thought for a few decades.
And as for Patrick Collison, I am willing to bet he hasn't read a single book written by Thomas Sowell (whose books will at the very least force you to ask these questions, even if you might come to different conclusions to others who read his books).