SilasBarta comments on Less Wrong Should Confront Wrongness Wherever it Appears - Less Wrong

24 Post author: jimrandomh 21 September 2010 01:40AM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 23 September 2010 07:46:06PM *  1 point [-]

True but the government also has to pay interest on its debt. Anyway, this gets away from the original question which is whether the total value of cash and cash equivalent assets exceeds the total face value of all debt (public and private). If you make this question slightly more specific and talk about the value of US$ denominated cash and debt then the answer is 'no, not by a long shot'. Or in the phrasing of the original question, you get a very negative number.

Looking back, it seems that Crono was asking two questions that only appear to be the same:

Incidentally, the question was this: If you add up everyone's cash-equivalent assets (actual cash, checking accounts, certificates of deposit, etc.) and then subtract everyone's debts (mortgage balances, corporate and government bonds, money a bank has to pay to depositors, etc.) is the total positive or negative? In other words, if every last dollar-denominated debt or other debt-like obligation was paid back, would there be any money left in the world?

One question is answered by comparing some accounting figures. The other is asking us to imagine a counterfactual in which everyone goes through and pays off debts. You're answering the first one, while I was answering the second.

And in that case, there could be e.g. only $X in cash instruments, $10X in government debt, and yet it could still be paid off: Say, one year people earn $3X in wages, pay $0.5X in taxes, then the government pays the $0.5X of debt that just matured. Interest could kick in which is less than this amount. The people who get the money from the maturing bounds can't making loans and so spend the money, generating wages, generating tax revenue, generating reduced government debt, and so on.

Comment author: mattnewport 23 September 2010 07:48:49PM *  0 points [-]

Oh, absolutely, I'm not disputing that the debt can theoretically be paid off in full - that's exactly what I mean when I say it's not really a problem that the accounting figure is negative. If that wasn't the case we'd be in in real trouble. The idea that cash needs to match the face value of debt is a confusion in a debt based economy like ours.

Comment author: SilasBarta 23 September 2010 07:51:00PM 0 points [-]

Understood. So do you agree Crono really is asking two very separate questions, even though it may seem like they're the same?

Comment author: mattnewport 23 September 2010 07:53:42PM 0 points [-]

To be honest it didn't even occur to me that he'd confuse those two issues but I'd agree that it looks like he may have done. It did puzzle me when I first saw the question why Robin Hanson wouldn't have just said 'negative'.