Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Rationality Quotes December 2013 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Cyan 17 December 2013 08:43PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 December 2013 02:36:43AM 3 points [-]

After years of reading econblogs, I now understand that the Federal Reserve is not creating enough money. I don't actually think that understanding is a bad thing.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 December 2013 09:02:50AM 3 points [-]

After years of reading econblogs, I now understand that the Federal Reserve is not creating enough money.

I can see why inflation can be good for a smallish economy, but the US dollar is widely used as a reserve currency by foreigners, and if they no longer trusted it to stay hard they'd probably switch to gold or Swiss francs or bitcoins or whatnot and... I dunno what would happen, but I kinda doubt it would be nice. (I hardly know anything about macroeconomics, so I'm very likely missing something.)

Nice example of metacontrarianism, BTW: “why don't they just print more money” is something uneducated people often come up with, and most literate people realize there are problems with that, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.

Comment author: satt 22 December 2013 02:16:56PM 3 points [-]

After years of reading econblogs, I now understand that the Federal Reserve is not creating enough money.

I can see why inflation can be good for a smallish economy, but [...] (I hardly know anything about macroeconomics, so I'm very likely missing something.)

I think the missing bits here are that (1) creating money needn't necessarily raise inflation, and (2) modest increases in US inflation are unlikely to trigger a mass flight from the US dollar.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 24 December 2013 02:59:06AM 1 point [-]

After years of reading econblogs, I now understand that the Federal Reserve is not creating enough money. I don't actually think that understanding is a bad thing.

Only if the Federal Reserve is in fact not creating enough money.

Comment author: satt 23 December 2013 01:39:54AM 0 points [-]

Interpreting the quotation charitably, it doesn't say that everything you'd learn from news ("or econobullshit") would be nonsense. It just means some of it would be.