That makes sense I guess. But under fractional reserve banking, any money that is "idly" sitting in a bank account earning interest will be loaned out by the bank to someone who will put it to good use. Similarly, if I buy an interest bearing corporate bond, the corporation that is paying me interest will put the money to good use. It seems to me that interest is a good mechanism for incentivizing those who have money to make it available to those who need it for some productive purpose.
any money that is "idly" sitting in a bank account earning interest will be loaned out by the bank to someone who will put it to good use
Yes, but there is also money -- cash -- that just sits in a safe-deposit box or under a mattress. Or think about gold bars.
It seems to me that interest is a good mechanism for incentivizing those who have money to make it available to those who need it for some productive purpose.
This is true. Negative interest rates are a curious contemporary phenomenon. I would probably attribute their existence to two ...
I posted a stupid question a couple of weeks ago and got some good feedback.
@ChristianKl suggested that I start building a model of hypercapitalism for people to play with. I have the first one ready! It isn't quite to the point where people can start submitting bots to play in the economy, but I think it shows that the idea is worth more thought.
Analysis:
http://www.hypercapital.info/news/2015/4/19/a-published-model-of-hypercapitalism
Runnable Code - fork it and mess around with it:
http://runnable.com/VTBkszswv6lIdEFR/hypercapitalism-sample-economy-for-node-js-and-hello-world
I'd love some more feedback and opinions.
A couple of other things for context:
hypercapital.info - all about hypercapitalism
Overcoming bias about our money
Information Theory and the Economy