sandals are supposed to show your feet

I read once that men should generally avoid showing their feet, because said feet are likely to be uglier than socks or shoes. (Or even Vibram Fivefingers).

The implied context of all this is: what if Bitcoin (or something similar) became a/the dominant currency, that paychecks, debts, etc. are denominated in?

If it doesn't then it doesn't really matter, societally, if it inflates, deflates, mutates, or defenestrates (other than to the people who invest in it...) It'd just be another good, as you say.

It's deserved - I wasn't being productive, or constructive, or even particularly coherent. It surprised me too. I think various Issues of mine that nobody cares about all came together yesterday, and so I'd be better off to just avoid discussing economics altogether. At least until I can be unemotional about it (if ever). Sorry for polluting the thread, back to public-key encryption...

My understanding is that one good wouldn't do it, but persistent, overall deflation would in fact devastate the economy.

Sure, right now you can stick money under a mattress for 6 months and buy more Core 2 laptops than you could today. But that doesn't seem the same as "getting richer".

Where's the line? Good question. Obviously if you could buy more of anything that would be getting richer without investing the money. Or if you could buy more (houses or food or cars or Internet access or electricity or sex or drugs or rock n' roll).

I've not been very coherent, and I think my once-debilitating fear of the Invisible Hand has not gone away enough. So I'm not making a lot of sense, even to myself.

So, umm, never mind. Sorry for polluting the thread.

Can you expand? Here's the difference as I see it:

• Price index: the dollar is worth 5% less than last year because it buys 5% less of the stuff in this market basket, populated with stuff representative of the "cost of living"
• Gold standard: the dollar is worth 5% less than last year because it buys 5% less gold

Which is more or less useful, and why?

Here's another, hop to it...

Sure, just discuss the particular problems with the (best versions of) propositions put forth by such people [goldbugs and libertarians], and how their conclusions don't follow, and what specific pieces of evidence weight heavily against them. (Note the lack of smearing them as racists in this method.)

OK. Libertarianism I can leave to others (I don't think I have anything new to say about it). As for hard-money advocacy, usually one sees the following errors:

• Belief that there's some Platonic ideal of "value" against which currencies should be measured (traditionally "gold", though one sees variations these days)
• Ignorance of the hazards of a totally exogenous money supply size. (fewer levers to deal with recessions and overly-hot economies; real wage declines have to happen nominally (which is very difficult) rather then through exchange rates)
• Belief in immaculate transfer (trade balances, capital flows, and exchange rates in fact all affect one another)
• Belief that the medium of exchange should be a stable long-term store of value, and in fact increase in real value without being invested (how could such a thing even work? What's creating the value?)

As far as I can tell, the only of those I've seen from you in particular is the last one, and that's another subthread.

There is a new one, from you, in this discussion though: the idea that "too much" economic activity is happening now, and it would be better to defer some of that economic activity until later. High unemployment refutes this. [If you'll claim current unemployment is structural in nature, then what is the industry that lacks labor, and is thusly currently experiencing increasing real wages?]

Not necessarily (though I'm no doubt being too snarky).

It's common for goldbugs to compare stashing gold under a mattress with stashing green pieces of paper under a mattress, and note that the former has better investment return. When there's no economic reason that simply sitting on wealth (without loaning it out to some productive use) should make one wealthier.

The expectation that money should be a long-term store of value is, in fact, misguided.