Hacker News Reader

Comment by barrkel | Hacker News Reader

So linear growth starves the economic beast, and would force us to abandon our current debt-based financial system of interest and loans.

Debt, interest and loans are not dependent on economic growth. Debt is fundamentally about reducing the latency between consumption and production; rather than having to wait until after you've produced something of value, you can consume some of that future production today, in exchange for promising to divert some of that future production. There's nothing here that requires the whole pie to keep on growing.

View on HN

If Fred and Ginger are an economic system whose total value at time t is $1000 (all of which is in Ginger's bank account), and Ginger loans Fred $500 on the promise that he'll pay her $600 at time t+1, then their agreement is predicated on the assumption that the Fred/Ginger economy will have grown 10% at time t+1.

No, it is predicated on the assumption that $500 at time t is worth $600 at time t+1.

In that case Fred could simply pay her back the $500 and she would value it at $600 (ie, deflation). He has to pay her back $100 more in real value than he borrowed, so sometime between t and t+1, someone in the system must produce $100 in new wealth.

I don't see the problem. Fred can sell his time/labor to make up the difference. If that is not possible for some reason, Fred could also default on the debt. Then the lender takes what she can get and learns not to make loans that cannot be repaid.

Fred can sell his time/labor to make up the difference.

In other words, Fred can bring new wealth into the system, yes. If he defaults, then Ginger learns that a key assumption of her loan---that the wealth of the Fred/Ginger system would increase at time t+1---was wrong. Which is exactly my point: that our system of finance relies on the implicit assumption that the economy will grow.

Fred can create new wealth simply by dancing to Ginger's tune for an agreed period of time. There is no limit on the amount of "wealth" that can be created; as long as there are economic actors in the system, their action is wealth generating if it is done in exchange for money.

See my answer to mrep above. There's no net increase in wealth there, Fred and Ginger merely shuffle money back and forth. And some of finance is exactly that. But some portion is not (ie Ginger loans out $1000, leaving her nothing to pay Fred with, and he has no interest in her services); that fraction of outstanding debt must be paid with new wealth, created in the interim. Ginger's loan is predicated on that possibility.

No, Ginger could take a small nap and pay Fred a 100$ to do some work for her that she would normally do. Then, Fred would have 600$ to pay her back, and the economy's output would stay the same.

True, and some portion of lending is no doubt exactly that kind of shuffling. But the total amount of debt also includes some proportion of Gingers who lent more than they can nap off.

No it's not. Think about it.

And in fact debt was ubiquitous long before the Industrial Revolution happened and economic growth increased to rates that made it comparable to the interest rates on debt.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com