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> The 2% annual debasement rate of modern state currencies would have been a massive crisis in the era of metals. Imagine a king putting 2% less silver in the coin, year over year. We're just used to it.

Say what? Coins were intrinsically valued and not used like currency as it is today. It wasn't until about the 1500s we even really see currency being used and it was hand waves a bunch of stuff thanks to the Dutch merchant class. In Rome people didn't spend money, they hoarded it, because the pile itself was a sign of wealth. Spending it was looked down upon. They instead purchased primarily through bartering of goods and resources. There was no middle class either to spend money, you were nobility, a solider, or a slave.

A lot of folks want to apply modern economics to historical contexts where it cannot be. There's too much missing when taking in only from the lens of Economics to evaluate or judge things accurately.

Having some inflation is important, though, to prime the economy for growth. Low level, consistent, inflation is a good thing.

Opinions differ substantially on this point.

This is like saying: "Opinions differ substantially as to whether man-made climate change is real". Yes, opinions differ, but when all mainstream scientists agree that deflation is bad, saying that "opinions differ" is quite misleading.

Economists aren't scientists.

> Economists aren't scientists.

How do you define scientist, and who else isn't included?

Like, micro-economists do a lot of interesting experimental work that certainly seems like science.

Macro-economics is pretty much entrail-reading because we fundamentally don't understand how the modern economy functions, and is massively political and hijacked by a variety of interests, but that's a subfield that even economists agree is problematic.

Scientists should have falsifiable theories, for starters.

Actually to my mind that is all you need for science: observe, make a falsifiable hypothesis, try to falsify your own hypothesis.

That is... not most economics.

Is geology a science?

They have most of the same issues as economics (modulo the political stuff), but everyone seems OK with it.

Also, Popper's falsification is a pretty unrealistic account of how science actually works, and it only really works as advertised where you can run effective experimental designs (which economics and geology, amongst other disciplines) have a problem with.

Geology definitely has more experimental falsification attempts going on than economics.

If you have a theory that is impossible to falsify experimentally, we're no longer talking about science (at least if your idea of science is the pursuit of objective truth). Modern "science" running amok with people more concerned with attempting to prove themselves correct than find the truth doesn't change that.

> Popper's falsification is a pretty unrealistic account of how science actually works

That's the rub though. A pretty strong argument can be made that "science" is not working and that "scientists" have lost their way, if you look at things like the reproducibility crisis.

There are many scientific fields that cannot conduct experiments, such as climate science. To say that this is not science is quite naive.

First off I reject the premise that people investigating the climate cannot perform experiments.

Even assuming what you say is true, if not experiments and attempts at falsifying your ideas, how does one pursue the truth?

You only have one planet, it's a little difficult to split it in two.

How would you suggest we run randomised experiments on the climate (or the macro-economy)?

No, they really don't. Uninformed opinions will argue this because they're just that... uninformed. I'm sorry but no one who has studied economics will believe this there's zero evidence to support the idea a low-level of inflation is bad. There's only crackpots and idiots who don't have economics degrees, or even enough math to understand the fucking equations (which aren't hard but also don't always provide intuitive results).

In general, without some form of inflation, you end up with a deflationary spiral because people stop spending and the economy seizes up. No one will spend money if just holding it makes it more valuable. It then becomes a race to horde as much as you can for as long as you can. It's also, quite uhhh... perplexing for me, to not increase the money supply when populations are increasing; because, they're increasing the value of the money by increasing demand for it.

Central banks are the result and answer to reckless unregulated financial markets crashing, being manipulated, and destroying lives... Oh shit, kind of sounds like bitcoin, doesn't it? Everyone does this "central bank boogeyman" and thinks it should go away but they all absolutely ignore why they exist in the first place.

There's a ton of quality stuff to be debated in regards to economics-- this is not one of them.

Not true at all.

People, and state economists, have confused inflation and deflation so much for their propaganda that right now is almost imposible to have a discussion around it primarily because different people don't mean the same things when they use those words.

Is the inflation you talk about consumer price inflation? is it assets price inflation? or is it money supply inflation? is the deflation caused by increases in productivity or is it caused by decrease in demand? Is inflation a product of regulations? of corruption? or was it caused by central banks and politicians' stupidity?

Those are all very different situations that require very different approaches, but because the "inflation-good deflation-bad" mantra has been repeated for so long (without any actual proof!) idiots now can't see past it, and think it's fine because they call themselves economists.

I believe we're discussing supply inflation.

You made his point.

> no one who has studied economics will believe this there's zero evidence to support the idea a low-level of inflation is bad.

That's quite the number of negations you've got there. I assume you want to say that a mild inflation make economic sense, but I think you're actually saying the opposite due to the 3 negations (no one, zero evidence, bad).

I think it is two separate thoughts. > no one who has studied economics will believe this - there's zero evidence to support the idea a low-level of inflation is bad.

Fucking true. Zero inflation for couple decades? Absolutely destroys a nation.

Fucking false, stop spreading misinformation. The US experienced continued deflation from ~1870 to ~1890 and still saw a growth rate of around 4%.

So first, you of course picked one of the very few deflationary growth periods in history.

Second, that deflationary period was caused by a huge increase in productivity... it is known as "the second industrial revolution", and global production efficiency took off during that period.

Third, the fact that there was only 4% actually shows that growth was artificially constrained by a limited money supply; productive efficiency increased so much, we should have had better growth than we did. We would have, if we were able to grow the money supply with the economy.

In fact, the only thing that kept the money supply from completely stopping economic growth is that there actually WAS a huge increase in the money supply caused by massive gold and silver mining.

Not OP, but they were bringing up a counterpoint to the "absolutely" destroys a nation. The counter example did not destroy the US, proving the original statement false.

Your third point also sounds like story-telling, or fitting a story to the evidence. Does that mean it is the only possible explanation for what occurred? If not, how can we determine which explanation is correct?

Yeah, you are right... it is a vast oversimplification and is not the only possible explanation.

I guess my point is that time period is clearly an outlier in a number of ways, which is why it is one of the only examples of high growth + deflation periods in history... it doesn't change the conclusion that you should aim for a small amount of inflation if you want economic growth. A single counter-example doesn't change the conclusion; just because we know there are people who have won huge jackpots in the lottery doesn't mean we stop suggesting saving money for retirement.

Depends on the use-case. Bitcoin's current zeitgeist is digital gold/store of value and from that point of view deflation is a strength that complements inflationary currencies.

Inflation is good for an economy (assuming it's growing). It's not good for an individual.

> Imagine a king putting 2% less silver in the coin, year over year.

This happened fairly often, and it's called debasement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debasement

https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/MONEYLEC.htm

A word I specifically used, yes.

A fun quote from the Wikipedia page:

> If done too frequently, debasement may lead to a new coin being adopted as a standard currency

Indeed a risk!

> Grin, to pick a cybercoin which has some interesting technical innovations, issues one coin per minute, forever.

With a 60 Grin block reward and 1 minute block interval, it's actually 1 Grin per second, forever.