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Comment by azth | Hacker News Reader

> If you like bitcoin, you must think the gold standard was a good idea.

Yes, it was.

> Because people really, really, really want it to.

Exactly. People are sick of government induced inflation, and the government devaluing people's hard work at a whim to pay for their debts they go into through incompetence. Since the government won't go back to the gold standard, the people are taking things into their hands.

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Inflation is a safety net. Inflation prevents populations from fearfully (or speculatively) hoarding money. When a population collectively decides to hoard money, demand for goods and services tanks, jobs are cut in response, and so on in a vicious cycle until the entire economy grinds to a halt. Such a situation is extremely difficult to recover from without government monetary policy to stimulate demand.

Fine then, there are inflationary cryptocurrencies for you to choose from as well.

this is only valid for growth-above-all capitalist outlook. nothing is wrong with "hoarding" money, in non-biased language it's also called saving for retirement, yet your capitalist overlords created a view of reality where nothing good ever happens if their investments don't grow steadily. but for that to happen - money has to lose value steadily.

don't be a slave to your capitalist overlords. you can save yourself by just rejecting their view, way easier than what slaves of the past had to do.

Show, don't tell.

The hardest working people are living paycheck to paycheck. Inflation, as long as it doesn‘t go hyper, is not a major concern.

The only thing normal inflation seriously devalues is resting on your hard work for way to long.

The problem is that today's economy is also based on debt (a very bad idea), many if not most people cannot simply save to buy assets like the old days because, due to inflation and interest, prices keep going up. Some of us refuse to engage in interest based finance as it is against our religion (and for good reason).

There are over 200 countries out there. One of them could always adopt the gold standard if it's such a great idea. Maybe there's a reason zero have done so in recent decades?

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