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Comment by PantaloonFlames | Hacker News Reader

The issue is not whether a person can make money in a Ponzi scheme. We know it is possible. The issue is, is it a good idea?

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It's really more of MLM than Ponzi at this point.

Buying low and selling high is not a ponzi scheme.

The losers in a Ponzi scheme buy high and sell low. What did the winners do?

So real-estate, stocks and gold are all ponzi schemes?

All of those have value even if you wouldn't be allowed to sell them. Stocks pay dividends, people use gold as jewellery, and you can live in real estate. Speculating on assets with real world value is different from speculating on assets nobody would care about unless they could sell it.

The whole point of these scams is to convince people to buy assets that nobody wants, but you convince them that some other guy really wants it a lot and will pay more for it in the future. And of course if he could convince some new guy of the same thing he can even sell it at a profit, but since there ultimately is nobody who wants this asset the chain has to break sooner or later.

So please tell me when that chain is going to break. Next year? Next decade? In 50 years? Is it still going to break within our lifetimes?

Your infer a lot from a little.

Seems to be your definition of a ponzi scheme. At least on wikipedia they don't agree with that definition.

I described attributes of a Ponzi scheme. These attributes may apply to other investments. I made no attempt to define anything. You infer where inference is not applicable.

Buy low sell high are not atrributes of a ponzi scheme.

Go look up the definition and history of Ponzi schemes.

Very interesting, and real estate and stocks, whilst subject to bubbles, are not Ponzi schemes.

And how is fiat not a Ponzi scheme?

And how IS fiat a Ponzi scheme? You don't buy into the US dollar expecting your "share" of dollars to go up. You just use it to pay for stuff.

In most modern economies fiat is backed by the 'full faith and credit' of the issuing government, which requires more young people paying into the pension system than retirees drawing from it. That's as clear an example of a Ponzi scheme as can be imagined, albeit moving on a slower timeframe than we usually think of such things working.

Fiat is backed by the insistence of the issuing government that you pay your taxes in that denomination. It has very little to do with pension systems, except to the extent that the government runs those also denominated in dollars.

But the US could end social security tomorrow and as long as it still required taxes and tariffs in the form of dollars, the dollar would still have value.

Zimbabwe required taxes and tariffs in the form of Zimbabwean dollars... You need a little more than just taxes and tariffs for a fiat currency to have value... You need a hard money that is not going to be devalued also. This is where all fiat falls short and has done since the demise of the gold standard.

Ok, but Zimbabwean dollar is not a Ponzi scheme either… the claim is about Ponzi scheme, not other things.

It's the best example of a fiat Ponzi scheme. Keep printing money to keep the guys near the printer (at the top of the pyramid) flush.

USD and other fiats are doing the same. Just at a much slower rate.

Edit:

It's basically just the Cantillion Effect[1] by another name.

[1] https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-cantillion-effect

No expectation of future returns. People who hold cash expect to lose money.

With a well managed fiat, money supply growth tracks the growth of economic activity. In a Ponzi scheme... It is otherwise.

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