Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
Based on its evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.
Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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Avoid long drawn out arguments. This should be a place to relax, not to waste your time needlessly.
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Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
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Please do not spam at the top level. If you have a lot to post each day, try and post them all together in one top level comment
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Try keep things light. If you are bringing in deep stuff, try not to go overboard.
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Things that are clearly on-topic for this board should be posted as a separate post and not here (except if you are new and still getting the feel of this place)
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If you find people violating these rules, deport them rather than start a argument here.
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Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evoloving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
At the core, this is a sound idea, but not entirely correct. Currency, ultimately, represents something. What is it?
Its a deep question and if you keep pursuing all lines of thought, you will ultimately arrive at the answer "It represents the willingness of someone to perform a specific action for the currency".
If I have currency, someone might be willing to climb a tree and collect an apple for me. Or dig in the ground and mine a piece of gold for me. Or sit in a corner and write a poem for me.
Or, I could be willing to part with an apple from my existing stockpile, without doing much work at all.
Ultimately, the only thing of value on this planet is the ability for a person to perform a work that is desired by someone else, including exchanging a resource.
From this point of view, the currency issued for a certain period of time should represent the potential for all the people who are willing to perform some kind of work in a given period of time and the resources they already own are willing to exchange.
There problems with the quantifying it based on "industrial hour worked".
Firstly, it only accounts of "industrial work" which is a subset of all the work and hence only a subset of the currency that should be issued. Specifically, non industrial work, and willingness to exchange resources, are completely ignored.
Secondly, it does not differentiate between what commodity is being produced or how scarce the skill required for that industrial work is. So it does not take free market into account
Thirdly, it does not account of the resources already present.
But once you account for the value for all the people performing all kind of work, and the resources available, creating a currency based on this is a sound idea.
The only way new currency is added is when the population grows.
The sound economic equation is: Economic growth = Population growth.
When the economic growth is faster than the population growth, we have a fiat system where the equation is imbalanced, and the only way to correct it is to extract value from people by force. As in slavery.