On BBC News today (10/19/09) - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8310420.stm

The theory: Going from here to somewhere else without passing through anywhere in between.

The science fiction: Beam me up, Scotty.

In practice: Take two particles of light and entangle them - now you can teleport quantum information - such as what their spin is - from one to the other, instantaneously.

The layman's explanation: Photons, particles of light, have a property called "spin". This can be up, down, or a mixture of the two. Alice has a photon, and she wants Bob to have one with the same spin. She can't send him hers because the Post Office is on strike, and she can't measure her spin and phone him, because the measurement can change the spin.

Fortunately, the last time she met Bob she gave him one photon from an entangled pair, and kept the other. "Entangled" means that the two photons were prepared so that their states were related in a special way. Alice lets her photon interact with her other photon from the entangled pair. This instantly teleports information about the spin to Bob's half. However, he can't "read" that information until a message arrives by more conventional means. A quick call on Alice's mobile, telling him some measurements she has made, now puts his entangled photon into the desired state.

Quantum "teleportation" destroys the original state and can't be used to send messages faster than light. It doesn't actually teleport matter - just quantum information.

Coming to a store near you?: In 1998, the quantum optics group at Caltech used "squeezed light" to teleport the state of a photon in a laboratory. It's now been done with atoms, too. In 2004 Austrian physicists teleported the state of a photon across the Danube river. Within another century it will be an amoeba. But be warned: when you are teleported, your body will be ripped to shreds and rebuilt at the other end.

This is kind of pointless.

Look, austrians are predicting a major collapse of the US economy in a few years, the value of the dollar falling because of all the monetary inflation the Fed is creating because they're thinking like keynesians. Once foreign nations wise up and stop lending us all this money that we're never paying back, we're screwed.

I know you don't think that will happen, that the recession is over, etc. However, IF it does happen, just like that, will you change your mind about austrian economics, or will you still stick to your keynesian view of the world?

>> ^marinara:
1. You can't say that doing nothing is what we got Hoover to do.

I didn't say that doing nothing is what "you" (meaning Austrian Economists, apparently) got Hoover to do. I said getting Hoover and Mellon to let banks fail, balance budgets, and adhere to the gold standard are what "you" got Hoover to do, and what Austrians are calling for Obama to do.

2. Hoover provided loan guarantees to the banks just like Obama/Bush
3. Hoover pledged public money towards building projects
4. Hoover made business leaders pledge to keep employment high
5. Hoover created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money and unfreeze the credit markets.

He did all of that in 1932, and not on the scale needed. Not every ounce of what Hoover did was wrong, nor was every ounce of what Roosevelt did right.

6. Hoover made the depression worse by tinkering with interest rates and taxes.

Oddly nonspecific what you say there with "tinkering". Hoover/Mellon raised interest rates and taxes. Obama/Bernanke cut them.

There is no rule, that says you always boost the monetary supply in recessions. Is there?

Actually, that is the short-form advice of mainstream economists. There is quite a long list of exceptions to the rule, though none apply right now.

Are all economic challenges the same? No!

I'm not saying they're all the same, but there's a lot about the current economic crisis that's very similar to the Great Depression.

Why is it so hard to believe the words in this video?

Because it's internally inconsistent, and cherry-picks facts around an obvious political agenda!

Is it so hard to believe that the Fed is operating on policies that benefit the few people who actually own the Fed?

Actually, no. But not all anti-Fed propaganda is created equal. Saying "Goldman Sachs got a sweeter deal from the Fed from anyone else because they have close ties to the board of governors" I believe.

Saying "the Fed destroyed the global economy on purpose, at least twice for private gain" requires a leap from the tenuous argument that the Fed caused both depressions (I'm not sold on the Great Depression, and I vehemently disagree about today's depression), to the Fed intentionally caused both for the economic gain of some small set of people.

This is a very clear and concise description of Austrian economics (aka libertarianism wearing a t-shirt labeled "economics"). It should be titled as such, and not as a primer on "how money works".

It seems to me that there is a big gap between the assertion that money must be a store of value, and that the value stored has to permanently be fixed.

Even if we were on the gold standard, what I could buy with a dollar would still vary wildly over time as other aspects of the economy changed.

The Austrian theory of boom/bust is pretty silly. It essentially says that fundamentally markets can't function properly -- if interest rates are ever "low", the market will always make stupid bets with the cheap money (boom), and then lose their shirts and make everyone raise rates (bust). It then declares that somehow this is government's fault for ever trying to use interest rates to dampen booms and busts, and if we just trust in the market, everything will be free of booms and busts (even though history says otherwise).

It's better to focus on things like interest rates and liquidity problems with regard to monetary policy, rather than trying to maintain currency value to an arbitrary standard.

Actually, it's pretty funny to me how he essentially says that the problem was that the Fed contracted the money supply in response to a crash. That's exactly what the Keynesian and Monetarist schools believe.

I also like how at 9:20 or so he says "the biggest gains happened when the National Recovery Act was overturned" well skippy, the National Recovery Act was trying to stop deflation by fixing prices. Not a good idea, definitely a drag on the economy, and not a part of the New Deal liberals want to repeat. He then says the "Agricultural Adjustment Act" (aka a farm subsidy bill) was struck down in 1936, and boom, growth immediately falls off (according to the chart), though his narrative blames that on the institution of the NLRA, which still exists today, and just protects the rights of workers to organize Unions.

What really cause the fall off was that Roosevelt was persuaded to believe that the depression was over, and it was time to cut spending, raise taxes, and balance the budget. Doing so immediately sent the economy crashing down again.

He also uses some voodoo to leave you thinking that because Obama thinks fiscal stimulus will help (and it did, even this video states that the economy recovered when the giant government stimulus of WWII began), he will somehow order the Fed to contract the money supply too. One, he can't, and two, we learned our lesson -- you need to expand the money supply in downturns, otherwise it chokes off the recovery. Bernanke is expanding the money supply.

He also defiantly ends with "it was not the free market and the gold standard that caused the problem", he's half right. With regard to the Great Depression, they were contracting money supply to get back onto the gold standard, and refusing to bail out the banks, which made a recession into a depression (not the free market). This economic problem was caused by the free market, and but Austrians cry out for a return to the gold standard, and that we let the banks fail.

We did it the classical/Austrian way in the 1930's, and it caused the Great Depression. Now you want us to do the same things you wanted (and got) Hoover to do, and got Roosevelt to do in 1937. Forget it.

>> ^Psychologic:
I've never seen Paul or Schiff talk about the inherent deflationary nature of information technologies in the context of Austrian Economics, despite their constant talk of inflation. The price of a given amount of processing power or data storage drops by a fairly consistent percent per year (on average)... the same is true for dna sequencing, solar power, or many other high-tech devices.
Maybe they don't think it's a big deal, but I've never even seen them mention it. Austrian Economics were formulated well before the information age, so I'm curious how these new trends fit into it.


Metal melt values are always a good indicator about inflation over the long history of time. Let us look at penny melt values. This would be a relation of the fiat value of a penny vs the market value of the copper.

http://mises.org/images4/3069figure1.jpg

The worst part of this is that the penny has been changed every so often with less and less copper (other coins as well). Soon, pennies will be filled with steal as that is one of the cheapest metals you can have. After that, it is the end of the line for a penny. What graphs and graphs like this show ( you can look it up for gold, silver, and nearly any other rareish earth metal) and the trend is the same, metal is more highly prized over time than US dollars. This eats away until the system snaps (like back in the currency crunch of 33 when the government outlawed gold...forced you to sell gold so the treasury could have something real to give dollars value after the failed works projects of the 30s.). Fiat currencies and currency under control of central bankers tends to eventually undermine itself. The world is complex and full of players and vested interests and various other things that make prediction along a specific time frame hard. You could have massive investment of a foreign saver nation rescue a monetary system from collapse (IE China to the USA). But when the music stops for debt, the game is up, you have to face the monster your created. And like most things, the longer you wait to fix it, the worse it will be at that time if finally needs mending.

You are also talking about two different ideas. Because tech gets cheaper doesn't mean there isn't inflation. Technology is fairly different from things like, say food, or metal. New processes make something more efficient to produce over its life cycle. Chips become cheaper because of size. The smaller it gets, the cheaper it can be produced and as consequence, more of them can be sold per unit of silicon wafer. If you ever wandered why smaller is better it is because silicon wafers have to be manufactured circular, it is part of the physic's of aligning the silicon molecules properly. However, chips are usually rectangular. This means that you have to throw away all the edge pieces that don't line up to make squares out of the main circle. This doesn't just scale linearly; the smaller you make a chip, the more of the silicon you use.

The same is kind of true of other techs. Hard drives use a similar shrinking so that less can do more. But a building isn't going to use much less material than it did 20 years ago. Also, inflation is really hard to place effectively when you have the government interfering with prices. When you distort prices by government hand out, it is hard to know what the value of something is. Lets take houses for starters. When the government was handing out nearly free money for housing stuff, the market inflated. House prices when up by 50% a year in some areas. This bubble finally burst along with some other bad lone stuff. The prices of homes have fallen dramatically in most areas, but this isn't "deflation", this is a market readjustment.

In other words, the ideas of metals and stuff still apply to tech. Tech is neat in the way that new advancements mean you can do more with less. (same for DNA stuff, as tech gets more advanced, the less you have to play people and computer time to do the same amount of work).

As for their predictions, Shiffs has been saying for years watch out for the bubble burst. He also predicted that the stock and gold values would merge before we saw the end of the stock tumble, which it pretty much did.

In reply to this comment by Psychologic:
I've never seen Paul or Schiff talk about the inherent deflationary nature of information technologies in the context of Austrian Economics, despite their constant talk of inflation. The price of a given amount of processing power or data storage drops by a fairly consistent percent per year (on average)... the same is true for dna sequencing, solar power, or many other high-tech devices.

Maybe they don't think it's a big deal, but I've never even seen them mention it. Austrian Economics were formulated well before the information age, so I'm curious how these new trends fit into it.

This may help.
http://mises.org/story/1040
tl;dr Increases in efficiency and productivity outweigh increase in money supply. If that can be believed!

I've never seen Paul or Schiff talk about the inherent deflationary nature of information technologies in the context of Austrian Economics, despite their constant talk of inflation. The price of a given amount of processing power or data storage drops by a fairly consistent percent per year (on average)... the same is true for dna sequencing, solar power, or many other high-tech devices.

Maybe they don't think it's a big deal, but I've never even seen them mention it. Austrian Economics were formulated well before the information age, so I'm curious how these new trends fit into it.

Not only will you receive this brilliant full color book that retails for 29.95 but if you denounce science in the next 30min, cause we cant do this all day, we will give you a free prayer cross. Hold the lords prayer close to your heart with this prayer cross with genuine Austrian crystal, hold it up to the light and the entire lords prayer is revealed.

So that's the book and the cross in the next 30min yours free all you need to do is just send a prayer to god and he will send someone directly to your location with everything we told you about all this is free (excluding S&H)

Have any Austrian's considered that maybe pegging currency to some shiny rock was the problem?

It's called a liquidity crisis for a reason. If the gold known to be above ground were divided equally amongst the people of earth, we'd each get a cubic centimeter. There is no reason the quantity of claim checks for services should be correlated with any particular specie.

Actually, it is popular. It's more popular than public "options" anyway.

It's popular because the balance of evidence supports it.

Don't tell that to the Austrian schoolers though. They don't believe in evidence.

You're a progressive, Keynesian, Statist swine. I like that.

I'm a liberal, Austrian Economics, Voluntarist bird. Let's get together and have a flu.

>> ^bmacs27:
How exactly is force the exclusive domain of the government? What about the polluter that is forcing you to breath lower quality air? I can't do anything about that. I need a government to enforce my property rights over the air. Yes, the government employs force. It's our only recourse against the force employed by concentrated capital.

Everyone has access to some form of violence, and violent impulses are part of human nature. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the initiation of violence against another usually is. There are many ways to repress the initiation of violence, but the ultimate resource is violent retaliation. In a civilized society, a government should try to establish a monopoly over the use of force, so that private citizens can concentrate on more productive endeavours and not have to worry about coercion from fellow citizens.

The level by which an individual is free of coercion from others determines how civilized a society is.

So, I'm not saying government has actual exclusivity over violence, but the reason we have government is so that it creates a monopoly over violence, so that it can use violence itself to repress those who use violence against each other. That doesn't mean government is allowed to go nuts and use violence to plan our lives, redistribute wealth, establish monopolies, control the currency, etc.

Services that *require* violence should be done by government. You can't have a "wagging finger" police, they're law enforcers, you can't have courts that can't apply punishment or incarceration, a military that shoots flowers, etc. However, any other service that doesn't *require* the use of force to be performed (education, healthcare, housing, insurance, product safety, space exploration, research, etc.), should be done and will tend to be done better by the private sector.

Please explain to me the law of nature which prevents corporate oligarchy in the absence of government force. Collusion is the rational selection for a small number of powerful agents. They reap the return, prevent entry into marketplaces, and price gouge when privy to exclusive control over an inelastic market (such as healthcare). You've been reading Ludwig too much... I'd recommend reading more of his brother Richard's work. He actually contributed to knowledge.

Well, how would they prevent entry into marketplaces in a free market? Usually it's the collusion between govt + corporations that stops new players from getting in a market with legislation and subsidies. If that's out of the picture, what's left, price dumping? Dumping can push competitors away, but, while it lasts, it's good for consumers (lower prices) and a dumping company's profit takes a hit. No matter how wealthy a company is, it can't practice dumping forever.

If, through price gouging, a company tries to take advantage of its "monopoly" in a market, that creates demand for competition. No matter how inelastic a market is, that doesn't stop the dynamics of supply and demand.

If you're dismissive of Ludwig's contribution to economics, yeah, I hear ya. Whatever knowledge he contributed got pretty much diluted in the mess that economics currently is. If after years of study you were lead to believe you're an economist, I can only offer you my sincere condolences.

Like I stated, healthcare is an inelastic market like police, fire, and water. As such, it should be provided by the government because the status quo of a small number of profit-driven actors in the market leads to price gouging.

You're talking about a highly regulated market that is about 60% provided by government. Gee, I wonder why it's so inelastic.

I'm not saying people got greedy... (loads of crap) It was the banks writing a junk bond, and slapping a smily face on it.

Look into how low interest rates set by the Fed for so long encouraged people getting into debt, how government pursued policies to encourage home ownership (good intentions gone bad), how the subprime market was only possible because of government guaranteed loans.

I've said this before, but I always find it curious how creative interventionists become when they come up with all sorts of "unsolvable" problems that arise from a free market, yet can't use any of that imagination attributing bad consequences to government intervention in a regulated market. It's always the market who gets the blame.

Actually, they do. If our dollar were to suddenly become worthless, they would have no currency reserves. While I agree, they have the upper hand in this, they've already seen what a collapse of consumption on our soil does to their own economic growth. (...)

China along with many other countries were duped into using dollars as reserves, pieces of paper we can print as many as we like. For a while now they've been accumulating actual reserves, such as gold, in preparation for the "quantitative easing" we'll soon be indulging ourselves in.

Consumption isn't a huge favor the world needs from us. Anyone can consume, it's not that hard. what matters is that you pay for it and America hasn't been able to do that for a very long time now. Hell, China has many more consumers than us who can actually pay for stuff with real money. Why would they care to export to us when they can consume most of their goods themselves?

Do you think a chinese is thankful he works in a dishwasher factory so he can go home and wash his clothes by hand on a rock? Or making cars for us so he can ride his bicycle to work?

Their government is also being stupid because they're still trying to prop up the dollar and devaluing their currency by keeping it pegged. They'll wise up eventually.

I didn't say hyperinflation... I said inflation. Between 2 and 4% inflation is a good thing. If you disagree, you are beyond help.

That's kind of a silly statement. Governments like inflation, people who have to produce and earn money don't. That's like saying "low interest rates are good". Depends on who you ask, they're good for debters, but not good for lenders and savers.

As for the Austrian school, yes, it's BS. (BS)

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." -- Hayek. Not that a keynesian would care.

No force, but enforce contracts. Right.

Touché Señor Nitpicker I meant something along the lines of "don't allow use of force among citizens".

It's easy not to worry about how the rules are set up so long as they are benefitting you. Once you see that not everybody is getting a fair deal, you realize the moral, and even selfish reasons for entering a broader scoped social contract. In the end, we all benefit from a well educated, healthy society. We just need to put up the VC.

Unfairness is, most often than not, advanced by the use of force. Problems that don't involve force to begin with, don't require force to be solved. Violence is in a different domain. That's like bullying people into liking you.

Why aren't you questioning the selfishness of those who advocate the use of force? They want power over a whole domain of other people's lives. They say people are being wronged yet they propose using the most destructive tool, something that opens up so much potential for abuse, to solve everything.

Libertarians are always worried about individuals instead of this group, or that group, or whoever claims to be speaking for the interests of society, not out of blind selfishness, but because "individual" is a very cool concept with the following magic properties:

An individual is the smallest minority, so when you help the individual, you help the minority that needs the most protection from abuse (they're the smallest!). An individual is the most numerous minority, so you help the most minorities. An individual is the majority because everyone is an individual. So when you keeps things always at the level of individual, individual rights, individual liberties, etc. you're helping everybody and people tend not to be benefitted at the expense of others.

That sounds a lot more fair to me.

Most of those activities you mentioned require the use of force, so they can't be done by private citizens, because the use of force is exclusive to government. Any other activity that doesn't require the use of force shouldn't be done by government because it can be done (and will tend to be done better) by the private sector.

How exactly is force the exclusive domain of the government? What about the polluter that is forcing you to breath lower quality air? I can't do anything about that. I need a government to enforce my property rights over the air. Yes, the government employs force. It's our only recourse against the force employed by concentrated capital.


If anarchy was the end result of libertarian ideals, they would be called anarchists. Corporate oligarchies are much more likely when government regulates the economy, and gets in bed with corporations. You have to realize that any "archy" requires government, force. It can't sprout out of markets where force is not allowed.

Please explain to me the law of nature which prevents corporate oligarchy in the absence of government force. Collusion is the rational selection for a small number of powerful agents. They reap the return, prevent entry into marketplaces, and price gouge when privy to exclusive control over an inelastic market (such as healthcare). You've been reading Ludwig too much... I'd recommend reading more of his brother Richard's work. He actually contributed to knowledge.


Does that overhead in the private sector have anything to do with excessive government regulation of the healthcare insurance market? Maybe it would be less of a burden to compete in a market that is almost 60% provided by government?

Hopefully not. I'm a single-payer kinda guy. Like I stated, healthcare is an inelastic market like police, fire, and water. As such, it should be provided by the government because the status quo of a small number of profit-driven actors in the market leads to price gouging.


Government and the Fed created the moral hazards that led to what you're attributing as the cause. A lot of people acted stupidly, you're saying it's cultural, that people "got greedy", ignoring the incentives and government guarantees that led people to believe there weren't any risks.

I'm not saying people got greedy (though the few did). I'm saying the majority of people got stupid. The laws that were in place to prevent the overextension of consumer credit were withdrawn. That is, they removed government intervention in the marketplace. That allowed unfortunate people to overextend themselves to the benefit of the few. Now, before you go off on some rant about the laws governing entrance into the sub-prime housing market, remember those laws would not have been nearly as dangerous had they not also repealed restrictions on debt securitization, turned a blind eye to insurance market regulation of CDS, and loosened fraction reserve restrictions. Those three de-regulatory events had, imo, far more reaching ramifications in this crisis. They removed the counter-party risk from debt initiators, and instead incentivized predatory lending. It was not government subsidy of the sub-prime market that distorted the incentives. It was the banks writing a junk bond, and slapping a smily face on it.


Ever hear of "cutting your losses"? There's no "sell high" here, the US can't pay back its lenders, not at the rate the US government is spending and willing to spend for the next few years, and not in a recession where government is ruining productivity. China will be part of the recovery effort alright, but they'll much rather do it without the US strapped to its back.
Think about it, if China lent the US more than a trillion dollars, it's better to lose that money than lend us 2 or 3 more trillions just to watch even more money go to waste. They don't need us.

Actually, they do. If our dollar were to suddenly become worthless, they would have no currency reserves. While I agree, they have the upper hand in this, they've already seen what a collapse of consumption on our soil does to their own economic growth. Without that growth, the chinese government doesn't have a political toothpick to stand on. I think you'd be surprised with the swings in currency valuation these days just how much higher the dollar could yet climb back. Our workforce is skilled, and increasingly well educated. In any event, it doesn't make sense to sell all at once. What they'll probably do is wait until the systematic risk has stabilized, and then slowly convert their treasury notes into special drawing rights at a rate which will not drastically undermine valuation of the dollar. I agree however, they will likely discontinue purchasing the debt, forcing us into "quantitative easing" (another winner from the PR team).


The Constitution is a good reference, most things the federal government does that are not expressly authorized in the Constitution are excesses.

So the market for nuclear weapons, particularly when wielded by militiamen, shouldn't be regulated?


NetRunner, is that you? I guess you think hyperinflation is a synonym for "awesome".
If you actually studied Austrian economics and you think it's "non-mathematical" and "BS", yes, we'll have to agree to disagree. You're beyond help.

Net who? No, I'm afraid there can be more than one educated progressive. I didn't say hyperinflation... I said inflation. Between 2 and 4% inflation is a good thing. If you disagree, you are beyond help.

As for the Austrian school, yes, it's BS. It's been discredited repeatedly. The predictions don't hold water, so they say "you can't use mathematics because people are too complicated." Even the Chicago school monetarists (many of whom worked with Von Mises) know it's BS. Once you run out of room with monetary policy what should you do is the only argument left. I think the Keynesians about have that fight won now that they've shown how to explain the late seventies.


Don't worry about that. Keep rules simple, no fraud, enforce contracts, no use of force. Everything else will tend to sort itself out. Also, don't be afraid of technology.

No force, but enforce contracts. Right. You show no regard for the existence of externalities, nor the rampant exploitation of the commons by the private sector. In fact, you explicitly removed that single section from my post indicating either your ignorance of basic economics, or an intentional dodging of the topic.

It's easy not to worry about how the rules are set up so long as they are benefitting you. Once you see that not everybody is getting a fair deal, you realize the moral, and even selfish reasons for entering a broader scoped social contract. In the end, we all benefit from a well educated, healthy society. We just need to put up the VC.

>> ^bmacs27:
Well, one could argue that government of any sort is government intervention in the economy. That's why anarchists and libertarians so often get confused. Think about it. There's a market for murder. There's a market for "protection". There's a market for "waste disposal". So really, the question always boils down to 'what specific government interventions into the marketplace are you for?'

Most of those activities you mentioned require the use of force, so they can't be done by private citizens, because the use of force is exclusive to government. Any other activity that doesn't *require* the use of force shouldn't be done by government because it can be done (and will tend to be done better) by the private sector.

To me, while anarchy seems like the end result of libertarian ideals... really it's rule by corporate oligarchy, with rampant exploitation of the commons.

If anarchy was the end result of libertarian ideals, they would be called anarchists. Corporate oligarchies are much more likely when government regulates the economy, and gets in bed with corporations. You have to realize that any "archy" requires government, force. It can't sprout out of markets where force is not allowed.

How about like this: Medicare operates with 3% overhead, non-profit insurance 16% overhead, and private (for-profit) insurance 26% overhead. Source: Journal of American Medicine 2007

Does that overhead in the private sector have anything to do with excessive government regulation of the healthcare insurance market? Maybe it would be less of a burden to compete in a market that is almost 60% provided by government?

I would disagree. We are currently in a financial crisis because an unbridled, short-term incentive laden banking industry leveraged itself into oblivion. Afterwards, they put a gun to our head and handed us the tab. In other words, print the dough, or the pitchforks and torches tear the whole joint down. The only reason their hustle didn't work indefinitely is because too many of US were spending money we didn't have. Changing that is going to take a cultural shift that is already beginning.

Government and the Fed created the moral hazards that led to what you're attributing as the cause. A lot of people acted stupidly, you're saying it's cultural, that people "got greedy", ignoring the incentives and government guarantees that led people to believe there weren't any risks.

Ever hear of buy low, sell high? No, I think China is more likely to just borrow against it, and start picking up their part of the consumption. They're already pulling the world out of this recession.

Ever hear of "cutting your losses"? There's no "sell high" here, the US can't pay back its lenders, not at the rate the US government is spending and willing to spend for the next few years, and not in a recession where government is ruining productivity. China will be part of the recovery effort alright, but they'll much rather do it without the US strapped to its back.

Think about it, if China lent the US more than a trillion dollars, it's better to lose that money than lend us 2 or 3 more trillions just to watch even more money go to waste. They don't need us.

Yes. Define excessive.

The Constitution is a good reference, most things the federal government does that are not expressly authorized in the Constitution are excesses.

Spending is serious business, it's inflation you all gotta relax about. Is it worth having the "why inflation is good for the economy" argument with you? Or would you rather go back to your non-mathematical Austrian school BS, and we can just agree to disagree?

NetRunner, is that you? I guess you think hyperinflation is a synonym for "awesome".

If you actually studied Austrian economics and you think it's "non-mathematical" and "BS", yes, we'll have to agree to disagree. You're beyond help.

I agree, it's difficult to write laws without unintended consequences. That is, you can always game the rules. One should not conclude from this, however, that you shouldn't try and write rules. Instead, you should just write them faster than the douche bags can game them. You always need more rules. Every time there is an advance in technology, you need more rules. Why? Technology makes it easier to game the rules, and exploit the commons, just like it makes it easier to do everything else.

Don't worry about that. Keep rules simple, no fraud, enforce contracts, no use of force. Everything else will tend to sort itself out. Also, don't be afraid of technology.