I think I'm being clear enough. There has been an objectively massive shift in wealth between low and middle income earners to wealthy asset accumulators over the past 30 years, and that has accelerated over the past 10. This solution you're lauding has been engineered by exactly those asset accumulators as a response to problems caused by exactly those asset accumulators.
It's like you're cheering on an arsonist because after the fire he lit that has burned down your house, he hands you a bucket of urine to help put the fire out.
So, I don't understand what you were trying to say, and when I ask for clarification, you just double down instead of actually answering my questions? Come on, I just want to understand what your viewpoint is, but if you don't want me to understand your viewpoint, I guess that's your prerogative.
1. Strawman. It is the concept of value itself that has been perverted through this process.
2. Because organisations (i.e. banks and the owners of their service channels) closer to the feed of treasuries suffer the least of the effects of monetary expansion.
3. I thought we were talking about inflation and bitcoin as a store of value?
When the question is, "Are you saying X?", "Strawman" is a nonsensical answer. I wasn't asking rhetorical questions, I was asking questions because I didn't understand what argument you were making and I wanted clarification. That's pretty much the opposite of a strawman argument right there.
Furthermore, I don't know how to make heads nor tails of the statement that the "concept of value itself" has been "perverted". Such a vague and sentimental notion could mean many different things.
The criticism that our economic system aggregates wealth in the hands of a few is valid, but at least the dollar isn't suffering from deflation and extreme volatility, which is what makes it viable as a unit of account (unlike bitcoin). I wasn't considering bitcoins or dollars as stores of value, just as units for measuring value and devices for transmitting it. Maybe at some point bitcoin will overcome these problems, but for now, I'm rather glad a graph of the dollar's value looks nothing like the graph shown in the original comment.
Let's bring ourselves back then to what was being stated. You said :
> The US, UK, and Japan are all currently fighting deflation with QE policies, which seem to be working fairly well.
... and I said :
> If by working you mean rapidly transferring wealth into fewer sets of hands, yes.
... and then you said :
> Are you saying that avoiding deflation and volatility is what consolidates wealth?
I was talking about the effect of QE. That effect being the objective fact that money has transferred from people with less to people with more. You were inventing a strawman about the theory that if the people who were doing this didn't get what they wanted, we would have 'deflation and volatility'? Seen the house markets over the past 30 years? Looks pretty volatile to me, so it doesn't sound like whoever is making policy has their fingers on the pulse, do they? Sounds more like a marketing gimmick to me.
I had to write a paragraph of crap to answer a BS premise that had no relationship to the argument at hand. So. Strawman.
> Furthermore, I don't know how to make heads nor tails of the statement that the "concept of value itself" has been "perverted"
Maybe you got fixated on your strawman.
> but at least the dollar isn't suffering from deflation and extreme volatility
Yeah. Theft is much better. Here is a gun to your head. Give me what I want or I pull the trigger. But at least you don't have deflation and volatility. Remind me again... how many people went to prison for the GFC?
I've certainly thrown my fair share of insults around on Hacker News. Petty? Yes. Wrong? Yes. I'm a slave to my baser emotions from time to time, and I won't excuse that. The general technique for insulting someone on HN is to be subtle and imply that they're stupid, to provoke them into getting angry and saying something stupid, or to throw indirect insults by describing their comments as "garbage", "crap", or whatever. I hope one day that I'll grow out of it, it's an awful habit.
The saying, "It takes one to know one," seems appropriate here.
Coming out and saying that you "had to write a paragraph of crap to answer a BS premise" is a bit transparent, don't you think? It's a roundabout way of saying, "you're so stupid that I had some kind of moral duty to correct you, which is a waste of my time because I have better things to do." But... why would you call attention to the fact that you have better things to do than argue with me? Isn't that basically the same thing as admitting that you're bad at prioritizing your own time, that you feel compelled on some emotional level to debase yourself by talking with me?
Which brings me to an alternative strategy: if you think someone's wrong, ask questions. Maybe you'll learn something, maybe they'll learn something, and maybe it's just a misunderstanding.
Or are you saying that quantitative easing consolidates wealth? How?
Or are you just inserting an unrelated complaint into the discussion?