…or maybe you’ll get depressed. Either way, go on to YouTube and search “Equal Money”. Have fun. I’m tempted to troll them, but just doesn’t seem worthwhile at the moment.
I managed to get to the first minute. Amazing parallel between saltwater and equal money. Galbraith must be kicking himself for never using such a brilliant analogy.
I tried to troll them, but just ended up calling them idiots. That stuff is too stupid to argue with.
In the sidebar there are tons of crazy eurotrash looney leftists; ‘one world equality’, ‘plants are equal to humans’, etc. Europe is even worse than America, it’s ridiculous.
I’m not a violent man, but I did feel an overwhelming urge to punch this guy.
On a more intellectual note, his analogy is false anyway. Salt in the ocean is not a scarce good, hence it is not an economic good. So salt for fish would be analogous to air for humans, not money.
What does an equal money system mean? does it mean that everybody gets the same amount of money or does it mean that everybody gets a minimum amount of money?
What does an equal money system mean? does it mean that everybody gets the same amount of money or does it mean that everybody gets a minimum amount of money?
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It means the guy is a leftist who knows as much about economics as I do about playing Jazz guitar.
Gah. What a horror. And the shape of that fellow’s head… my God.
To any “equal money” nutjobs:
Money is not the salt. The necessary goods are the salt. Only SOME of the necessary goods aren’t abundant like the salt. They need to be produced. If we simply GIVE all of the non-abundant goods to those who need them, there is no reason to MAKE them. And if there is no reason to MAKE them, then we will run out.
You can’t avoid scarcity by pretending it doesn’t exist. Any society that provides “subsistence level” assistance (without a massive coercive apparatus to enforce minimum labor standards) to everyone soon finds that “subsistence level” drops rapidly, as the incentive to make consumed goods disappears.
Imagine it this way: if the only good is delicious oranges, and we give everyone equal numbers of delicious oranges regardless of how many delicious oranges they grow, and thus nobody feels like they have to grow delicious oranges, how long will our supply of delicious oranges hold out? The same logic works for all goods in a complicated system in aggregate, only with a lot more complication due to varying degrees of preference for different goods, jobs, etc.
Basically, mandating a return on investment equal to the average encourages people with higher returns to invest less. And then the average falls because everyone above average starts goofing off. This negative feedback loop eventually results in an average that approaches zero, because it is incredibly unlikely that everyone will, without exact knowledge, all decide on the same level of production any time they decide to produce anything. The only above-average production that will occur will be by those who produce because they like to, and not because they gain from it.
It may be possible to eke out a living by appropriating the kindness of people’s souls, but you may find that the standard is pretty low, especially after this kind of system cycles a few times and the incentives sink in. When everyone is starving, kindness becomes a scarce commodity.