Currency

@andrewmcpherson the list of assumptions lay out the values and goals that the policy is intended to achieve. If you don't share these values and goals, that's fine, but it would be nice if you could say so explicitly, and explain why.

In order to evaluate how economically realistic the proposal is, you'd need to read the entire policy, and see whether or not you think it could successfully modify the existing economy to achieve the goals laid out in the list of assumptions. That's a technical exercise which doesn't depend on whether or not you share those goals.

@strypey the reason I don't share those assumptions is because I have learnt from the experiences of my German lecturer who came from East Germany, my secondary schoolmate who had left Russia soon after the Soviet Union collapsed, a couple of workmates from Georgia, and a younger friend from Russia.

I think that if even the notoriously well-organised Germans can't make their own communist system work as an economy, then nobody can. And that sentiment has been shared by everyone I know who has actually lived in a communist economy.

For those reasons, the land tax system just won't work, as the basic assumptions used are illogical and irrational, and have been proven to not be desirable functions of an economy by historical evidence from 25 years ago.

@andrewmcpherson This is just one big strawman. Land Dollar = Soviet-Style Socialism (SSS), ergo, can be dismissed. A similarly hollow argument has been made against free code for years (“if you program open source, you program COMMUNISM”). If I claimed that your social network/ cryto-currency proposal is just communism, ergo not worth even discussing, would that be a fair argument?

The proposal for the Land Dollar shares almost nothing with this strawman of your creation. The assumptions in the Land Dollar paper were never the actual values or goals of the regimes which operated SSS, just rhetoric used to justify them, The actual economic mechanisms proposed in the Land Dollar paper have nothing in common with the way SSS operated.

BTW This is not just about “philisophical convention”, it’s about arguments that actually address the point versus arguments that just make shit up. I’d love to learn from knowledge and ideas about economics, but for that to happen, you need to give me detail, not weak rhetoric.

@strypey I am unsure why your argument has now gone over to why I have to teach you basic economics in order for the debate to progress.
I'd simply refer you to 4th & 5th form economics and 6th form business studies, which I did over 20 years ago. For the purposes of your education, you should be able to pick up any ncea studyguide cheaply.

As for the question of the land dollar, it goes against the basics of keynesian economics, which has been accepted as the standard model for the last 80 years.

Now you are you just being patronizing @andrewmcpherson . This contributes nothing to the policy discussion.

As for the question of the land dollar, it goes against the basics of keynesian economics, which has been accepted as the standard model for the last 80 years.

Even if this is true, and you haven't told us why you think it is, that doesn't mean it wouldn't work. Keynesian economics could be wrong. In order for us to establish this either way, we need to go into details and evidence. In policy discussion, you need to put forward reasoned arguments, not just contradiction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

Does anyone else have anything to add to the discussion of what monetary policy the Pirates could/ should have, and whether we support the crypto-currency proposal by the IP?
@andrewreitemeyer @mako @adambullen @robueberfeldt @hubatmcjuhes

I for one would love for the NZX to pick up the slack where MtGox left off and provide a secure trading platform for BitCoin.

MtGox had a good idea, they just didn't have the security expertise to back up their rapid growth. Once they got to a certain size they became a massive target and their downfall was inevitable.

Security is a major concern with digital currencies, thus organisations that already have extensive experience with security could provide the kind of confidence that people are looking for.

If the NZX were to pick up BitCoin, it could sidestep the whole debate about weather or not it is a "real" currency by trading it like any other stock.

@adambullen it is not that MtGoX was a decent company and only overwhelmed by being massively targeted. Actually they where a trading card trading platform and treated bitcoin transactions with the very same sensibility. They acted recklessly. Not a good idea, actually.

Sure enough, if some serious service provider would take responsibility for seriously trading bitcoins (or any other crypto currency), that would make a difference.

But the real difference is in the relation, really : If the crypto currency relates to standard fiat-currency, then the difference is really only in the international transaction costs. This would be reason enough to support its existence. But how boring would that be.

If the crypto currency relates to something else to back up for the trust needed to run a currency, then it becomes an alternative system. E.g. if a crypto currency would be used to implement the Land Dollar as proposed by the New Economics Party, then it would implement a completely new economic system. This would not bre revolutionary, as it only would exist as a niche aspect of the national economy. But it could become more important to exactly that degree as people would literally buy into it. It could open up a door for us all to step into a system that would stand tall, even when the fiat system may collapse.
I am convinced that we need such a system. It's just that a crypto currency is not the saviour. It is the backing of the currency that might be.

@andrewmcpherson like the western philosophy of the last 2500 years can be divided between Aristotelian and Platonism, the economic theories of the last 80 years can be divided between Keynes and Adam Smith. In this duo-pole Keynes has always been the minority position.
Like Immanuel Kant has changed the playground of philosophy by igniting the era of enlightenment (te reo: Mārama?), degrading both, Aristotle and Plato to 'the classics' as opposed to the 'modern philosophy', we might need to do the same with Keynes and Smith. What about that?

@strypey A fiat currency is inflationary by design, because the fiat system only works as long as there is growth. This growth is not about the growth of the underlying economy, though, but simply the growth of money supply! With the de-regulation of the financial system that we have seen throughout the last 2 decades, the financial system can provide growth of money supply without the need of actual growth of the economy. This is known as bubble, but works to some extend (enough to get fed by boni before leaving the ship like rats) before everything collapses because of money supply being out of sync with real economic growth.

Bitcoin is deflationary by design because the money supply is finite. But transactions do cost a little bit. So having bitcoin is cheaper than spending bitcoin. This is intrinsically deflationary. End of story.
T
he fact that the bitcoin is traded against classic fiat currencies and that therefore the actual price goes up and down doesn't change anything of that nature. These price changes are injected from the external system, where bitcoin can be seen as an alternative to gold, the traditional currency you turn to if you loose the faith in your local fiat currency.