Quote from: Puppet on March 25, 2013, 01:02:47 PM

Quote from: memvola on March 25, 2013, 12:40:48 PM

What are you talking about? My money isn't worth less every year, because I invest in immovables like every other sane person. Actually land is more valuable to me than a house, so no incentive for economic activity there...

By the way, what is the difference between me getting paid in gold and paid in USD, as long as I can freely exchange USD<->Gold? Absolutely nothing, am I right? It seems to me that we are already living in your dystopia. What am I missing?

The way you put it, the only thing holding the economy together must be friction

Do you really not see the difference?
Your land is only becoming more valuable because you express its value in an inflationary currency. Try expressing its value in bitcoin for a laugh.
The actual purchasing power that the land you own represents isnt going up significantly every year unless you made an above average clever investment. You and future generations cant live of the value of your land for the rest of your lives and accumulate more wealth in the process, not without taking economic risks. At best it preserves your wealth.

The same goes for gold btw, an ounce of gold buys you a lot less labor today than it did 50 years ago. It also buys you roughly as much bread as it did 2000 years ago (despite massive productivity increases in farming and baking which ought to reduce its real price). Unlike a deflationary currency, buying gold or land doesnt make one get eternally richer, its only a way to preserve wealth.

While this is generally true, land values do tend to rise over time simply because the population increases and thus there are more people competing for a finite resource. It's a value change that can only be measured accurately over decades, however.