Quote from: Puppet on March 25, 2013, 08:58:07 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on March 25, 2013, 08:32:20 PM

Easy peasy, since I get to choose the time frames. Any society that has ever existed upon a gold standard, prior to that same society's move towards currency debasement. You're getting your cause and effect wrong, The Roman Empire didn't collapse because they used a deflationary currency (gold, silver, salt, nails) they debased that same deflationary currency because they were in the process of multi-generational collapse.

So predictable: the infamous libertarian rewriting of roman history. Here is some the other side of roman coin:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.be/2011/06/debt-deflationary-crisis-in-late-roman.html

I stopped right here....

" but they never mention the rather important point that deflation and debt deflation were clearly factors in the economic and social turmoil that saw the fall of the Roman Republic in the first century BC and its replacement with the despotic Roman empire (for a timeline of Roman Republican history, see below)."

Because this is a strawman setup. Of course "debt deflation" (as it's commonly defined, usually by Kenyesians) had significant effects upon the course of the breakdown. That's freely acknowledged by most Austrians. What your lot seems to misunderstand is the praxelogical effects of debt itself that leads to these ends. It's not the debt deflation that is the root of the problem, it's the debt fueled boom that proceeded it. The debt deflationary period is called a "correction" for good reasons.

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Money is simply a tool.

There is no arguing that: It just seems you want our society to use a tool that works for you; I will buy such tools myself and prefer society uses a tool that works for society.

Go right ahead. If you honestly beleive that money is a tool intended to "work for society" then there is nothing that I can do to change your mind. Nor would I care to try, you're as free to be wrong as the next guy. And yes, I want a tool that works for me, for I am the only person that I can trust to best handle my tools. The prisoner's delima doesn't apply to free market trades in the absense of third party coersion, so in a free society wherein the vast majority of economic interactions occur in the absence of such coersion, it's literally impossible for the collection of individual interactions (presumedly favorable to both sides of the trade) to be a net negative for society.

Think, young man, think. Think for yourself, not just how your professor expects you to react.