Quote from: Hell-raiser on September 14, 2018, 06:50:46 AM

Actually, no one is particularly interested in the common good as everyone is after their own interests, obviously. And elites are no exception to this rule. You speak of them like they are aliens, while in reality they are essentially the same people only in a position which gives them a feeling or sense of superiority.

Precisely, no one is arguing otherwise on this point. No one is an alien.

Quote from: Hell-raiser on September 14, 2018, 06:50:46 AM

In essence, when I said they are interested in the common good over the long term, I meant they are of course interested in their own well-being before anything else. But they also understand (well, at least some of them) that their prosperity is inseparably linked to the prosperity of the whole society as they depend on it more than on anything else and more than everyone else does. The point is that to support their high standards of living, they have to rely on the whole society as their feeding ground, and thus they have to care for it.

Leaders in Communist countries genuinely wanted the best for their country too, in the same sense that you're saying here. Unless you can provide more specifics as to how the elites' interests are more aligned with society at large than at this generic level, we'll have to stop at this, and we know how well the Communist countries turned out.

Quote from: Hell-raiser on September 14, 2018, 06:50:46 AM

Quote from: BobK71 on September 13, 2018, 02:50:45 PM

Over the modern centuries, financial busts were generally followed by a policy of tightening the money supply. This imposed even more pain on the public, on top of the wealth and jobs lost by the bust, and basically put all of the pain from the financial bubble on the shoulders of the public. The excuse for doing this was to protect the peg of the currency against gold or silver, to guard the 'moral honor' of the elites in being able to redeem their paper with gold or silver. (Or the fiat-period equivalent of this argument.)

Does it mean that elites dismantling the gold standard was the good thing for the public as there is no more "'moral honor of the elites" in the form of paper money redemption for gold?

If you're trying to argue that the dismantling of the gold standard was for the public good (as today's economists seem to argue,) you only have to look at how each gold standard was 'dismantled' only when the elites were about to lose all their gold, due to a rush by holders of the paper to redeem for gold.

Otherwise, please explain what you're getting at here.

Whether losing the gold standard was a good thing for society, is a much more complicated question, but I'll be happy to go into at some point. Let's just say for now that the gold standard, as implemented by the elites of the time, was essentially a system of theft like the 'fiat' system we have. But you could argue a future gold (or Bitcoin) standard, combined with the level of democratic power we enjoy today in the West, would potentially be a more stable and beneficial system than today's.

Quote from: Hell-raiser on September 14, 2018, 06:50:46 AM

Quote from: BobK71 on September 13, 2018, 02:50:45 PM

But the real reason is to protect their system. If the elites used inflation to lessen the pain to the public, by devaluing currency against gold/silver (or doing the fiat equivalent,) the long-term confidence in their system would be harmed. They benefited most on the way up, but the public suffered on the way down.

You talk of them as if they really were aliens. Seen the V television series? Indeed, they are protecting their personal interests, but so does everyone else. So what's the point? This is not Lalaland.

I hope we're not falling into a condition where in order to discredit the other person, you have to distort what they mean. You can certainly do better than that!

In a certain sense, everyone is only after their own interests. But we can certainly talk about what system best serves the interest of all, as in preventing murder and theft, for example. And we can all agree to uphold such a system because it's in all our basic interest.

Understanding the power of creating money and the corruption it brings is the next major step in social awareness. And it's important to explain to the average person the full ramifications of this money creation, in order to bring about proper understanding of the true nature of the system we're living under.