Re: "A currency that increases in value is a terrible thing"
Corruption of the central planners is a serious issue, but that could be fixed if people would actually spend more then 5 minutes to do research on who will they elect for the public office.
We don't have to change the system, we have to change the people who have control over the system.
Don't blame the system, but blame yourself for not caring enough for electing the right people to lead the system.
These are sentiments admirable in its optimism - even for me, a self-proclaimed incorrigible optimist!
I disagree very strongly with them, though. I don't think exchanging people at the top of the pyramid would help. We have tried this many times, after all, but somehow we always seem to end up with the "wrong" and corrupt people up there, if only there was a way to vote in the right people...
No, the problem, to me, seems to be with the system itself, its centralized nature in particular. Even if intelligent people of good will find themselves in the seats of power, they have many obstacles to overcome if they want to steer the system in a way beneficial to many. Obstacles like:
1) power corrupts. And if they don't get seduced by its promises, they can be blackmailed by those who would like to keep the status quo
2) power attracts the corrupted - a corollary to the above point. This increases the likelihood of the "wrong people" finding themselves in power.
3) information flow in centralized systems has poor efficiency due to the absence of effective feedback mechanisms. This might be the most important one. Even if people of good will sincerely work for the benefit of all, the information they base their decisions on is mostly crap, because it gets filtered through the prejudices of those in the line of command before it reaches the person(s) in charge of decision-making.
4) centralized points of failure (even, or maybe especially in decision-making) make the system more fragile, more dependent on the people in charge. Also they amplify bad decisions. A single household making bad financial decisions is sad. A whole country doing so is catastrophic.
Besides, the antithesis to centralization is decentralization, not centralization with machines in charge (as opposed to humans). Based on historical data and current technological development I feel like the changing/dismantling of the current system has better chances of bringing about positive change than exchanging the people in charge of said system. I'm not sure if that is even possible, surely we don't imagine the politicians who we are allowed to vote for, to be actually in charge of the most important decisions?
EDIT:
It's still funny to see how the same people who often present themselves as "anti-establishment" or "anti-Fed", are mostly also in favor of ultra-liberal views of Greenspan, who was actually to blame for messing up Fed together with US finance. Bernanke has just been a loyal dog who follows the same trail that Greenspan put in motion. The trail where money regulation is trusted in the hands of the private sector without the supervision or restrictions from Fed itself. This has caused the US to go into a growing bubble that is on the verge on popping.
well, what else do we want to call the consortium of the FED and the big commercial banks if not "the establishment"? It's not like during the Greenspan years the government was suddenly completely uninvolved in financial markets. As you are surprised about the view of some people, I find myself surprised how people can point to the 90s and 2000s and say: "see the free market has failed!" - after which I scratch my head and wonder "what free market?". I would expect the participants of a free market to fail if they behaved like the big banks did. But they didn't, they were propped up and zombified by the government. Now we can wait for a while, pretend that everything is OK, until the whole system implodes, whereas we had the option of just letting bad players implode - just like with Gox. Now there is a much freer market at work and see what is happening? No one is getting bailed out, people are hurting from it...and with no one but themselves to blame and no Big Brother to turn to for protection they are actually starting to take responsibility into their own hands and demanding stuff like proof of reserves and liquidity under threat of not doing business with companies unwilling to provide them. Now THAT is how you improve a system. You let the bad parts, ideas and investments fail while they are still of little consequence, before their failure can turn into systemic risks.