Never underestimate the ability of mainstream anything to engage in motivated reasoning.
The motivation is obvious: people want hard money, and some economists wish they didn't. So they deny the obvious: inflation is a punative tax on savings and make up b.s. psych nonsense.
The motivation is obvious: people want hard money, and some economists wish they didn't. So they deny the obvious: inflation is a punative tax on savings and make up b.s. psych nonsense.
Meanwhile they also recognize a perfectly valid reason for inflation: to pay for security. But *that* reason has no need for more than a token amount of inflation - 0.5% would probably be fine.
They're perfectly smart people, but not ethical enough to tell the truth.
They're perfectly smart people, but not ethical enough to tell the truth.
The Bitcoiners are equally guilty! 21 million BTC is practically a religion, and anyone with any economic sense knows that we do have a high inflation rate and do just fine, and the difference between 0% and 0.5% is as insignificant as it sounds. But again, motivated reasoning.
We have reasons to think a fee market may develop. But it's far from certain and staking the future of bitcoin on the tis certainly risky, especially when even if we do have a fee market the game theory of fee-only mining is untested at best. But motivated reasoning...
Your best argument against _adding_ inflation is the fairly straightforward one that changing things without a proven reason opens the door to all kinds of bad changes.
We can hard fork in inflation later if it's really necessary. For now better to socially have BTC be stable.
We can hard fork in inflation later if it's really necessary. For now better to socially have BTC be stable.
Also, homework problem: what's my motivated reasoning for talking about this?
I can think of two reasons, one relatively straightforward and one subtle. Hint: my last scaling bitcoin talk.
I can think of two reasons, one relatively straightforward and one subtle. Hint: my last scaling bitcoin talk.
