Thanks for the response and clarification. These are interesting ideas and a radical departure from the current economic situation. If I have time, I would like to read more of Silvio Gesell’s theories. And, I’m glad to hear that you’ve considered the potential for (hyper)inflation resulting from the increased velocity of money that will result from its increased availability and the fact that consumers will be eager to spend it quickly before it decays.
I am still unclear on what (if anything) is wrong with a modest positive interest rate along the lines of pre-2008 downturn levels. You said:
If you’ve ever felt that you didn’t make something because money was too expensive then...money was too damn expensive.
A converse argument is, if whatever project you are considering is not economically viable if capital costs ~ 8-12%/year, maybe it was not really such a great idea.
And, you said:
(money) isn’t anything real
Well, yes and no. My understanding of capital is that it is just wealth used to generate more wealth. For example, if I am a plumber by trade and I need a backhoe to repair a sewer line, the backhoe is capital that I need to complete my project and create wealth. If I don’t own a backhoe, I’ll probably opt to rent one, and this would arguably be preferable to owning one as it is not every day that I need to dig up a sewer line. Obviously, if someone owns a backhoe, they will expect payment (rent) in exchange for my using the backhoe. By the same token, if I am a real estate developer and I need $100M to develop a project, I would expect to have to pay interest (rent) to use that money. I don’t see the difference between paying to use someone else’s backhoe and paying to use someone else’s money. In both cases, I am paying for capital that I need to complete my project, and I don’t really see a problem with that arrangement.
And, as Lumifer said upthread:
From a practical standpoint there is no shortage of money in the world, availability of capital is not a binding constraint.
Thanks for the feed back! I’m glad to be having real conversations about this stuff instead of just letting it rattle around in my head.
A converse argument is, if whatever project you are considering is not economically viable if capital costs ~ 8-12%/year, maybe it was not really such a great idea.
Let’s look at the data. TTP(Time to profitability)
This is another example where we ignore time. Of course we want our companies to make money. And we want people working on their best ideas. But how many other billion dollar companies failed because their owner flew to vegas to bet the last $5k on blackjack and lost? The market will eventually settle things out even over time. If no one buys what your are selling, your creditors will eventually catch on. But what if the trade off is over 3 years you learn enough to turn a profit or, if you fail, your creditors get to fold your entity and profit from all the places you spent their money?
This could be a serious problem if we are depleting massive amounts of non-replenishable resources, but in endeavors where the resources are renewable, your only limited resource is time.
You either believe we are in an upward trajectory or a downward one. The data suggests upwards and I’d suggest it is more important to learn as much as possible as fast as possible than to make sure that creditors make money at only 1 degree of separation.
Well, yes and no. My understanding of capital is that it is just wealth used to generate more wealth. For example, if I am a plumber by trade and I need a backhoe to repair a sewer line, the backhoe is capital that I need to complete my project and create wealth. If I don’t own a backhoe, I’ll probably opt to rent one, and this would arguably be preferable to owning one as it is not every day that I need to dig up a sewer line. Obviously, if someone owns a backhoe, they will expect payment (rent) in exchange for my using the backhoe. By the same token, if I am a real estate developer and I need $100M to develop a project, I would expect to have to pay interest (rent) to use that money. I don’t see the difference between paying to use someone else’s backhoe and paying to use someone else’s money. In both cases, I am paying for capital that I need to complete my project, and I don’t really see a problem with that arrangement.
Take a second read of Gessell’s parable and try to put aside the availability bias that we all currently pay interest.
Why is it obvious that someone would demand payment for use of a backhoe? If the backhoe is in use to you and returning cash to you then of course you would not take it out of service to rent to someone else unless they offered a premium. But if it is sitting idle in a work yard rusting, all you want back when you loan it out it your resource in the same condition you lent it in. This may have the cost of maintenance, oil, grease, etc. In a perfect market this is all you would be able to get for your backhoe and you’d be glad to get it. The potential for a backhoe is how many ditches it can dig, not how much money it can make for other people digging ditches. If you charge someone two ditches for them to dig one ditch, that is ‘economic rent’ that we seem to have some differences on. Of course it is profit for the renter, but we still only have one ditch.
The use of money only demands interest because it doesn’t have a carrying cost. The banker doesn’t need to part with it because $1 dollar will still be $1 tomorrow. If $1 were worth $0.80 tomorrow, some banker somewhere would be more than happy to give it to you today in exchange for you repaying $1 tomorrow. He might even be willing to give you $1.10 that he has no use for today in exchange for $1 tomorrow.
I don’t know so much if there is a ‘problem’ with the arrangement we have now(look how far it has brought us), but I also don’t think it is ‘the best’ way.
From a practical standpoint there is no shortage of money in the world, availability of capital is not a binding constraint.
If money is so available, maybe the issue is that people don’t know how to ask for the money because they didn’t have the money to pay for the education where they teach you how to ask. :)
Thanks for the lengthy reply! I don’t think I quite follow your first point. However, by listing several companies that took multiple years to become profitable, you illustrate that our current system is equipped to support endeavors that are not immediately profitable.
Take a second read of Gessell’s parable and try to put aside the availability bias that we all currently pay interest. Why is it obvious that someone would demand payment for use of a backhoe?
While I read and enjoyed Gessell’s parable, there are some special conditions in the parable that make it not particularly applicable to many real-world scenarios, including my backhoe scenario. The stranger planned to borrow buckskin clothing, seeds, etc., from RC and pay them back in kind with zero or negative interest. These were things that RC had no immediate use for, and that would deteriorate if not used (like money under hypercaptalism). So (and this is the point, I think) the stranger was doing RC a service by borrowing these things, using them, and paying back later in kind with new products that had not suffered deterioration. However, in the case of my backhoe example, a plumber needing to borrow a backhoe would probably borrow it from one of two sources:
A tradesperson who owned a backhoe for his/her own use, and rented it out when idle as a secondary revenue stream, or
A business that buys equipment specifically to rent out at a profit
In the case of #2, clearly the business would not purchase a backhoe unless it expected to be able to rent it out profitably. In the case of #1, the tradesperson who bought the backhoe uses it him/herself, so it is not in danger of getting rusty or falling into disrepair due to lack of use. So, even in case 1, there is no advantage to the tradesperson to lend out the backhoe unless rent is charged. And in both cases, there is effort and risk involved in loaning me the backhoe – risk that I might damage it or not return it, and effort in running a credit/background check on me prior to lending me the backhoe, taking and verifying a credit card or other collateral to (partially) mitigate the risk of my absconding with the backhoe, inspecting the backhoe upon return, etc. So, in both cases, there will be no incentive to lend the backhoe (and plenty of incentive not to) unless sufficient rent is received to make the exchange profitable to the backhoe owner (break-even is not sufficient). And yet in both cases, the backhoe owner is providing an economically useful function (as anyone who has ever had a one-time need for a backhoe can attest).
But if it is sitting idle in a work yard rusting, all you want back when you loan it out it your resource in the same condition you lent it in. This may have the cost of maintenance, oil, grease, etc.
It is unlikely that anyone who has no need for a backhoe and did not expect to be able to rent it at a profit would own a backhoe. Therefore it is unlikely that anyone will be willing to loan one just to keep it maintained and in good working order.
In a perfect market this is all you would be able to get for your backhoe and you’d be glad to get it.
A perfectly efficient market is an abstraction; something that we can approach but never reach. Nor would we necessarily want to reach it.
The use of money only demands interest because it doesn’t have a carrying cost. The banker doesn’t need to part with it because $1 dollar will still be $1 tomorrow.
Actually, in our current economic system, money does have a carrying cost – inflation. $1 today is worth less than $1 tomorrow when you adjust for inflation. In fact, hypercapitalism has several characteristics of an economy with high or hyperinflation, e.g. high velocity of money, decaying value of money, strong incentives for consumers to spend money quickly, etc. It seems to me that hypercapitalism would have many of the same disadvantages as high or hyperinflation; I imagine that no one who had lived in Weimar Germany or in Zimbabwe in 2008 would be eager to “build in” decay into currency unless it was a very modest decay.
If money is so available, maybe the issue is that people don’t know how to ask for the money because they didn’t have the money to pay for the education where they teach you how to ask.
I am not sure that there is an issue; what evidence do we have that there are a lot of under-served qualified borrowers? And, in addition to loans, our economy has other avenues for obtaining funding, e.g. venture capital, stock issues, crowdfunding, etc.
It seems to me that our current system (or at least our pre 2008 system) has a slight currency decay (inflation), disincentives to holding money idle (inflation and lost opportunity costs) and incentives to make it available to others who may need it for productive purposes (positive interest above the inflation rate). So, aside from phasing out central bank “easy money” and stimulus policies, I am not sure that our system really needs to be fixed.
Thanks for the response and clarification. These are interesting ideas and a radical departure from the current economic situation. If I have time, I would like to read more of Silvio Gesell’s theories. And, I’m glad to hear that you’ve considered the potential for (hyper)inflation resulting from the increased velocity of money that will result from its increased availability and the fact that consumers will be eager to spend it quickly before it decays.
I am still unclear on what (if anything) is wrong with a modest positive interest rate along the lines of pre-2008 downturn levels. You said:
A converse argument is, if whatever project you are considering is not economically viable if capital costs ~ 8-12%/year, maybe it was not really such a great idea.
And, you said:
Well, yes and no. My understanding of capital is that it is just wealth used to generate more wealth. For example, if I am a plumber by trade and I need a backhoe to repair a sewer line, the backhoe is capital that I need to complete my project and create wealth. If I don’t own a backhoe, I’ll probably opt to rent one, and this would arguably be preferable to owning one as it is not every day that I need to dig up a sewer line. Obviously, if someone owns a backhoe, they will expect payment (rent) in exchange for my using the backhoe. By the same token, if I am a real estate developer and I need $100M to develop a project, I would expect to have to pay interest (rent) to use that money. I don’t see the difference between paying to use someone else’s backhoe and paying to use someone else’s money. In both cases, I am paying for capital that I need to complete my project, and I don’t really see a problem with that arrangement.
And, as Lumifer said upthread:
Thanks for the feed back! I’m glad to be having real conversations about this stuff instead of just letting it rattle around in my head.
Let’s look at the data. TTP(Time to profitability)
Tesla − 10 years FedEx − 4 years Amazon − 9 years Turner Broadcasting − 11 years ESPN − 5 years (http://www.inc.com/drew-hendricks/5-successful-companies-that-didn-8217-t-make-a-dollar-for-5-years.html)
This is another example where we ignore time. Of course we want our companies to make money. And we want people working on their best ideas. But how many other billion dollar companies failed because their owner flew to vegas to bet the last $5k on blackjack and lost? The market will eventually settle things out even over time. If no one buys what your are selling, your creditors will eventually catch on. But what if the trade off is over 3 years you learn enough to turn a profit or, if you fail, your creditors get to fold your entity and profit from all the places you spent their money?
This could be a serious problem if we are depleting massive amounts of non-replenishable resources, but in endeavors where the resources are renewable, your only limited resource is time.
You either believe we are in an upward trajectory or a downward one. The data suggests upwards and I’d suggest it is more important to learn as much as possible as fast as possible than to make sure that creditors make money at only 1 degree of separation.
Take a second read of Gessell’s parable and try to put aside the availability bias that we all currently pay interest.
Why is it obvious that someone would demand payment for use of a backhoe? If the backhoe is in use to you and returning cash to you then of course you would not take it out of service to rent to someone else unless they offered a premium. But if it is sitting idle in a work yard rusting, all you want back when you loan it out it your resource in the same condition you lent it in. This may have the cost of maintenance, oil, grease, etc. In a perfect market this is all you would be able to get for your backhoe and you’d be glad to get it. The potential for a backhoe is how many ditches it can dig, not how much money it can make for other people digging ditches. If you charge someone two ditches for them to dig one ditch, that is ‘economic rent’ that we seem to have some differences on. Of course it is profit for the renter, but we still only have one ditch.
The use of money only demands interest because it doesn’t have a carrying cost. The banker doesn’t need to part with it because $1 dollar will still be $1 tomorrow. If $1 were worth $0.80 tomorrow, some banker somewhere would be more than happy to give it to you today in exchange for you repaying $1 tomorrow. He might even be willing to give you $1.10 that he has no use for today in exchange for $1 tomorrow.
I don’t know so much if there is a ‘problem’ with the arrangement we have now(look how far it has brought us), but I also don’t think it is ‘the best’ way.
If money is so available, maybe the issue is that people don’t know how to ask for the money because they didn’t have the money to pay for the education where they teach you how to ask. :)
Thanks for the lengthy reply! I don’t think I quite follow your first point. However, by listing several companies that took multiple years to become profitable, you illustrate that our current system is equipped to support endeavors that are not immediately profitable.
While I read and enjoyed Gessell’s parable, there are some special conditions in the parable that make it not particularly applicable to many real-world scenarios, including my backhoe scenario. The stranger planned to borrow buckskin clothing, seeds, etc., from RC and pay them back in kind with zero or negative interest. These were things that RC had no immediate use for, and that would deteriorate if not used (like money under hypercaptalism). So (and this is the point, I think) the stranger was doing RC a service by borrowing these things, using them, and paying back later in kind with new products that had not suffered deterioration. However, in the case of my backhoe example, a plumber needing to borrow a backhoe would probably borrow it from one of two sources:
A tradesperson who owned a backhoe for his/her own use, and rented it out when idle as a secondary revenue stream, or
A business that buys equipment specifically to rent out at a profit
In the case of #2, clearly the business would not purchase a backhoe unless it expected to be able to rent it out profitably. In the case of #1, the tradesperson who bought the backhoe uses it him/herself, so it is not in danger of getting rusty or falling into disrepair due to lack of use. So, even in case 1, there is no advantage to the tradesperson to lend out the backhoe unless rent is charged. And in both cases, there is effort and risk involved in loaning me the backhoe – risk that I might damage it or not return it, and effort in running a credit/background check on me prior to lending me the backhoe, taking and verifying a credit card or other collateral to (partially) mitigate the risk of my absconding with the backhoe, inspecting the backhoe upon return, etc. So, in both cases, there will be no incentive to lend the backhoe (and plenty of incentive not to) unless sufficient rent is received to make the exchange profitable to the backhoe owner (break-even is not sufficient). And yet in both cases, the backhoe owner is providing an economically useful function (as anyone who has ever had a one-time need for a backhoe can attest).
It is unlikely that anyone who has no need for a backhoe and did not expect to be able to rent it at a profit would own a backhoe. Therefore it is unlikely that anyone will be willing to loan one just to keep it maintained and in good working order.
A perfectly efficient market is an abstraction; something that we can approach but never reach. Nor would we necessarily want to reach it.
Actually, in our current economic system, money does have a carrying cost – inflation. $1 today is worth less than $1 tomorrow when you adjust for inflation. In fact, hypercapitalism has several characteristics of an economy with high or hyperinflation, e.g. high velocity of money, decaying value of money, strong incentives for consumers to spend money quickly, etc. It seems to me that hypercapitalism would have many of the same disadvantages as high or hyperinflation; I imagine that no one who had lived in Weimar Germany or in Zimbabwe in 2008 would be eager to “build in” decay into currency unless it was a very modest decay.
I am not sure that there is an issue; what evidence do we have that there are a lot of under-served qualified borrowers? And, in addition to loans, our economy has other avenues for obtaining funding, e.g. venture capital, stock issues, crowdfunding, etc.
It seems to me that our current system (or at least our pre 2008 system) has a slight currency decay (inflation), disincentives to holding money idle (inflation and lost opportunity costs) and incentives to make it available to others who may need it for productive purposes (positive interest above the inflation rate). So, aside from phasing out central bank “easy money” and stimulus policies, I am not sure that our system really needs to be fixed.