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30 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 26 Nov \ parent \ on: Could an Increase in the Supply of Gold Cause a Boom-Bust Cycle? econ
Yeah, I just don't think Rothbard is right about this. The issue, as Mises describes it, is that the quantity of scarce resources are not properly accounted for by current prices.
That leads entrepreneurs to systematically take on projects that there aren't sufficient resources for. Or, they over-save, as though there were fewer resources than there actually are.
Yes, those quantities are not accounted for because they are unknown. Like the asteroid of rare metals just waiting to be mined cannot be accounted for until it is found and mined.
Hmmm….. I don’t think there is ever a problem of oversaving because saving = investments in Austrian theory. You can only have investments from savings. If you take them from loan money created by fractional reserve you are misallocating resources with fraudulent money.
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The idea would be that people are saving as though their future money will be worth more than it's going to be: i.e. inflation is discoordinating savings and interest rates.
They will then be acting in the present as though they're going to have more purchasing power in the future.
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I agree with that assessment because you can see it all around you, day-in and day-out. People, when they save (which isn’t much, now) expect to get the time-value of their money back in the future or principle plus interest (the time preference value of money).
This brings to mind something I will never forget — the differences between saving, investing, speculating and gambling, which are all on as spectrum of the same kind of behavior, vis-a-vis expected returns.
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