Daztur is simple, no one else. There's not much difference between pretending to be stupid, and not pretending.
Wages are hard to get lowered, not raised. The idea that wages are "sticky" is one of Keynes' arguments against deflation and in favor of continually expanding the money supply.
Gold is deflationary. The amount of gold in human hands is roughly the same as it was a hundred years ago. Mining is expensive, and the growth of the gold supply is marginal, nowhere near the Fed's target rate of 2% inflation, or the projected growth rates even for established economies. Bitcoin is similar, except digital. There's an argument that we need more money to account for more wealth, but it's inherently a silly one. Because if the money is sufficiently divisible, any amount of money works. It doesn't matter if there are 20 million bitcoins, 100 billion trillion, or only 1. Or whether it's used for transactions in the 18th century when there was less wealth, in the early 21st, or for some future K3 civilization. You just move the decimal point.
There have always been attempts by those in power to debase the money supply to their advantage. It's called "debasing" because kings used to take the coins and remint them, except with a higher quantity of base metal. They'd issue more coins using the same amount of gold, and thus creating more coins the kings could keep, at the cost of making everything cost more. But hard, physical money is hard to debase. You can only alloy gold with so much tin before people start to notice. The shift to paper money made it easier. One historical example is the Continental currency, which was printed in such vast quantities during the American Revolution that it was worthless before the war was over. It's even easier today, with modern largely electronic money being created with just a few keystrokes.
The US lived under a gold standard a "deflationary" regime, for most of its history. This meant money was reliable and solid, and made for a good investment. Modern inflationary money has made saving cash impractical, and pushed people into investments in more speculative assets.
I'm not an Austrian. I don't really buy praxeology, for instance. But I'm definitely less of a Keynsian, though I do think he made a few sharp observations. Most of what I'm talking about is classical or neoclassical economics -- which every modern school of economic theory largely agrees with, with the fringe exception of the Marxists (Marx was a classical economist, but predated the insights of the Marginal Revolution).
I wish I were pretending, but I honestly believed everything I said, even if I also knew enough about my lack of understanding to give warnings in advance that I might be getting it wrong.
I get that workers may not want lower wages, so that makes sense. (I feel like Keynes was kinda sketchy in that he wanted to trick them into accepting lower wages, right?) That said… Why aren’t wages sticky the other way too, though, especially if they don’t seem to keep up with inflation? Plus shouldn’t the risk of unemployment and weak individual bargaining power mean that workers are unable to bargain individually cuz it might lose them stuff and probably won’t gain anything? (Union threat weirdness notwithstanding, which may perhaps be the flaw in my perspective.) There’s risk in applying to a new job, especially if you’re used to your job or have a sentimental attachment and it’s possible where you could apply elsewhere that new folks are the first to be fired, so lower wages at a certain job should probably be more valuable to the risk-neutral and risk-averse, I would think. Weird to hear wages are easy to get raised, but also if econometricians or whoever have data backing it, I guess I can maybe believe it. Possibly cuz unions or the like, maybe?
I don’t really understand the division argument, save in that as bitcoin is more divisible it should probably be better able to handle precision in pricing and nobody has to worry about going without bitcoin more generally. But I guess if gold is deflationary and the economy did well under the gold standard that would probably prove that deflation doesn’t inherently doom an economy.
Debasing sounds like a scam to make currency seem to be worth more than it is and create national/government wealth out of nothing. So I guess maybe there’s something to be said for gold based currencies in that sense. I’m guessing the equivalent would be printing money as the government and then telling nobody you did that, to make it seem worth more than it is. Though even if they do tell, sounds like a very real problem if they go out of control, like in the case of hyperinflation, and based on what you said earlier might be an inflationary tax on the poor?
Also, apologies for inadvertently misrepresenting you and your stances. And I now know what praxeology is. Kinda have to agree that humans aren’t always rational actors with perfect calculation. Also like that it sounds like you try to take from each school what deserves to be considered.
I don’t know much about economic schools beyond, again, limited rap battle soundbites and google searches, but I will look into the categories you have mentioned probably. (What I really need to do is probably to read those 3 textbooks you recommended. But I’m procrastinating at the moment.)
I do appreciate your patience in explaining some of this stuff to us, and me specifically, though from what you’ve been saying it sounds like it may be a bit simple from your perspective. I do think the average person these days, as well as the average American, while better educated than at some points in history, may be a bit behind even on the core economic theories. That and we/I do admittedly perhaps have a tendency of making up assertions or arguments that may not be 100% supported by the literature or understood. But on the flip side, with discussion and shall we say creative argumentation, at least one gradually learns what one believes and eventually something that is said by others or supported rationally/logically consistent may take root and grow to develop or restructure one’s positions. So I do appreciate discussions like these.
(Also, this may be a bit of a weird question, and no need to answer if it’s too close to real life personal info, but are you like an economist or financial specialist or something? Or just well informed in that sector?)