The Miser and Morality, an examination.

[sabs]

Hoarding of Money in an underground vault IS bad.
Saving money in the bank, isn't actually Hoarding, because the Bank is going to use your money as collateral for loans.

But really this entire debate is silly, because you can't hoard US Dollars, especially in today's economy where there isn't even a 1 to 1 corrolation between printed dollar bills, and the amount of money in your bank account.

Grain Silos aren't Hoarding. Unless of course, you're Hoarding Grain in order to raise the price of grain so you can sell it at a higher profit, because people need grain and you've got it all. But that's because grain is useful, where as Gold is not.


Misering is specifically about hoarding /money/ especially in a metalic or bi-metalic money system.

[Parthenon]

I've been trying to follow this thread, and I'm a bit confused. I don't get any of the arguments at all, and Doom seems to be trying to do his best to ignore requests to expand upon his argument where people are confused.

So, from the original post, part 1 is worthless and can be ignored. It waffles around the idea that in a moral examination of miserliness you need to consider morality, and then talks about the romans for a while. Is there anything in that part I actually need to give a fuck about?

Then, in part 2, I get immediately held up by the second sentence:

The hoarder owns the fruits of his labor, and that includes money.

Wait, what? What exactly is the labour that the hoarder did? Maybe for some people who are already close to poverty the living in squalor and going without food is labour, but for a large proportion of hoarders they didn't do anything. Maybe I'm just being naive here, but if you are going for the "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?", then at what point exactly did a lot of these hoarders have to sweat?

Getting past that, you seem to say that the possibility of cutting prices is the same as actually cutting prices. I mean, just look at the recent recession. Did a lot of employers fire a fuckton of people and keep prices the same leading to record profits from big businesses, or did they keep everyone employed and reduce prices? I think you'll find its a mix of both, but mostly the first. So any hoarder that reduces demand will reduce some prices, but a whole lot more prices will stay the same and fuck people over.

Then, you start talking utter fucking garbage:

The miser enjoys holding his money, it makes him happy.

You're saying that thats the reason people hoard? Because they like owning stuff? Not that they want to hold onto a large amount of money and then spend it all to get as large a benefit as possible to himself? As in, what people who hoard regularly do, and what you have held up as a good way to hoard?

Saying that people who hoard only deflate money is a complete lie since when they do spend their hoard they will cause a sudden massive inflation which is going to be in all ways worse than noone hoarding and some inflation slowly happening.

Man, shut the fuck up and start making some sense.

[Grek]

[quote="Doom]On the other hand, you could spend a billion dollars on a painting and burn it for your funeral, if you so wished.[/quote]

Someone that buys a painting for a billion dollars just gave a billion dollars to an artist that will, presumably, be spending that money on other things himself and thus paying people that produce whatever it is that super rich artists want. That's how an economy is supposed to work, and that's fine.

What isn't fine is someone just destroying the money (or effectively destroying it by putting it in a vault and throwing away the key), as that stops the flow of money, causes deflation and fucks up the economy. And if they ever take the money out of the vault, we get a billion dollars worth of inflation to fuck up the economy again.

[Doom]

best to ignore requests to expand upon his argument where people are confused.

Apologies, amidst all the straw men, I may have missed an actual request. Wat did you want?

So, from the original post, part 1 is worthless and can be ignored. It waffles around the idea that in a moral examination of miserliness you need to consider morality, and then talks about the romans for a while. Is there anything in that part I actually need to give a fuck about?

Not really, it's just explaining that our age-old hate of the hoarder comes from the Romans, and is not legitimate. You need not know that, especially if you already know such things.

What exactly is the labour that the hoarder did?

Why on Earth do you assume that he didn't earn or has no right to what he has? This is a whackadoodle hypothetical, there's really no argument that can stand up to this level of ridiculousness.

Go ahead you try to formuate any argument, and I'll see how easy it is to annihilate it with these types of assumptions from out of nowhere.

, but for a large proportion of hoarders they didn't do anything.

Interesting assumption out of nowhere. I'm not even sure how you could prove this.

then at what point exactly did a lot of these hoarders have to sweat?

Unkown, but a silly point to consider. Again, this is why it's necessary to assume he has property rights to whatever it is he's owning in the first place.

Again, I beg you, formulate any argument at all, and I'll casually deconstruct it using the same techniques mostly being used in this thread (I'll apologize in advance for using such non-legitimate tactics)

. So any hoarder that reduces demand will reduce some prices,

Now, realize, this is all that is necessary to concede the point: "misers are not all bad". You've just acknowledged that, indeed, this is the case.

You're saying that thats the reason people hoard? Because they like owning stuff?

Maybe, maybe not, but this was said in response to people that criticise misers for not "doing" something with the money, or saving towards a purpose. He is doing something: amusing himself. Sorry that wasn't clear.

you have held up as a good way to hoard?

Why would such a way need to be held up?

Saying that people who hoard only deflate money is a complete lie since when they do spend their hoard they will cause a sudden massive inflation which is going to be in all ways worse than noone hoarding and some inflation slowly happening.

Ok, now this needs to be proved, that the benefits from deflation are necessarily worse than the harm from inflation. Again, we're assuming a massive level of extremes here, just how many misers have actually done great harm by releasing their currency 'all at once', assuming it's ever happened (and a citation would go a long way, otherwise this is just theorycraft of no relevance). Can you even give a single example of this hypothetical ever occurring?

Man, shut the fuck up and start making some sense.

Seeing as you agree with the entirety of the point, sufficient sense has been made. Again, if you really, really, don't like these arguments, I strongly encourage you to read the book (not mandatory), and then post your most astute observations to Amazon.com.

[Kaelik]

Again, this is why it's necessary to assume he has property rights to whatever it is he's owning in the first place.

And what does property rights entail again? Oh right, you won't say.

Is it true that the government doesn't have the right to take the misers money whenever they want? No, that's false. The government can take the Miser's money anytime it wants, for any reason, whether the Miser has "property rights" or "owns" his money is irrelevant, because in either case, if the government decides that he is not making good use of his money, they can just take it from him and put it to good use.

What does assuming that he has property rights do for your argument? Apparently nothing.

Now, realize, this is all that is necessary to concede the point: "misers are not all bad". You've just acknowledged that, indeed, this is the case.

Hitler built the autobahn, being not all bad is not a compelling argument for not murdering someone viciously, much less for them being in any way tolerable to society, or worthy of praise, which is what you are attempting to argue for.

Saying that people who hoard only deflate money is a complete lie since when they do spend their hoard they will cause a sudden massive inflation which is going to be in all ways worse than noone hoarding and some inflation slowly happening.

Ok, now this needs to be proved, that the benefits from deflation are necessarily worse than the harm from inflation. Again, we're assuming a massive level of extremes here, just how many misers have actually done great harm by releasing their currency 'all at once', assuming it's ever happened (and a citation would go a long way, otherwise this is just theorycraft of no relevance). Can you even give a single example of this hypothetical ever occurring?

You are a joke. You are now demanding that other people demonstrate citations of times Misers have spent money and claiming that if they can't prove that Miser's habits cause more harm than they do good, that your argument that Miser's deserve praise is therefore true.

You claimed that Misers are the good guys, so you actually need to demonstrate that.

However, as point of fact: here is a comparison between two people:

Not Miser: Spends money constantly, producing minor, constant inflation that grows the economy, Benefit or neutral, for society.

Miser: Hoards money, causing deflation, which hurts the economy, then spends money all at once, causing rapid unpredictable inflation that destabilizes economy, causing harm to economy.

Result: Miser is a shithead coming and going, never actually benefits anyone except possibly himself.

[Parthenon]

Apologies, amidst all the straw men, I may have missed an actual request. Wat did you want?

That was my first post in the thread so I hadn't asked any questions but others have. You've avoided questions, had a huge hissy fit over DMatticus without actually refuting any of what he said, and not actually explained further when people have stated what they are confused about.

For example you didn't actually answer the question below:

Hypotheses: Printing more money is the same as stealing money from the pockets of people who already have 'money'

This is what you are stating? Yes?

You agreed with the statement just before the hypothesis, but did not talk about the hypothesis at all.

---

What exactly is the labour that the hoarder did?

Why on Earth do you assume that he didn't earn or has no right to what he has? This is a whackadoodle hypothetical, there's really no argument that can stand up to this level of ridiculousness.

I think we're talking at cross purposes. I'm starting to think that you are talking about the money that they hoard being the fruits of other labour, whereas I was asking about in what way the hoarding itself is labour.

So, yeah, I'd like to know. How is the act of hoarding itself labour that should bear fruit?

---

. So any hoarder that reduces demand will reduce some prices,

Now, realize, this is all that is necessary to concede the point: "misers are not all bad". You've just acknowledged that, indeed, this is the case.

I probably should have put a qualifying statement in there somewhere about how if your explanation is correct then... A sort of following through your idea and continuing on to where you avoided the fact that the hoarder fucks up the economy.

---

Saying that people who hoard only deflate money is a complete lie since when they do spend their hoard they will cause a sudden massive inflation which is going to be in all ways worse than noone hoarding and some inflation slowly happening.

Ok, now this needs to be proved, that the benefits from deflation are necessarily worse than the harm from inflation. Again, we're assuming a massive level of extremes here, just how many misers have actually done great harm by releasing their currency 'all at once', assuming it's ever happened (and a citation would go a long way, otherwise this is just theorycraft of no relevance). Can you even give a single example of this hypothetical ever occurring?

Hmmm... there are two points here. Firstly there is the fact that saying that people who hoard only reduce prices, even if they do reduce prices in some cases, is a lie. Talking only about that aspect and not about the inflation is either a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth or you being an idiot. You need to talk about that, and show how sudden inflation is heroic.

Secondly, I did make an unsupported claim that there is the idea that deflation then sudden inflation is always bad and worse than inflation. Unfortunately I don't have any examples of that. The only similar general examples I can think of are when people hoard a huge amount of commodities or shares and then sell them all when the price is high leading to massive devaluation of the commodity meaning the company or other people who have invested in the commodity are screwed over. This would leas to fewer investors meaning the economy is slowed down, and as such is "bad".

[Doom]

That was my first post in the thread so I hadn't asked any questions but others have. You've avoided questions,

I ask again, which thing did I miss? I eventually addressed the strawlike "own has no meaning" thing, providing a definition and accepting every definition given (since it's like, totally not the point).

had a huge hissy fit

No, I politely asked him to leave. One post. That's not a hissy fit.

over DMatticus without actually refuting any of what he said,

It's called manners; it would be rude of me to respond to him with him not here, and I'm reluctant to even discuss him here, since that, too, is rude.

For example you didn't actually answer the question below:Hypotheses: Printing more money is the same as stealing money from the pockets of people who already have 'money'

This hypothesis is not in the OP, and has nothing to do with the OP; there have been many straw men, I'm hard pressed to burn them all as they spring up, my apologies if some simply run away, you tracking them down and setting them up again does no good.

Should I know ask you several hundred questions unrelated to the discussion, and then give you crap if you refuse to answer them all?

what way the hoarding itself is labour.

Oh. No, hoarding itself is not viewed as labor, although I suppose someone else might disagree.

you avoided the fact that the hoarder fucks up the economy.

Again, this is taken as fact without proof, and if you do so, it does make the argument void, I agree. But if you assume the opposite of any argument is by definition false, it does make it hard to come to much beyond the assumption. As shown in the historical Roman example, it wasn't the hoarders at all that were causing the problems...they were blamed for it, extensively.

We have hoarders now, we've had hoarders in the past, at all times in history we've had hoarders. Are you sure that all economies everywhere, all the time, at all instants, are 'fucked up', as you say?

I acknowledge that misers can cause harm, but the OP is to look at the rest of the story.

Knowing that in the past, hoarders were used as scapegoats falsely, you should be reluctant to make the same mistake again.

I mean, in the past, Jews were blamed for all sorts of ills, but anyone who stands up now and says they're responsible for plagues and the like would be shouted down quite quickly, I believe (and sincerely hope). It makes more sense, rather than libel a group, to instead think about things, rather than buy the assumptions we were told as children.

Talking only about that aspect and not about the inflation is either a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth or you being an idiot. You need to talk about that, and show how sudden inflation is heroic.

I ask again, can you give an example of this ever happening? A specific example of a miser taking his savings and spending it, causing serious inflation, doing real harm. I would like to rule out kings or governments, since they can do something similar with money printing (and have done so in the past); I justify ruling this case out because such are not actually spending savings, which is what a miser does in your hypothetical.

Even if such an example exists, this doesn't prove misers are all bad (the folks getting increased sales are getting quite a boon!)...but I am curious if such a thing has happened. Just as Jews actually spreading plagues (likely) never happened (and will still not prove that all Jews were bad), I suspect this boogeyman is comparably rare.

It may even be worthwhile to read another defense of misers, although it requires a bit more mastery of economics. There is a counter-argument to this you can find online, to get an idea of what reasonable objections look like. This article is notable, because it's difficult to publish articles in defense of misers, as economists consider such a thing to be bleeding obvious. This is also why I'm quite quick to distance myself from claiming I've shown anything new--anyone here educated in the field would be quick to take me to task for saying I've discovered something only slighly less common, than, say, water in a liquid form (I grossly overestimated this possibility, I admit).

Your example regarding commodities is worth comment. Yes, in this extreme case, we can have problems, but even here, it is not all fundamentally bad at all times. Consider the Hunt brothers' attempt to corner the silver market. These 'hoarders' were eventually destroyed, but everyone who turned in their physical silver at anywhere near the peak made out quite and very well...and it's worth noting, the people doing so were not the much more massively wealthy paper traders, instead being folks getting rid of grandma's silver, or old pocket change.

[K]

The defense of misers article you link to is incoherent. It's not even about misers.... it's about concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. It never even addresses the effects of taking that money out of circulation for the life of the miser, but simply talks about where that money ends up eventually. In short, it is terrible and I think it was not written by a real professor, but by a gold bug trying to justify hoarding.

Small colleges have terrible professors with stupid ideas. It happens.

I think the reason you are not finding anyone defending misers is because the very idea is moronic. Obvious ideas are explained in great depth because they are used as teaching tools for students of economics. Stupid ideas are not.

[DSMatticus]

@Parthenon, Doom and I have had a lot of lively debate on related topics, and he decided he did not want to have that lively debate anymore, and it's fairly time-consuming and frustrating anyway, so I can't say I mind.

That said, Doom, you really aren't responding to the practical side of the argument. Kaelik said it very well:

Miser: Hoards money, causing deflation, which hurts the economy, then spends money all at once, causing rapid unpredictable inflation that destabilizes economy, causing harm to economy.

This is probably the direction this conversation should go. Screw this morality, property rights crap. Society violates property rights all the time, when it's in the interest of society to do so. So the real debate is: does it strengthen society to 'curb' mising?

(And yes Doom, I'm leaving again after this - no worries. You seem as sick of the "property rights, property rights, property rights" crap as I am, I was just trying to helpfully redirect conversation to something more important. The morality/ownership crap is completely pointless. Posts like Kaelik's are far more worth debating.)

[Doom]

The defense of misers article you link to is incoherent.

Great point, that's exactly what was said in the rebuttal.

In short, it is terrible and I think it was not written by a real professor, but by a gold bug trying to justify hoarding.

I encourage anyone who cares to investigate this claim, to see what a great point it is.

I think the reason you are not finding anyone defending misers is because the very idea is moronic. Obvious ideas are explained in great depth...Stupid ideas are not.

You know, you're right. My books have literally thousands of pages on how to take an absolute value, and even my calcululus books only have a line or so on how to take a derivative. Good point!

Keynes was right, but one person in a million can find such discussion anything but incoherent.

[Username17]

@Frank: I'm not so sure about that. Doom appears to be arguing in this thread that deliberately decreasing the amount of revenue that a business receives in an attempt to force them to lower prices to attract sales to replace the lost revenue is a moral good. If we apply the principle of charity and assume he's not just wildly contradicting himself, it follows that Doom thinks that the guy opening a pizza shop down the street and devaluing your own pizza shop is actually doing the right thing. And it also follows that Doom is supporting a policy of intentionally trying to deflate our currency, which has the problems pointed out previously of making it so that only ventures that produce money faster than the rate of deflation are worth doing over nothing at all.

Doom's argument is incoherent. Because he is saying that someone lowering prices for you is a moral good. Leaving aside the issue that disinflation caused by hoarding is made up in spades by currency markets flooding when hoards clear, the reality is that this position makes no sense. Because every sale is a trade with two people in it.

So if someone makes a money hoard and lowers the general supply of dollars, it makes the cost of rice in dollars relatively less. But that also makes the relative cost of dollars in rice be more. The guy with dollars gets more rice, but the guy with rice gets less dollars. There is no moral good or moral ill possible from the price change alone unless you are an a priori supporter or detractor of rice farmers.

Try it the same way, only now the miser hoards rice: pushing prices of dollars down and pushing prices of rice up. Doom's argument is that this is still morally good even though this is literally and specifically simply the opposite effect on the same transaction. Because when he is talking about money hoarding he is only thinking about people who are selling money, and when he is talking about rice hoarding he is only thinking about people who are selling rice. But since there are also buyers on the other ends of every sale, the argument is nonsense.

-Username17

[K]

The defense of misers article you link to is incoherent.

Great point, that's exactly what was said in the rebuttal.

In short, it is terrible and I think it was not written by a real professor, but by a gold bug trying to justify hoarding.

I encourage anyone who cares to investigate this claim, to see what a great point it is.

Oh, they are employed as professors at a bullshit school I've never heard of. That doesn't mean that they have the respect of their peers or that they have ideas worth considering.

A lot of bullshit schools have professors like that. It's what makes them bullshit schools.

The fact that some other third-rate professor was polite enough to comment on a shitty paper about a stupid idea does not mean it is a credible idea.

I think the reason you are not finding anyone defending misers is because the very idea is moronic. Obvious ideas are explained in great depth...Stupid ideas are not.

You know, you're right. My books have literally thousands of pages on how to take an absolute value, and even my calcululus books only have a line or so on how to take a derivative. Good point!

Pretend that you are having an adult conversation.

A mathematical function is not an economic theory (though sometimes a economic theory can be described as a function). People wax poetic on inflation, on supply and demand, and on every other noted economic theory. They rarely write a lot about stupid ideas (though I will admit that supply side economics has gotten a lot of words devoted to it).

Seriously. The fact that no one is talking about this idea is because economists with any reputations at all at stake think it's stupid.

There are very few hidden geniuses in academia. These two are not among them.

[cthulhu]

What is doom's arguement? That inflation is bad?

Edit: Wow, the definition of saving in the first topic is total bullshit. Investment is different from hording. But he defines hording = saving = investment capital.

[hyzmarca]

The thing that Doom seems to be missing is that money is not real. It has no real value. It is an imaginary thing with imaginary value. Because it's value is imaginary it can serve a very important purpose as a placeholder to facilitate trade and do so very well.


Since the value of money is imaginary, any increase in that value is also imaginary. Even if the miser lowered the cost of goods he actually provided jack and squat in economic total value.

Worse than that, his actions actually result in a total net loss of economic value. You see, entropy happens. The third law of thermodynamics an inevitable bitch. Your giant vault full of money will, at the very best, cease to exist due to proton decay sometime several hundred trillion years from now. It probably won't make it that long.

The economy looses value due to entropy constantly and inevitably. Food gets eaten, tools rust, machines break down, and so forth. You can't stop it. You also don't want to stop it as that would mean that everyone would starve to death.

The actual value of an economy is equal to the actual value of all goods in that economy. As edible foods get converted to manure, vehicles get converted to tacky law sculptures, and so forth the economy looses value. Since an economy's value is equal to the value of all things in it, only way to actually add value is to make more things. We sometimes call the making of new things "production."

In order to make new things you need capital. Capital requires investment. Investment requires liquidity. And liquidity is what money is for.

Your miser adds nothing to the economy but he also subtracts nothing. Unless, of course, he hordes so much that he negatively impacts market liquidity. One man can't do that, but lots of men all scooping up as much money as they can just might.

Excessive speculation and hoarding hurts the market because it drives up apparent value artificially and often to unsustainable levels. We've seen that with the .com bubble, the comic book bubble, and the recent housing bubble.

Currency hoardingcan be just as bad, though for a different reason. As stated the value of a currency is imaginary. It's only real worth is as a placeholder to provide liquidity and make trading easier. You need to keep your currency in that sweet spot where you can actually make small discrete purchases and yet don't need a wheelbarrow full of bills to purchase a big mac. Hyperinflation is bad, yes, but so is hyperdeflation.

If you can buy a thousand hamburgers for a penny you're screwed because you simply cannot buy fewer than a thousand hamburgers no matter how prudent it would be. You can't eat a thousand hamburgers all by yourself, so you have to go through the trouble of finding a thousand people to share lunch with you or the extra just goes to waste. Of course, the fact that that penny was an entire week's pay doesn't help much, either.


The miser, if he is hoarding enough currency to increase its apparent value, is doing nothing but reducing liquidity. This is ultimately counterproductive.

Of course, smart governments know this and actively manipulate their currency pools to maintain an ideal balance, which makes hoarding currency only slightly harmful in the long term.

But, when we think of hording we think of the guys who buy all the toilet paper before a big hurricane and then sell it to the survivors for $100 a roll. In other words, profiteers who produce an artificial scarcity in times of high demand in order to line their own pockets. Not that it matters. Doom is wrong either way.

[tzor]

The thing that Doom seems to be missing is that money is not real. It has no real value.

If you start scratching that veneer you soon realize that nothing really has any value. The real value of anything depends on the relationship between the buyer and seller and the needs and desires at the moment. The value of anything could easily drop or rise depending on that one factor alone. Value is an abstract fuzzy concept. It isn't really "real."

[hyzmarca]

The thing that Doom seems to be missing is that money is not real. It has no real value.

If you start scratching that veneer you soon realize that nothing really has any value. The real value of anything depends on the relationship between the buyer and seller and the needs and desires at the moment. The value of anything could easily drop or rise depending on that one factor alone. Value is an abstract fuzzy concept. It isn't really "real."

Ultimately, the real minimum value of any product can be reduced to the simple expedient of its ability to stave off local entropy (though doing so always contributes to entropy elsewhere). Such a simplification does have the disadvantage that perpetual motion machines have infinite value, but since such devices are impossible it really doesn't matter.

At the very least, 2000 calories of food is worth 2000 calories. How you want to convert it into money is your business. There will most certainly be a dimensionless quality factor determined by edibility and taste, but the basic principle stands.

The economy is ultimately a giant entropy-moving machine, that shifts entropy from one locality to another constantly in an attempt to keep it as far away as is possible. The more wealth you have the more entropy you can move away from you.