Surplus wealth, not fiat money, is necessary for investment. Investment is just surplus wealth that is spent to increase future production rather than for the present. This surplus wealth can be invested by the people through their voluntary savings, or can be extracted by deceit and force with fiat money. Deceit because people don't realize that they can buy less than they produce because their money is worth less. And force because people are forced by legal tender laws to use and accept debasable money.
Ok James Madison, but we have 200 years of economic data and reasons for the fiat money. You're hand waving and claiming that it's an evil without acknowledging that it solves some pretty fundamental problems. People aren't poor now because their vast wealth has been decimated by inflation. It's because we are doing more with less and commoditizing the types of work they were doing.
> People aren't poor now because their vast wealth has been decimated by inflation. It's because we are doing more with less and commoditizing the types of work they were doing.
Efficiency in production makes society as a whole richer, not poorer. For example, programming computers to drive cars will ultimately enable a lot of taxicab drivers to do other things to help society that they couldn't do before because they were busy driving. When self-driving cars become widespread, society will benefit because it will have the same benefits of transportation that the taxicab drivers used to provide as well as the new goods and services the former drivers are now providing. The fallacy that machinery reduces wealth and employment is debunked in longer form by Henry Hazlitt in Economics in One Lesson. See http://www.fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.....
That's great but go to the rural south where people are dirt fucking poor. Average is an inane statistic by itself--just because in aggregate we are richer because we can afford a $200 meal in Nor Cal doesn't mean that wouldn't be a boon to feed a family at the bottom elsewhere.
