Assuming the title to be accurate, what is a good way for the working class (90%+ of all humans) to save and succeed in this current environment?
what is a good way for the working class (90%+ of all humans) to save
Gonna sound like a dangerous lemmy communist, but vote for parties who want to raise wages and join Union to defend your rights. The main problem is that most working class struggle to finish the month without a negative bank account, once it’s solved, saving become possible again
But if their savings is in fiat, and its stated goal is loose value 2-3% annually, then the working class could never retire unless they make every economic investment choice correctly their entire life to have beaten inflation
Which isn’t always plausible to do in a country lacking social safety net, public healthcare, etc.
Yeah, hence why I’m looking for ideas
You sound like a decent social-democrat to me
Fiat can work fine on a finite planet, most money doesn’t even take up physical space anymore, just bits in an account ledger database. Ideally in the future governments will make sure their currency is backed or based on labor time, and nothing is technologically preventing that, nor is crypto-currency required for it.
The issue here is according to the Fed, the stakeholders get a 6% return, which is supposed to outpace inflation. So if the ones closest to the money printer get more every year, while the rest lose money due to inflation eating it, it doesn’t matter if it could theoretically work, it leads to an accumulation to the class system at the top while the lower classes must continually work forever since their savings are worth less every year
Buy jewelry, gold and silver coins, gemstones, rolls of silk, fine pelts, expensive spices like vanilla beans (avoid saffron though, its perishable), fine porcelains and maybe a rare painting or two. Put it all in a big wooden chest with a big iron padlock on it, and bury it in your backyard. Then draw some sort of cryptic map to it in case you die unexpectedly, or forget where your backyard is or something.
Also traps, lots of traps - something fancy like blowpipes shooting darts when an intruder steps on the wrong stone of a floor puzzle, maybe even a large an perfectly spherical stone that rolls towards intruders if the weight of your chest is altered.
There’s a series of documentaries about such things were a professor of Archeology - a Dr. Jones, if I’m not mistaken - illustrates their workings.
Good advice, thank you for sharing
Good advice, thank you for sharing
Eat the rich
Cannibalism leads to brain disease, so I’d advise against eating other humans. A common example of this is “mad cow disease”
Why would I assume the title is accurate? I’ve never heard this criticism of fiat currency before, since the whole point is that it doesn’t rely on on scarcity but on the stability of the issuing body. Can you explain, or is that outside the scope of this thread?
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The issue is those closer to the money printer get the biggest rewards (according to the US Fed’s description of their stakeholders) so as they increase their supply of currency they can accumulate more goods, outpacing the rest of the classes which have to suffer through inflation, which debases their money, keeps wages low and goods prices increase
In an evenly distributed and fully observable currency supply which can rise and lower as needed, there is no inherent issue with fiat currencies as long as the issuing party is reputable and wages increase at the same pace (up or down) with all prices
Yes, that sounds better. I didn’t mean to imply there are no problems with fiat currency, only that scarcity wasn’t one I’d heard argued.
What do you mean fiat doesn’t work on a finite planet? Current economic models certainly don’t work on a finite planet, but fiat was here before them and will be here after they are long gone.
what is a good way for the working class (90%+ of all humans) to save and succeed in this current environment?
There isn’t one. A big chunk of that class can do just fine and you probably already have good normative answers in that respect, but the current economic model is one that demands poverty. Even with all of the ridiculous developments in production we have, the available infrastructure even with the qualms we might have with it, and all the other things going for us that you might want to list, the closest that the current economic model has achieved to escaping its age-old need for having a sizeable portion of the able-bodied population unemployed is by slightly expanding that same portion and then having them sell themselves by the hour and minute in the Gig Economy. If you want that whole 90% of the population to all be able to do well, you need to change the system they are operating within.
Socialism. The problem here isn’t with currency, it’s with capitalism.
Haven’t you seen how every time this has been done it leads to dictators and coups and massive starvation?!
Yeah, it could be a faulty system or we just keep trying it in states that have enemies that don’t want it to succeed. I’ll have to do more research from more modern thinkers, because yeah capitalism isn’t sustainable without heavy regulation since humans are human…
I have socialism at home and fiat is still an issue
Do you have socialism at home? Because if you’re in Europe, no, you don’t. Social safety nets under capitalism is not the same thing as abolishing private ownership of the means of production.
Do you have fiat money at home? Because if you’re in the Eurozone, no, you really don’t, because you don’t have monetary sovereignty. What you have is a cartel of European private banks running the show, as Yanis Varoufakis and Michael Hudson will tell you. Europe’s Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy
How is a lack of national monetary sovereignty relevant to whether or not a currency is a fiat currency? The euro isn’t backed by anything, it’s as much a fiat currency as any other.
It is fiat money, it’s just that it’s not theirs, meaning their country’s government. It’s the unelected, undemocratic private bank cartel that has control of it.
Most central banks are run by unelected civil servants appointed by the head of government or a similar position/body. By this logic, the US dollar, Japanese yen, Chinese renminbi, and British pound equally do not belong to those countries. The ECB is just subject to the heads of 27 governments instead of one.
In the case of the US, the Federal Reserve is our “central bank,” and it too is largely the cartel of US private banks. But it doesn’t create new money—bank loan-created money notwithstanding—the Treasury does. And the system is intentionally made more complicated & opaque than necessary so that almost no one understands how it all works. So in practical terms you’re somewhat correct. But the US government isn’t as under the neoliberal thumb of the private banks as Europe is, at least when it comes to printing money for the military-industrial complex. Why the [US] Government Has Infinite Money
Looking at their post history, they’re
. Not even close to socialism lmaodeleted by creator
Without any sort of specifics, this is just a meaningless non sequitur. The equivalent of “nuh-uh!”
why have money when you could have a moneyless classless society
Just store infinite money tokens in a magic Orb. Lol. That’s quite easy
Disclaimer: I work in accountancy (Commercial Finance) but my advice should be taken with a pinch of salt.
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Diversify your investments. Have savings across multiple bank accounts so that the unlikely event where one bank fails doesn’t wipe out your financial wealth., and overall don’t put your eggs in one basket.
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Currently, the best ROI/passive income you’ll get is from corporate bonds. A cursory glance at the Hargreaves Lansdown website shows me quite a few corporate bonds and gilts that have a voucher rate (% return each year) of over 8 percent. Do bear in mind that a bond is a loan instrument where the ROI is based on both the maturity date (the date you get paid back plus interest) and the overall risk of the debt.
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Another good option is to invest in high dividend yield shares or ETFs. These can offer superior returns on investment to the interest you’d get from a savings account.
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Avoid day trading or swing trading unless you 100% absolutely know what the fuck you’re doing. Unlike what many YouTube ‘gurus’ claim, making a living off the stock market requires a high amount of starting capital to see any kind of tangible ROI, plus sophisticated stock trading software and knowledge on how to exploit trends.
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Same goes for penny stocks (i.e. the FTSE AIM All Share market.) You can make some rookie gains from it. Many of the companies listed on this index are oil/gas/mineral exploratory firms that are likely not going to see any kind of profit unless they strike it big, find a new oil well, lithium mine, etc and get the necessary contracts and investment to extract those resources. They’re penny stocks for a reason.
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Side hustles. For example, I have two friends that are karaoke DJs and they get gigs where bars pay them to host nights. Bookkeeping is another one, but you really are going to have a lot of competition in that respect, and you will probably need the right qualifications to do it.
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Screw crypto. At best cryptocurrencies are speculative assets that are scarce and expensive because the very nature of how their blockchains were designed make it take exponentially more effort to mine a new coin. At worst, they’re used to launder criminal proceeds (Monero is a good example of one where the blockchain is encrypted.) NFTs are even worse.
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The objection about a “finite planet” is about capitalism, not currency. A 100% communist system can still have fiat currency and function perfectly well, the two aren’t even related.
It’s capitalism you don’t like, not money.
Communism: A classless, moneyless society, based on the principle of “to each according to their needs, from each according to their ability”.
I think you’re conflating communism and socialism a bit.
Communism is a classless society where it is “from each according to their ability to each according to their needs”. Moneyless is often mentioned as well, but I don’t think it’s strictly necessary.
Socialism is a transitional stage on the way to communism, where the working class controls the state (having taken it from the capitalist class’ control), and it is usually described as “from each according to their ability to each according to their labor,” though when they say that I don’t think they really mean that those who can’t perform labor should simply starve.
I don’t understand why you think that guy was conflating communism and socialism. He claimed communism is moneyless, and in your response you said “neither is moneyless.” What’s being conflated?
And it’s worth noting that most definitions include, if not expressly the word “moneyless,” clauses about all property being held in common. And if there is no property, then there is equally no money, by definition (as money is simply a system for the valuation and exchange of property).
Yeah you’re right. Sorry, @[email protected]!
I didn’t say that neither is moneyless, only that I don’t think it’s strictly necessary for a society to be moneyless in order to be considered communist.
Then where is the communism and what’s the point of money? Seems like a capitalist society with a bit of socialism… see any European nation, really
You seem to think that money and capital are one and the same; they are not.
Do European nations have “a bit of socialism”? Has the working class wrested control of the state from the capitalist class? Have they abolished private ownership of the means of production? No, in fact they’re becoming more and more neoliberal, where the working class has less and less influence on the state.
It’s a question of the most stable thing to use to mediate value for exchange of goods and services, right? Fiat currency is just the choice of “the state” as a stabilizing force. Certainly it’s better than trusting the scarcity of rare metals, but eventually “just trust the state” will become a problem, and we’ll need to think about rebasing currencies. In theory, computational complexity isn’t a bad choice, but nobody has come up with a solution that actually functions well as a currency.
But I agree, the finite planet has nothing to do with any failings of fiat currencies, and only makes sense as a failing of the “number must go up” mentality endemic to capitalism.
Well the issue here is we’d need full observability of the fiat currency, since how I’ve seen it, no issuing party ever states “there are XYZ units of currency in rotation”. Maybe a not capitalist issuing party would be so transparent?
The only way for a working class person to have any financial security is to join or build a strong union with other working class people. The rich/powerful/elites will always be able to crush us if we don’t work together
Finding pockets of self sufficiency, or at least ways to prevent falling down to the bottom.
Universal basic income helps this by making sure everyone has at least enough to live on.
Homesteading and community gardens help this by making sure you at least have some basic amount of food available to you.
Building walkable cities helps.this by allowing you to avoid or reduce the expenses of a car.
Building resilient cities that leverage adaptive reuse help this by making it cheaper to start new small community businesses that keep money local.
The solutions aren’t in the system of money we choose, it’s in building small sustainable ways to provide for basic needs, even in a small way.
Good advice, thank you for sharing
What makes you think that “crypto has failed on it’s goals”?
I don’t agree with either of my statements, I’m just asking what people think of a new system. The current ones aren’t working for most living things on the planet in their current form, and it would be nice to have new thoughts
That’s a good question, because as a scam it has worked wonderfully.
Not OP, but as someone who was at one point excited by the potential of crypto, the ecosystem has moved more and more towards what it claimed to stand against initially
It’s supposed to be decentralized, but things like mining pools have lead to heavy amounts of centralization in block production. If we look at Bitcoin, for an example, we see that over 51% of block production is controlled by just two mining pools. That’s not limited to just Proof of Work mining either. Proof of stake sees centralization in staking pools as well. That’s only just looking at one aspect of the network
It has also not really been seen as a currency. People’s view of it as an “investment” which have the opposite qualities you really want to see. People are encouraged to hold it and never let go, meaning they won’t want to spend it which is adverse to its use as a currency. This has also lead to it being incorporated and dominated by the very financial systems it was initially supposed to move away from
I don’t want to type out an essay, but I could keep going on in other ways that’s not really lived up to its promises.
XMR is decentralized and its seen as a currency
There has been significant growth of crypto as currency, particularly in the developing world with use of USD pegged stablecoins. It remains the only practical solution to make online transactions privately or when alternatives have been censored, potential pitfalls notwithstanding.
Centralized control is a threat, but it’s one that is taken seriously, and by practical metrics crypto has been largely successful in defending its integrity here. Other related values measures worth looking at are credible neutrality, permissionlessness, and trustlessness, also basically areas it continues to succeed. You submit a valid transaction to a major blockchain, it’s getting included, even if powerful people would rather it wasn’t. Transactions that are illegal as per US sanctions are treated more or less equally to any other. Miners and stakers are not taking control of the money printer dial for their own enrichment. And there’s reason to think this will continue, because in a lot of ways control is a liability, and giving it up is valuable; “CEO of Bitcoin” is not a sane title to aspire to because it would make you the responsible party and valid target for all sorts of legal threats and obligations, and just having it would destroy the value of what you control.
That said, as a means for the economic salvation of the median person like OP seems to be talking about, it was never going to do that on its own, no one who thinks honestly about it would promise that, and anyone who did is full of shit. It’s just a new type of p2p money with some cool properties, that obviously isn’t going to be enough to fix the mess that is the world’s economic and political systems.
Well, this is a fair criticism… of Bitcoin :)
It’s supposed to be decentralized, but things like mining pools have lead to heavy amounts of centralization in block production. If we look at Bitcoin, for an example, we see that over 51% of block production is controlled by just two mining pools. That’s not limited to just Proof of Work mining either. Proof of stake sees centralization in staking pools as well. That’s only just looking at one aspect of the network
Centralization of mining pools (and mining in general) is indeed a serious problem. In Monero we now have p2pool which is totally decentralized. For now it’s just shy of having 10% of total hash power, so there is a long road ahead, but we are moving there. ASIC resistant RandomX also helps to ensure mining decentralization.
It has also not really been seen as a currency. People’s view of it as an “investment” which have the opposite qualities you really want to see. People are encouraged to hold it and never let go, meaning they won’t want to spend it which is adverse to its use as a currency. This has also lead to it being incorporated and dominated by the very financial systems it was initially supposed to move away from
I don’t think this applies to Monero, which is more or less the only currency used in DNMs.
What do the acronyms of a DNM mean?
Not the person you are replying to but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market
Thanks
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Proof-of-work has inherent centralization pressures due to economy of scale. You get more profit per hash per second of mining power when you’ve got a bigger mining operation. That’s not the case for proof-of-stake.
Just stop paying your bills.
