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11:49
17
Q: What happens if money vanishes if not spent?

ErikIt's a few years in the future and society in general is fed up with hoarders; people who have a lot of money lying around that they don't use. Motivated by the rule that money should roll, they overhaul the (by now fully digital) money-system and add these new rules: Any money you obtain has a...

sighs Well, guess I'm going to die at my desk...
It would lead to a new valuation as £1 with 1 year remaining would have a perceived value greater than £100 with 1 hour remaining...
The price of gold and precious metals would go even further through the roof
What happens if you donate (or are donated) money? or if you end up with "your" money after 3 or more exchanges?
Reminds me of the movie In Time. The economics of the system in that movie don't actually work, but the theoretical concept has some basis in which you can see what the goal was.
11:49
Would institutes be able to "hoard money"? If not how would health- and retirement plans and insurance companies work?
I feel like this question has no idea how banks or markets work...
Has lack of knowledge of how something worked ever stopped politicians from making new laws? The question is not necessarily "is this a good idea" but rather "what would happen if you do it anyway". I'm not really expecting this to go over well.
@mg30rg: no, rule also applies to institutes.
@Erik So people with terminal illnesses requiring an expensive (=more than one moth of salary) therapy, or more than one month of therapy - and making them unable to work - would automatically die?
@Erik maybe think about this in reverse, who are these people 'hording money' that these rules are going to effect? Remember that as soon as money goes into a bank/markets, it would effectively circumvent all your rules (you are not holding it, not selling/buying from a single entity etc). It might prevent me from holding a lot of physical cash... but the digital currency needed to do that would probably eradicate cash anyway.
Define money. Does debt also go away after a year? If not, how could that work? (debt creates money)
11:49
One key question is, does lending count as spending?
@Lostinfrance I would think lending counts as "trading money for money" therefore is forbidden or the returned money has the same lifetime then the given.
The buyback system is something you couldn't defeat. Can't sell to one and buy back? It will go through tweo hands first, then maybe three, maybe four etc. - However many are needed to keep the system rolling. As you cannot monitor buyback indefinitely this will eventually defeat the system. Incidentally, there is a simple solution to hoarding - tax possessions (possibly beyond a threshhold value so that people can save for retirement). Also tax possessions increasingly with worth, i.e. the more someone owns, the more tax that person has to pay. Key point: Ensure tax rules & laws are enforced
The 'Simple Loopholes' example doesn't work. Basically you are saying I can't pay sue 100 for 100 in order to get an extra year of money. What if I pay sue 100 for an hour of her time and she pays me 100 for an hour of my time? If not what if we bring in Paul and we each pay each other? What if you work for a burger joint, do they not get a year on their money because you choose to buy a burger for lunch? There is no way to differentiate between subverting the 'rules' and normal transactions without creating an example where the rules can be subverted.
I think the basis for this question comes from a misunderstanding of what money is, what money does, why there are wealthy and poor, and how the economy works. The first false assumption is that some people are poor because other people are rich (based upon the false assumption that the economy is a zero-sum game). Second, is that there are poor people because rich people won't spend their money. Third, is that money in "savings" has been pulled out of the economy and isn't doing anything. There are more problems with the basis of this question but these give an idea of what's wrong.
I'd argue that this happened in In Time
11:49
Occasionally, central banks have imposed a negative interest rate, which is sort of like this.
@Nate Actually, I would say that any time the interest rate is less than inflation, it is "sort of like this" because your money is losing value in the bank, even though you may have 'more' of it.
vsz
vsz
Probably a large black market is what happens, as in most societies where things were rationed and you couldn't use your money as you used to do before the rationing / inflation / collectivisation.
"Money is divisible, interchangeable, impossible to counterfeit, countable, verifiable, not subject to decay, rot, or rust, and it is rare. These are the properties of any money." –Chloe
RLH
RLH
Further reading, read up on the "Worgl Experiment" (see here: realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/…) and there is also an existing, demurraging cryptocurrency in use (see here: freico.in/about) as a modern example.
11:49
Any money you obtain has a one year lifetime, what if someone kept it for 6 months and paid someone, is it it a year for them or only 6 months for them -- or is it only 6 months if it comes back to you? Is the timer linker to the owner or the money itself?
to the same person but what if you organize a network of people exchanging fixed value trivial objects without knowing to whom they exchange it? how do you figure that these objects are indeed money?
So, if I buy something and I want to sell it, I would have to do so within a year to get money back? Maybe in this case people would start trading
I think you'd find the price of gold increasing fast. However, this would never happen of course, government exists to protect wealth and most of those in government are very "invested".
@Eric "Has lack of knowledge of how something worked ever stopped politicians from making new laws?" I've always thought lack of knowledge about how things work, was more of a requirement for politicians... it's what allow them to keep their ideologies.

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