That said … it’ seems to me it’s a very rare thing for a country to go 100 years with stable money. The Romans had periodic devaluations, for instance. Yes, the English and the Americans have put up 200-year spans of monetary stability — but again these were with limited voter participation and hugely growing economies.

Still … I’m not sure we need to worry much about inflation for the next 50 years. It’s the wrong thing to worry about. You can have a little bit of monetary erosion and it is offset by increasing efficiencies of production. So, for instance, the real cost of airplane tickets is pretty low.

Where will truly stable money come from? I don’t know. I used to think gold was stable in real terms, but now I’m a little less sure given how much it’s outperformed the last few years. Bitcoin is NOT stable money because it’s always rising in value, which freaks me out.

So, it seems to me central bankers do about the best thing you can do, which is target bond yields, CPI and growth, all with an eye toward reasonably strong growth and reasonably low inflation. It’s worked out reasonably well. In emerging markets, monetary policy is now RADICALLY better than before the 1997-98 crash. I just got back from Jakarta, for instance, and the place has never looked better. That’s because the currency hasn’t been pegged for 15 years and central bankers have learned their trade, allowing interest rates to fall to single digits.

I wouldn’t bet the farm on no hard money. Nor would the actual farmers.

Somehow the world had both a gold standard and fractional banking [if I have to choose between the two, that’s so easy, but I’m not a speculator] until 1971, or 1933/1913 if you like, but it did exist.

We have an interesting situation under managerial progressivism of a electoral coaltiion of the the very weak [mostly by choice] and super-predators of government and finance. Both must be disenfranchised, the latter is disenfranchised by hard money. That’s why it’s unthinkable to speculators, and why it must happen.

The value of goods will meet the value of trustworthy money available, that’s something that can be trusted because it’s the story of man and money.

But the idea we’re going to get rid of fractional-reserve banking … well … it just isn’t going to happen.

Here’s something else to consider: It could be that the aging global population coupled with DECLINING population in some countries could bring a greater risk of DE-flation than inflation (see Japan). Also, with Third-World IQs going up, instances of hyperinflation become rarer.

From a Kondratieff perspective, the 2008 crash could be viewed as a one-off, every-fourth-generation event, not to be repeated until everyone who experienced this crash is dead.

Here’s another instance of two things not going together: the welfare state and stable money. Since you can’t get rid of the welfare state, you can’t have stable money. These are just the problems you get with 100% voter participation. To get to hard money you’d have to disenfranchise the weak.

Or they go out the fucking airlock. That can be on reality TV too.