Time Preference

the wealth gap isn't widening because of capitalism it's widening because asset owners benefit from monetary expansion while wage earners suffer from currency debasement the cantillon effect isn't a market failure, it's a policy feature

they called it stimulus it was just a loan from the future at an interest rate the future didn't agree to the future is now here to renegotiate

the man who builds a business to pass to his children has a lower time preference than the man who builds a business to sell to private equity the monetary system determines which one is more rational currently private equity wins this upsets me

fiat money is the industrialization of impatience

every great university was built by people who would never attend it every great legal system was written for people not yet born high time preference produces none of these things

a civilization builds for the ages when it believes the ages will come inflate the currency and you inflate the uncertainty about whether the future is worth building for the planning horizon collapses not from pessimism but from rational calculation

they say young people don’t save because they are irresponsible young people don’t save because the monetary system charges them rent on the future while inflating away the present the irresponsibility is in the system not the saver

the green movement wants to save the planet for future generations while supporting the monetary system that makes future generations an abstraction nobody plans for

every pension crisis is a time preference crisis the promise was made by politicians with a four year horizon the liability lands on people not yet born this is institutionalized high time preference written into law

the monastery had a time preference so low it copied manuscripts by hand for centuries the printing press was invented by people with a time preference low enough to spend years building it neither would exist in an economy that punished saving

the most revolutionary thing bitcoin does is not the decentralization; it is the fixed supply a fixed supply makes saving rational rational saving lowers time preference lower time preference rebuilds the planning horizon that fiat destroyed

they borrowed from the future to fund the present and called it investment; the future is now arriving with the invoice the time preference of the bond market is no longer as patient as the fed required

a high time preference society votes for politicians who promise things now and charge them to the future the future doesn’t vote this asymmetry is the entire story of modern fiscal policy

climate hysteria is just another symptom of high time preference

sound money rewards patience fiat money punishes it the culture downstream of each monetary system reflects this incentive with perfect consistency

the person who plants a tree in whose shade he will never sit has a time preference so low it looks like love fiat money makes him look like a fool

the keynesian school ignores the simple praxeological axiom that humans act their short run / long run analyses are perpetual bullshit how can you mathematically decide how humans will act every single time complete nonsense

they inflated away the savings of an entire generation and then complained about young people not investing in the future

high time preference is not a personality trait it is what happens when the currency punishes saving and rewards spending the fed manufactures high time preference at scale

the austrian understands that debt is not wealth it is future consumption brought forward a society that mistakes debt for wealth is consuming its future and calling it growth

every regulation is a price control on behaviour price controls produce shortages of the regulated behavior and surpluses of the unregulated alternative the regulator is always surprised by this substitution effect