Cash can be exchanged for resources but if you burned $100 billion of cash or put it in a vault, there is no decrease in resources, amirite?

OP doesn't know what "medium for exchange" means haha

by Anonymous 8 months ago

I bet "catalyst" goes over their head, too

by Anonymous 8 months ago

There's also no "increase" in resources if you don't burn it. Money is just a motivator, an argument if you will.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Yes but there is a very large decrease in your access to those resources.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

How so?

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Well if you burned it you can't use it to buy resources now.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Society at large may not take too much of a hit. But you certainly will.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

As a matter of fact, everyone else who owned any cash would have gotten very slightly wealthier when you did that.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

No, because the amount of money that exists doesn't determine how much it's worth. (For most currencies)

by Anonymous 8 months ago

If that were true then the government would be dumb for levying taxes instead of printing money infinitely to pay their bills.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

It absolutely does see Quantitive easing/tightening

by Anonymous 8 months ago

OP don't understand money

by Anonymous 8 months ago

You don't understand money

by Anonymous 8 months ago

no u

by Anonymous 8 months ago

You really solved the puzzle

by Anonymous 8 months ago

There's also no increase in resources if you print money

by Anonymous 8 months ago

What is your definition of resource??? Burning money is absolutely burning a resource because it is one. Are you only thinking natural resources count as resources ?

by Anonymous 8 months ago

There is a change in the exchange value of remaining cash

by Anonymous 8 months ago

OP has discovered something meaningless. Incredible

by Anonymous 8 months ago

I'm sorry, I just don't understand. The decrease in resource part is what I don't get.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Man discovered quantitative tightening. Governments take money out and destroy it to either replace it or deflate the value of the dollar.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

You mean besides the paper and ink? And the money itself?

by Anonymous 8 months ago

It's more intuitive if you think of cash as permission to produce, rather than as a product. If you produce something of value without permission, you lose the opportunity to pass that permission on to someone of your choosing. At the day to day level it might seem like money is destroyed when it's spent, but it's not. It's circulated: someone uses the bit of permission you gave them to permit someone to do something else. Destroying 100 billion wouldn't change much, but destroying, say, half of the worlds money would cause a big slowdown in circulation until prices finished deflating. Deflation typically results in high unemployment (lack of permission to produce). In this way, destroying enough money really does result in less resources. (Too much money causes other problems).

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Well no, but the remaining dollars in circulation will be worth a little bit more If there were only 200$ in circulation, and you burned 100, the remaining 100 would double in value

by Anonymous 8 months ago

No but the remaining dollars in circulation are now worth more. Deflation. Yes please!

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Thanks billionaires for hoarding wealth and not using it

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Remember when Musk had to ask a loan to buy Twitter? That's because billionaries don't hoard wealth the way you think they do. Most of their networth is invested in many stuff.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Is it hoarding resources if the cash is invested? Maybe its controlling the direction of society to an extent but it doesn't seem to be hoarding resources.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

I mean except for the fuel source you used to burn the cash with

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Bank notes are merely vouchers..

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Well, yeah why would there be? There's no relationship between a valuable item and quantity of resources.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

That's called deflation baby

by Anonymous 8 months ago

If you didn't spend the money on the first resources you wanted, you can spend it on the second set of resources and it's basically likes it's free because it was just saved money

by Anonymous 8 months ago

If you burn it, the paper or plastic that the cash is made out of will disappear. There is a decrease in resources available.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

That's because capital is only the abstraction of labor (Karl Marx).

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Look at it this way. Cash is a resource. It can be exchanged for other resources. Burning doesn't affect other resources, but there is a decrease in resources overall (because cash itself is a resource).

by Anonymous 8 months ago

It's a medium of exchange.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

I agree but economists differ.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Economists would largely agree with OP.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

If cash is burned then other cash supply will be more valuable, basically deinflation because you are removing the supply.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

And if you put resources in a vault or burn them, there's no decrease in cash. What's your point?

by Anonymous 8 months ago

Technically M2 goes down. Do you know how that works

by Anonymous 8 months ago

I feel like if you burnt 100 billion you'd probably increase the value of everyone else's money and that would likely have a pretty powerful effect on resource markets.

by Anonymous 8 months ago

You could build an entire business by having proof of a billion in the bank yet not spend a cent of it. Welcome to the unfair world of "old money".

by Anonymous 8 months ago