[atweiden]

Another option is to pump the brakes.

> “As the lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus in India continues, pollution levels across much of the country have dropped sharply. Now some residents in northern India say they can see the snow-capped Himalayas 200 kilometres away for the first time in 30 years.” [1]

If we had a global deflationary economic system, the incentive to invest in capital and engage in consumerism would dissipate. People would work less, because there would be less reason to work. Without work, people would have less reason to travel. Pollution would drop accordingly.

Under a deflationary economic system, a touch over $480,000 in savings would yield an effective “UBI” of $1000/mo [2].

Once adopted by the entire world, a global currency of fixed supply controlled by computer algorithms could achieve this. Humans would voluntarily work less and pollute less.

[1] https://www.sbs.com.au/language/english/audio/himalayas-visi...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31759685

[jljljl]

This works really well if you have $480,000 in savings, but it doesn't really work if you have 0 savings, or debt.

Deflation, with its disincentives to investment or economic growth, would reduce employment and real wages. Most Americans would lose their jobs or see their wages cut as the economy ground to a halt. Anyone with debt would likely be trapped working for the rest of their life at subsistence wages, never making enough to pay their debts off.

At that point, you'd need an entire overhaul of the economy, not just an algorithmic monetary system

[noduerme]

So? What about the cliff? Isn't that more important than getting people out of debt? It's this kind of thing that makes reasonable people who do want to avert climate disaster wonder whether the cliff analogy isn't just a rallying cry to push an agenda of nationalization and redistribution of private property. In other words, just because we do swerve doesn't mean the socioeconomic upheaval is likely to work out in favor of people who want to eat the rich, or anything resembling justice either. More likely what will happen is everyone will get poorer in a somewhat linear fashion, meaning the rich will still be rich and the poor will be below water.

If the only way to cure the climate crisis is to prevent people from flying having tchotchkes, how naive is Corey to think that the rich will somehow stop those things before the middle class and poor do?

But it's dangerous and flawed to mix climate targets with social justice targets for this very reason. Hinging the swerve on a social/economic revolution means it will never happen.

[atweiden]

Hyperinflation of the old currency would erase all debt denominated in it as we shift to a global deflationary economic system.

Once in the deflationary environment, the cost of borrowing would be higher, and there would be less reason to work, consume and invest. Hence, there would be less incentive to take on debt.

Many things are preferable to having 0 savings and a planet on fire.

[imtringued]

>People would work less, because there would be less reason to work.

You mean most of the work will be piled up on a handful of full time employees which leaves a huge percentage of the population unemployed and destitue and ready to rebel against the system.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKd6WURBqOY

>Under a deflationary economic system, a touch over $480,000 in savings would yield an effective “UBI” of $1000/mo [2].

What if people decide to have less children to protect them from the rent seeking conducted by the rich families that inherited wealth over centuries? What if the above unemployed people die from starvation and are no longer there to guarantee the value of your money?

>Once adopted by the entire world, a global currency of fixed supply controlled by computer algorithms could achieve this. Humans would voluntarily work less and pollute less.

Voluntarily? Are you sure about that? Aren't you just trying to make some transactions illegal by forcing a less effective medium of exchange? Also we already tried this and it failed not only with the gold standard but also with Bitcoin.

If it were that simple the Roman empire wouldn't have collapsed. No currency in history would have collapsed.

You are also discounting the fact that deflation encourages corruption as gaining money through war, crime, trafficking, environmental destruction, political bribes becomes highly profitable as once you are locked in and got a lucrative 10 million dollars you will earn more from those savings than you can earn from being an upstanding politician. Hence there is an intensive pressure to destroy physical and social capital for a share of the fixed supply currency.