If the asteroid is controlled by a monopolist, he will prevent this disaster. If only the monopolist were a company owned by all the people (eg the government).
This also reminded me of Mali’s great emperor Mansa Musa (14th c) who gave out some much gold during his pilgrimage to Mecca that it caused the value to collapse in Cairo that took years to recover.
I think what these types of analyses omit is the time scale between "very few have these resources" and "the resources are spread out among everyone". If only a handful of people (even several thousand, in a large company) have access to some effectively infinite reserve of resources, those resources still hold much of their trade value when initially exchanged to outsiders. It's only once those resources have become diluted into the population that their trade values plummet.
So, too, with the government printing money. That money still holds its nominal value for the first exchange which puts it into the economy; the government derives maximum benefit from that exchange. It's once the money has filtered throughout the economy and people can compete for scarce goods by offering to pay higher amounts that the unit value of the currency has diminished. One of the more insidious aspects of inflation, in my opinion.
If the asteroid is controlled by a monopolist, he will prevent this disaster. If only the monopolist were a company owned by all the people (eg the government).
So you're saying we're doomed?
Economics truly is the dismal science.
I like to consider ourselves the social science version of Myth Busters!
This also reminded me of Mali’s great emperor Mansa Musa (14th c) who gave out some much gold during his pilgrimage to Mecca that it caused the value to collapse in Cairo that took years to recover.
brb while I go dig through wikipedia for the rest of the day
I think what these types of analyses omit is the time scale between "very few have these resources" and "the resources are spread out among everyone". If only a handful of people (even several thousand, in a large company) have access to some effectively infinite reserve of resources, those resources still hold much of their trade value when initially exchanged to outsiders. It's only once those resources have become diluted into the population that their trade values plummet.
So, too, with the government printing money. That money still holds its nominal value for the first exchange which puts it into the economy; the government derives maximum benefit from that exchange. It's once the money has filtered throughout the economy and people can compete for scarce goods by offering to pay higher amounts that the unit value of the currency has diminished. One of the more insidious aspects of inflation, in my opinion.