Asklemmy

1454 readers

66 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Fiat doesn't work on a finite planet. Crypto has failed on its goals. What is a better way to be economically secure? (infosec.pub)

submitted 3 months ago by aviation_hydrated@infosec.pub to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Assuming the title to be accurate, what is a good way for the working class (90%+ of all humans) to save and succeed in this current environment?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Your core premise is, again, flawed. You want a good way of storing 'value'--which is a nebulous concept to start with--and then condition that premise on not using a fiat currency. Fiat currency is the best way of storing that value, and using that value at some point in the future. You could invest in stocks, bonds, money market accounts, or real estate, but that's all still based on a fiat currency of some kine.

[–] aviation_hydrated@infosec.pub 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Value is vague on purpose, since it means that something retains its "essence" tomorrow as good or better than today. Otherwise humans would not even be able to feed themselves since the only reason I can have food in the winter is because I have something to exchange for food from places that have figured out to grow or store food. It also would be a terrible place if we worked very hard today and our returns depreciated rapidly, because there will be times when we can't work

Sure, stocks and bonds have historically held some value, but is near impossible to out perform base inflation and has gotten worse the last 20+ years. Physical land and tangible long term goods have held up, but difficult to use for trade, hence currency

So you're just very pro fiat?

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm pro-fiat because it works. Crypto is okay, but it's too volatile, and has too many unknowns, to be a good investment vehicle. Crypto is only useful if you're actively buying things. Real estate is illiquid. Gold can't be used readily without being converted to a fiat currency; you aren't going to be able to convince any grocery store to accept an ounce of gold in place of currency. Treasury bills and bonds nearly always outperform base inflation, even if it's not by very much. If I'm reading things correctly, the current rate on short-term US treasury bills is about 2% over inflation. Longer term bonds tend to have higher yields. Both are lower than you could expect to get with a money market or index fund. And an index fund is going to have lower yield than a growth fund.

Almost everything out-performs base inflation rates over the long term, because if it didn't, no one would invest.

[–] aviation_hydrated@infosec.pub 1 points 3 months ago

Totally understandable and why change something that functions