Comment by electrograv
4 days ago
I had no idea Keynes had similar ideas, so I definitely should read his work (and economics literature in general).
I probably should generalize my thoughts though to say “expectation of economic growth” (instead of just “money printing”) seems to me necessary to yield “opaque market insanity”, as opposed to “transparent evil sanity”.
As a thought experiment, consider a (practically impossible) scenario where there is universally no expectation for long-term economic growth/contraction — regardless of whether it’s “real” or just monetary. Then by definition, a long term market simply cannot exist at all. No amount of wealth inequality can cause market insanity if there is no (long-term) market at all.
Wealth inequality in such a situation can still yield hoarding, domination, conquest, control, scams, manipulations, etc. But I wouldn’t call that “market insanity” so much as “evil sanity”.
In practice, the real impact of wealth inequality on the common people would likely be the same either way. However, without long term economic growth/inflation, the “sane evil” of the greedy wealth can no longer hide behind the veil of “market insanity”.
Humanity have always had markets, investment has been a thing for thousands of years, while economy growth wasn't something people expected until something around the middle ages.
You probably won't get a lot to support that idea on the literature.
Financial markets and capitalism has only existed for ~300 years, even if trade did happen since the start of recorded history.
The Romans had private ownership of land, mines and early industrial concerns (e.g., steelmaking) 2000 y ago. They had a legal system to protect the interests of investors. Also, professionals specialized in providing various financial services.
And capitalism with unlimited ability to print money has only existed for 53 years. And capitalism with actual unlimited money printing has only existed for 17 years. These aren't ancient systems or part of fundamental human nature; they're modern experiments.
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