So I was listening to @theycallmedan the other day and he was talking about inflation. Playing devil's advocate on both sides (not really) about whether or not we should drastically reduce inflation on Hive in order to tighten our economic policy and stem the bleeding on this selling pressure.

Funny how that works, even when the price of Hive isn't even going down, just because Bitcoin/ETH/LTC are going up everyone is flipping their damn shit and trying to justify these ridiculous maneuvers as if they are going to help the price.

Dan comes to the obvious conclusion (that it's a bad idea), but at first I was confused about the conversation, why are we talking about this again? Then I saw this little gem:

https://leofinance.io/@aggroed/hive-inflation-reduction-thoughts-on-the-next-hard-fork

Oh what do we have here? A "top witness" talking about how we should reduce our overall inflation from 8% to 1%? Cool story, bro! That's sure to work!

Tell me, would you bet your life on it?

Would you bet your life on the "FACT" that lowing Hive inflation so drastically is going to make the token price go up? Because guess what? It's not. Stop talking.

Ultimate backfire recipe:

I think we should bring it to 1% per year and hold it there. .33% for witnesses, .33% for DAO, and .33% for post rewards.

Conflict of interest? How do you mean?

Oh okay I see... we shouldn't lower inflation for the witnesses or the dev fund, just for everyone else. Again, stop talking.

I can tell you've really done the math on this.

Hm, let's see... if we cut inflation from 8% to 1%, my vote power loses 87.5%... but wait... there's more! Because instead of 65% of inflation going to the reward pool that gets cut in half to 33%. So now my vote get's reduced by 93.75%. And there is no mention of the 15% we are giving to stake holders as APR. Again, I can tell you really thought this through.

Trying to nerf my 80 cent upvote to 5 cents? Get fucked? How about that instead?

What was the point of hardcoding the inflation schedule into the protocol if so many top level authorities would so blatantly disregard that whitepaper promise without even so much as a community vote?

I repeat:

One of the biggest founders of PEACE ABUNDANCE LIBERTY wants to cut abundance by 90%+, just as long as the witnesses don't lose their cut. Seriously, get fucked... how much more of a fool of yourself can you make? Stop running HiveEngine on a god damn toaster that crashes when you don't pay the renewal fees for steem-engine.com.

Scotbot: the little engine that couldn't.

Sad.

See this?

This is a visual representation of the Butterfly-Effect and Chaos Theory. Change a single variable and the entire system has a completely different outcome. To casually throw out the idea that drastically reducing inflation is the answer to all our problems is foolish and naïve. Coming from someone of such a high position of power makes it dangerous and a disgusting conflict of interest to the community.

No vote; no discussion; let's just do it.

How could it possibly backfire?

Hm, let's see... if you reduce my upvote from 80 cents to 5 cents, I'm going to power down all my stake for starters.

Inflation is amazing.

Inflation promotes growth and increases money velocity and volume. To make the claim that inflation is a problem is to claim that the people in control of that inflation are the problem (this is why fiat currency is shit). "Stakeholders shouldn't control inflation, because witnesses and upvoted devs are more trustworthy"? Please. Get real.

Even if it was a good idea to lower Hive inflation, now would be the absolute worst time to do it. We have suffered multiple crippling defeats. We have airdropped millions of tokens to users who are looking to exit. We have been dealing with a negative feedback loop for 3 years, and right after we've paid all our dues somehow it's a good idea to change things up right when that negative feedback loop is about to flip? NO.

Because when the price starts going up... what happens? Upvotes increase... and then people want to power up... and then there's a liquidity crisis and the price bubbles. Take away inflation... no more feedback loop. If you want to take it away you take it away at the top of the bull market, not at the bottom of the bear market.

Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Fear is being used in an attempt to centralize the power of this network.

"Don't worry, we'll protect you. We can wield this power better than you can wield your own freedom."

The irony is that the same libertarian anarchist antigovernmental characters on this platform are the ones trying to pull the standard moves out of the imperialist playbook. Good thing we're on a transparent network, eh?

Broken Record

https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@edicted/bitcoin-is-the-stablecoin-we-need-to-print-more-inflation

I hate saying the same shit over and over again... but really... why does everyone just talk about how they are going to fix everything by turning a few nobs on this play pen? How about you go out and build something of actual value instead of trying to juke the system we have? THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. LEAVE IT ALONE AND BE PATIENT.

If it were up to me I would INCREASE inflation on Hive to 10% indefinitely. Even if Hive got devalued by 10% every year due to the 10% inflation... it wouldn't matter. Why? Because most of that inflation is "devaluing" the stake of the people who control it. Ergo, nothing is being devalued at all. Would you rather have 100 coins worth $2 each, or 200 coins worth $1 each? Who gives a shit how many arbitrary units you have? Get over the BS unit-bias already.

And of course, Hive would not get devalued by 10% every year, because that inflation creates growth and increases money velocity and promotes decentralizion and yada yada yada. Inflation is awesome. Too many Bitcoin maximalist ideas are out there hiding the truth of the matter. It's not about reducing inflation, it's about who controls it and the trustworthiness of their character. By continuing to allow all stake holders to wield quite a bit of inflation we get a nice spread.

Conclusion

It's not very professional to go on such a tirade... but if I was being paid for being nice and proper I'd of made $0 so far me thinks. It's one thing for random users to come forward thinking we need to reduce inflation, but when it comes from top brass looking to funnel it directly into their own pockets that's another matter entirely.

You know what I have never seen, ever? A top witness saying we should lower witness inflation or increase the number of consensus witnesses. What a novel concept. I wonder why no one's ever thought of it before. Not saying its a good idea, just that these other flagrant power plays are transparent and offensive.

Put your money where your mouth is.

If you're so sure that lowering inflation is a guaranteed path to the moon, then why are you making sure that witnesses are also getting paid more than x3 more? Like... seriously.

No one wants to take responsibility for getting dumped. If you want to blame someone for Hive price action: blame yourself. I do it all the time. I've been here three years and I feel like I easily could have brought enough value to this network to justify a top 20 ranking on the witness list. Alas, here I am... zero dapps in. Too bad, so sad. Get over it.

Perhaps rather than create some pump/dump shit-token we should be more focused on burning the network's HBD debt to generate value. Or perhaps we'll just carry on hiding behind this illusion of abundance mindset when our actions clearly point to one of scarcity. Fake it till you make it, amirite?

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