1. Dan Dennett award and speech at AAI 07

Comment #87033 by upsidown on November 11, 2007 at 3:55 am

He wasn't talking about deflation - he said "hyperinflation". That's the very opposite of deflation.

You wrote: "The inflation results as the money 'created' by the credit system is 'destroyed' by the banks..."

You probably meant: "Deflation results as the money 'created' by the credit system is 'destroyed' by the banks..."

2. Dan Dennett award and speech at AAI 07

Comment #84385 by upsidown on November 2, 2007 at 12:41 am

I think someone should point out that Dennett is talking total nonsense when it comes to economics. Hyper-inflation doesn't happen because people lose their confidence in the currency, it happens when the central bank starts printing huge quantities of money; this devalues the currency and *consequently* people lose confidence in it. He totally misunderstands what is the cause and what is the effect in this case. Moreover, people were against going off the gold standard because they were aware that fiat money makes inflation very easy and thus makes the currency unstable - under the gold standard it is very hard to devalue the currency because to do that you would have to dig up large amounts of gold (during the gold rush there was some inflation but nowhere near the modern phenomenon). Dennett should probably read some books on economics before making any more economic analogies.