The exciting news last year of the election of Javier Milei in Argentina received broad acclaim throughout the Bitcoin community and libertarian circles. Argentina's decades of hyperinflation should lead to a natural skepticism of excessive central bank money printing, and it is reassuring to see that politics can follow this basic logic.
Last year brought exciting news with the election of Javier Milei in Argentina, an event that was met with broad acclaim throughout the Bitcoin community and libertarian circles. Given Argentina's decades of hyperinflation, one might expect a natural skepticism towards excessive central bank money printing. It is reassuring to see that politics can follow this basic logic. This was a big win for the sound money movement, of which Bitcoin is a part. The election of the former TV commentator to head of state is a warning call to all central bankers everywhere, and a ripple of hope that democracies can in fact check the power of government bureaucrats.
Argentina and modern macroeconomics
Argentina also played an outsized role in the war of ideas battled in academic economics over the last 30 years. The giants of this field like Robert Lucas, Thomas Sargent, and Ed Prescott were all at the University of Chicago economics department.
Lucas offered the official critique of central bank stabilization policy in his Nobel-winning article “Expectations and the Neutrality of Money.” He makes a technical contribution establishing a new area of mathematics applied to macroeconomics, following in the footsteps of John Muth. Lucas was a master storyteller and his main idea emerges a simple parable even kids can understand.
Imagine a community of people at a circus who magically receive an extra $20 bill in their pocket. At first, everyone delights in the new money, and they buy more cotton candy, roller coaster rides, and hot dogs. New money now circulates throughout the circus, and yet the total supply of goods and services remains fixed. Over time, prices have only one way to go: up. There may be some adjustment time, but the increase in price is inevitable. And so purchasing power falls, and the general price level will rise.
But here's the rub: people are rational, so they know this will happen. Therefore, at the moment that everyone receives their $20 bill, they know in advance that everything will ultimately be $20 more expensive. And so it's impossible to fool them into spending more now. In economic terms, these rational expectations will not lead to changes in real consumption. This was a broad critique against Keynesian economics, which argued that increasing the money supply can in fact fool people. Keynesian economics gave a carte blanche to central bankers to manage the money supply to try to induce economic growth. But Lucas argued that such an exercise is a fool's errand. You can't trick people into changing their real consumption or investment if they are smart enough to form rational expectations about the future.
The rational expectations movement took hold in economics in the '70s and '80s at the freshwater schools of Carnegie Mellon, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Chicago as a pushback against the saltwater schools of Harvard and MIT. Lucas and Sargent often referenced the hyperinflation in Argentina as the prime example of central banking run amok. The University of Chicago at the turn of the century imported dozens of PhD students from Argentina who had lived this daily experience of hyperinflation where prices change not by the quarter or month, but by the week or day. And it's a sad tale that 25 years on, the same is true.
Rational Expectations and Bitcoin
It is a loss to the academy that Robert Lucas died, as he pioneered many of the early critiques against central banks. But how does rational expectation square with Bitcoin? This answer is subtle and nuanced. At one level, rational expectations are a strong critique of central banks, as is Bitcoin. So, they have a common enemy. They are both critiquing the poor choices that inevitably ensue from human beings managing their own money supply. For Lucas, aiming to stabilize the macroeconomy by tinkering with the interest rate every six weeks is a waste of time, and ineffective.
但是支持比特幣的論點更進一步。比特幣的發行時間表是對一種非常特殊的貨幣供應的強烈認可，這種貨幣供應是可預測且不可改變的。在理性預期中，金錢並不重要，因為人們太聰明，不會被金錢的變化所愚弄。對於比特幣來說，貨幣供應量確實很重要，每個人都必須提前知道供應量並且無法更改，這一點至關重要。所以在某種程度上，人們對理性有不同的假設。盧卡斯認為，人們太理性了，不會被錯誤的央行愚弄，而中本聰則假設（在他的協議的設計選擇中）人們沒有足夠的理性來完全適應不良的央行政策，這就是為什麼一個固定且不可改變的政策。利率的過山車般的變化，不斷地在寬鬆貨幣和緊縮貨幣之間轉換，對經濟中一個未知但重要的組成部分產生了深遠的影響：我們的人力資本的配置。對收益的追求促使個人投資者在股票市場上賭博，而年輕學生則從事交易職業，而不是在實體經濟中生產商品和服務。固定
新聞來源：
https://www.kdj.com/cryptocurrencies-news/articles/argentina-rational-expectations-movement.html
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