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Aug 2021

Money and inflation. Like.. I don't get it, we assign this arbitrary value to a dollar, and somehow it's decided and agreed upon that physically making too much of that currency makes it worth less?? Why??? Why can we not just keep it at the same value? I've received countless explanations and it still doesn't make sense to me.

A dollar is a dollar! Why dollar go less when still same on the paper??? Who invented this concept???? JUST KEEP IT THE SAME!

Languages with the verb in the end of the sentence.

Yes, German and Japanese, I am talking about you two, crazy handsome bastards.

Lol I speak French and I'll try to explain briefly-

Let's use the sentence 'I'm walking to school' in English

So the walk has three phases. Past present and Future.

.walked
.walk
.walking

In French that'll be

.Marché
.Marche
.Marche

I know in German it's the same- meaning the words 'walk' and 'walking' are the same.
(Gehen)

The only way to know which tense you are talking in- is to use different words to define the verb.

So in other words- you put the verb last.

Sorry if this makes no sense. I'm bad at explaining

It was actually more of a rhetorical question really, thank you :smile: unfortunately French doesn't cut it, it's not in the same league :grin:

In all honesty, bigots. Like, I can read about and comprehend their backgrounds, but it still escapes me how a person can make a choice to be a piece of sh*t to other people basing solely on their existence.

Almost everything haha

I feel like every day I learn something new.

To do something more specific. Almost half the tools in CSP. That program can do so much, and I use a LOT of tools in it very smoothly and without issue, but there's also so much more I have not even touched yet and sometimes when I try to check them out I get overwhelmed and really confused.

Why are popular songs for adults from the 1890s to 1910s now considered music for toddlers? Including ones that came from minstrel shows? I know in recent years people have been trying to remove some of the more racist ones from American public schools, but it is sort of weird that they were there in the first place.

Even when I was in school, we had a song book with Little Brown Jug, which is not really a song appropriate for kids.

I don't have a definite answer for this, but I think the question I would ask to someone who might know better is this: If, somehow, there was an invisible mint that magically put extra dollars into people's pockets, and we somehow managed to collectively keep that a secret from the world's governments...what would happen?

I'm pretty sure the concept of 'inflation' is purely arbitrary: if value/currency exists that the powers that be simply aren't aware of, there's no way they can factor it into their make-believe money games. This is why counterfeiting works perfectly fine on the small scale. ^^
The only issue that remains is whether or not the system can make them aware of it at some point...which is what the 'invisible mint' question should clear up. I think one of these things would happen:

A) No one notices/cares. Business owners would see their profits going up and decide not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Economists would see the increase in spending per capita, but chalk it up to some BS 'trickle down' program finally kicking in and call it good. =/ Everything will be hunky-dory until inflation slowly creeps back into the economy over time.

B) Somehow, people's increase in spending power would force a new level of capitalist evil to kick in and 'rebalance' the system. Maybe CEO's would collectively raise the price of literally everything so they can go back to bleeding people dry, or politicians would suddenly decide that taxes are good and we need a LOT more of them.

I'd bet on B. ^^; Although I'd love to hear an expert opinion.

Maybe it's because I've been exposed to Japanese for a while, but I don't see anything that strange about it. We do it in English too, actually...like when we say "Off we go", or "United we stand". It's not the normal word order, but no one blinks an eye when they hear those phrases.

Syntax is generally very flexible; I don't know of any languages (yet) where a little word order switching isn't allowed at least some of the time. ^^;

I think it's just cultural evolution of at work. When a song becomes so old that its original context, or even the meaning of the words themselves fall out of the collective memory...we'll take it if it sounds cute. That's all. ^^;

To be honest, I think a lot of popular/folk songs of that age and older tend to be "cuter" in composition because they were meant to be sung and interacted with...before the age of radio and records made passive listening more accessible to the public.
They are designed to be fun and catchy and easy to learn, and so it kinda makes sense that they get resurrected to be marketed to children.

Records were invented in 1877 and even then sound recordings predate that. Even movies would have a record playing in place of it's music. Thanks to YouTube and internet archives, we had the ability to listen to original records of some of these songs. And it is debatable if their are cuter. You are My Sunshine is about a depressed person loser their lover and crying, yet is has been appropriated into a love song. Or really weird ones like Go Tell Aunt Rhody.

And then you have stuff that is a bit more recent like This Land Is Your Land which was a protest song.

I can explain......and avoid using too many fancy words to overcomplicate the explanation :sweat_smile:

Is kinda crazy, because economics looks like pure math, but is a mix of sociology, psychology and math to understand the behavior of people trading and getting stuff.

Why people care about money?:

The value of money is the ability to make trading stuff and services easier, so instead of wasting hours trading chickens for pigs and pigs for cellphones and cellphones for a computer, we use the money represents value itself that can be traded for stuff.

Money itself is only useful as long as people are willing to accept it. When nobody cares about your money:

You only have to offer a bunch of pieces of paper.....

Differents currencies like dollars, yens and euros, between others are valued based on the perception of the world of their use and the credibility of the country when it comes to business.....

What is inflation: inflation is when money loses it's value. The value of things vary naturally based on how useful it is in the short and long term, how easy or hard is to get something, and the needs of the people buying.

When something becomes easier to get, it becomes less valuable. Maybe one dollar used to get you an apple, but now that getting dollars is easier, you may want more in exchange of the same apple.

Hope this helps, and if you have any questions feel free to ask.

When I said "cute", I meant...well, what I said: in composition. When it comes to people's enjoyment of music, the subject matter or even the lyrics are secondary, even when it comes to modern songs. What matters most is the sound.

Maybe it's composed in a major key, so it just sounds 'happy'. Or maybe the rhythm is bouncy, or the syllables are arranged in a fun way. Or maybe (especially when it comes to folk songs) there are lots of open, sustained vowels that just make you sound good when you sing them. Those are the things that attract people to songs long before they realize what they're about.

And this is a little beside the point, but the point at which something is invented and the point at which it becomes ubiquitous are two different things. Computers were invented decades before they were even available for the average person to buy, let alone a staple in everyone's homes.

@DokiDokiTsuna @DiegoPalacios
I should've known someone would try to explain inflation in "simpler terms" without me asking for an explanation. That and the fact that even with said explanation, my monkey brain still wouldn't understand. Guys, I'm fine not knowing. I like being upset at stuff I don't understand, leave me be lol

But if you absolutely must and can not resist.. Y'all are gonna have to explain it like I'm literally 5 years old if you wanna make progress. Baby up the language significantly lmao

One thing I absolutely cannot fathom is how some people can stand or sit completely still for a long period of time. I absolutely cannot do that haha

I think it's actually good that it doesn't :slight_smile: it's useful when you're a student, but when it comes to normal life it means you just stand up from your place less and move less and your body is in one position a lot, which is not good for it ^^