Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[SimonNZ]

Trump hits Ann Coulter over recent criticism: 'Maybe I didn't return her phone call or something'


Trump rips into Fox News over shutdown, border wall coverage

"President Trump on Sunday blasted a pair of Fox News reporters over their coverage of the border wall negotiations, claiming that they have "less understanding" than journalists at "fake news CNN & NBC."

"Never thought I'd say this but I think [John Roberts] and [Gillian Turner] have even less understanding of the Wall negotiations than the folks at FAKE NEWS CNN & NBC!" Trump tweeted, referring to two of the news network's  top correspondents.

"Look to final results! Don't know how my poll numbers are so good, especially up 19% with Hispanics?" Trump continued, referring to a poll published earlier this month that found a growing number of Latino adults approved of Trump's job performance. "


speaking of poll numbers:

Trump's first-2-years approval rating is the lowest ever recorded

"A new poll from ABC News/Washington Post shows Trump with an average approval rating of 38 percent during his first two years in office. That is 23 points lower than the average approval for the 12 presidents before him, 61 percent, going back to 1945 — when the first approval polls for U.S. presidents were conducted.
The latest poll also marks a record low for Trump himself, not just all U.S. presidents in the history of polling. His January approval rating was 37 percent, down 4 points from October and down one point from his previous low in December.

A large majority of Americans, 58 percent, disapprove of Trump's job performance.

Trump has never had the support of a majority or even a plurality of voters. His approval has never risen above 50 percent, while his disapproval has remained at 50 percent or higher for the bulk of his presidency."

[drogulus]

1)All those observations of barterless or barter with money trading were made in a world where money exists and is known. So they are useless in attempting to describe an economy that existed prior to money.

2) There is actually evidence in Mesopatamian and Egyptian texts (and also the Biblical narratives) of an economic world in which barter was used, and in which state issued money did not exist. People did use standardized amounts of metal or other goods, but those were not coins or money issued by the government.

     Your first point is obviously correct. No one objects to the existence of barter after money. Your second point is too vague to be of use. These societies had money very early and what people used in addition to money is interesting but no thesis is advanced that people didn't value gold and silver, only that it could not be a unit or pay a tax without an authority to give it money status. It's a contingent fact that states did on occasion find metals useful to produce money objects and that people find metals useful whether the state treats these as money or not.

     

[drogulus]

   Money preceded all other forms of literacy. The earliest records we have, before any other written language, are about money.

[JBS]

   Money preceded all other forms of literacy. The earliest records we have, before any other written language, are about money.

No, they are records of counted objects.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_numeral_systems

The earliest known writing for record keeping evolved from a system of counting using small clay tokens. The earliest tokens now known are those from two sites in the Zagros region of Iran: Tepe Asiab and Ganj-i-Dareh Tepe.[6]

To create a record that represented "two sheep", they selected two round clay tokens each having a + sign baked into it. Each token represented one sheep. Representing a hundred sheep with a hundred tokens would be impractical, so they invented different clay tokens to represent different numbers of each specific commodity, and by 4000 BC strung the tokens like beads on a string.[7] There was a token for one sheep, a different token for ten sheep, a different token for ten goats, etc. Thirty-two sheep would be represented by three ten-sheep tokens followed on the string by two one-sheep tokens.

To ensure that nobody could alter the number and type of tokens, they invented a clay envelope shaped like a hollow ball into which the tokens on a string were placed, sealed, and baked. If anybody disputed the number, they could break open the clay envelope and do a recount. To avoid unnecessary damage to the record, they pressed archaic number signs and witness seals on the outside of the envelope before it was baked, each sign similar in shape to the tokens they represented. Since there was seldom any need to break open the envelope, the signs on the outside became the first written language for writing numbers in clay. An alternative method was to seal the knot in each string of tokens with a solid oblong bulla of clay having impressed symbols, while the string of tokens dangled outside of the bulla.[8]

Beginning about 3500 BC the tokens and envelopes were replaced by numerals impressed with a round stylus at different angles in flat clay tablets which were then baked.[9] A sharp stylus was used to carve pictographs representing various tokens. Each sign represented both the commodity being counted and the quantity or volume of that commodity.

[Zeus]

Drogy has trained himself to view reality through the prism of his mental model / ideology. 

Which means once again we are discussing the merits of a theory which obviously departs from reality.

Why not discuss reality?

For those interested in reality, it should be noted that the money I use every day is issued by a bank, not a government.  And 99% of the time I use money as a medium of exchange, not as a way to pay taxes.  Those are basic facts which should be given their due, not discarded as irrelevant shadows on the wall of some higher truth. 

Drogy's theory requires him to downplay/ignore banks and money's origin as a medium of exchange in order to elevate the supposed role of government as the creator of money.

Sigh.  In order to understand you must first describe – accurately. 

No one needs another unrealistic model.  Use an unrealistic model to argue a point quickly and clearly if you must, but then return to reality.  Please.

[drogulus]

No, they are records of counted objects.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_numeral_systems

     That's a good start. Counting did precede accounting, but not by much, unless you imagine counting had no function. If it had function, it would be resource and production management. It would be who gets and gives what. It would be money.

     It would be silly to start money with banks because banks use money. Banks write loans on state money, not "Bankofamericas". They are not issuers of the dollar.

     

[drogulus]

    I fail to understand how these historical facts don't indicate what I say, even though I rely on the same facts as presented above. Of course early counting systems begat money. You needed to keep the records and the function is implicit. All you need to do is evict the notion that money was money stuff, and recognize it was the social tool your evidence supports, and you will have arrived at my position with very little help from me.

[Karl Henning]

"Getting charged with lying again and again, Roger Stone learns the hard way. "Most people wouldn't perjure themselves in easily detectable ways to Congress and threaten a talkative witness in writing. But Roger Stone isn't most people. Roger Stone is a character lovingly crafted by Roger Stone. And now Stone is facing prison time because he couldn't seem to grasp the distinction between a television persona and a prudent response to a federal investigation." Neither does Trump."

[drogulus]

     An Obscure White House Staffer's Jaw-Dropping Trump Tell-All

     Let me make a semi-obscure point about the rolling revelations about the WH in books that have been published. I take it that some of the books are "bad books" and others are "good books" by the estimation of estimators. I don't know, I don't read them, or need to. My point is that nothing from the books is refuted. Even the bad books are not wrong, or we'd know. There is no contesting, no counterstory put forward. Wouldn't there be? I think there would be real substantive objections if there were any ones available, ones that were not lies that might add to evidence of WH misdeeds.

[JBS]

     That's a good start. Counting did precede accounting, but not by much, unless you imagine counting had no function. If it had function, it would be resource and production management. It would be who gets and gives what. It would be money.

     It would be silly to start money with banks because banks use money. Banks write loans on state money, not "Bankofamericas". They are not issuers of the dollar.

     

It hit me last night after I signed off.  You, in a quite literal way, do not understand what the meaning of "money" is.  With the result that when you say something like

    I fail to understand how these historical facts don't indicate what I say, even though I rely on the same facts as presented above. Of course early counting systems begat money. You needed to keep the records and the function is implicit. All you need to do is evict the notion that money was money stuff, and recognize it was the social tool your evidence supports, and you will have arrived at my position with very little help from me.

you make no sense.  Unless you mean that sheep and goats were the prehistoric form of money.  In which case you're admitting that people bartered before "money" appeared.

Or to approach it in a more verbal way, if money is the medium of exchange, than by necessity it did not develop until after that which is is the medium of, exchange, developed.

[drogulus]

Or to approach it in a more verbal way, if money is the medium of exchange, than by necessity it did not develop until after that which is is the medium of, exchange, developed.

     No, it's way simpler than that. Before anything can be used as money you must have a money concept, and no, sheep and goats didn't have to wait for money concepts to be useful, but people would not use them as money before they had a money idea. The confusion rests on whether objects "were" the idea of money all on their own or if people had to organize themselves and count whatever was important to them before they could arrive at the idea. The idea of money is more important and clearly prior to anything used for it. It must have been a counting record first. So if we find that the first writing we can decipher was the kind of counting I describe, the next step, that this was the invention of money, is inevitable. After that, if it's useful, physical objects will find a use. A use for what? A use for money.

[JBS]

     No, it's way simpler than that. Before anything can be used as money you must have a money concept, and no, sheep and goats didn't have to wait for money concepts to be useful, but people would not use them as money before they had a money idea. The confusion rests on whether objects "were" the idea of money all on their own or if people had to organize themselves and count whatever was important to them before they could arrive at the idea. The idea of money is more important and clearly prior to anything used for it. It must have been a counting record first. So if we find that the first writing we can decipher was the kind of counting I describe, the next step, that this was the invention of money, is inevitable. After that, if it's useful, physical objects will find a use. A use for what? A use for money.

Now I see what you are trying to say, which boils down to the idea that bartering was just a form of trading money.  All you doing is trying to deny something by verbal play of words.

[Karl Henning]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/28/boar-der-security-denmark-builds-wall-keep-out-german-swine/?utm_term=.716dff9c9149

[The new erato]

Yes,and  the german swines will have to pay for it.

[drogulus]

Now I see what you are trying to say, which boils down to the idea that bartering was just a form of trading money.  All you doing is trying to deny something by verbal play of words.

     That doesn't sound familiar. Money was a record before currency evolved. Currency then took on unit values money established. An authority decides the units, a weight of something, designates an acceptable token and off we go.

     So what do we have so far?

     1) The record shows that everywhere you look today you see a money economy, including tribes that live the way people did 5,000 or more years ago.

     2) Often you find barter is conducted, too.

     3) Nowhere is a barter economy found.

     People looked and looked. They wanted, some of them, to find one. It didn't seem possible that Adam Smith would be wrong, or that Aristotle would be wrong.

     Was it different in the past? Were past primitive societies doing it backwards and skipping money to invent a barter economy? Let's look for them. It will be a triumph to find one.

     A word of caution is in order, though. The idea that an entire economy of people organized enough to keep records that counted everything that mattered to them but chose to make barter the basis for the economy and not just personal exchanges where money is unavailable or its use is frowned on, is going to be hard to accept without big time evidence.

[Zeus]

For what it's worth, essentially all international trade prior to about the mid nineteenth century was conducted by barter.  A ship would load up with one commodity, sail to its destination, and exchange it for another commodity to take back home.  What we now call commodity moneys – ie. gold and silver – were part of the barter system, but not necessarily the dominant form.

I'm not exactly sure when it became generally possible to pay for international trade with modern money – i.e. via bank account balance transfers.  Presumably only after telegraph lines were laid.  Before that, the Rothschilds and a few other early banking houses facilitated international transfers of money – via letters between relatives in different cities carried on horseback – but only occasionally and only for special (e.g. royal) clients.

If anyone knows any good books on the subject, I'm all ears.  I'm sure I have a few books myself that cover the topic at least in part, but I haven't looked recently.  Anyway, it's an interesting history, rich with examples of diverse barter systems and monetary systems. There might even be a few examples of moneys created by governments, though these were certainly rare.

[drogulus]

     Barter in or between money economies is not controversial. You raise a good point, one that I neglected to make, that the frantic search for a barter economy is related to the quest to make precious commodities retroactively money and not a commodity for nonmoney and money use. The quest has failed, no one denies the value of gold in money terms or other terms. It's the value of the money idea, one of the greatest ideas in prehistory, that is being denigrated.

     Palatial Credit: Origins of Money and Interest


      It's an expert view. It's long and detailed.

[JBS]

For what it's worth, essentially all international trade prior to about the mid nineteenth century was conducted by barter.  A ship would load up with one commodity, sail to its destination, and exchange it for another commodity to take back home.  What we now call commodity moneys – ie. gold and silver – were part of the barter system, but not necessarily the dominant form.

I'm not exactly sure when it became generally possible to pay for international trade with modern money – i.e. via bank account balance transfers.  Presumably only after telegraph lines were laid.  Before that, the Rothschilds and a few other early banking houses facilitated international transfers of money – via letters between relatives in different cities carried on horseback – but only occasionally and only for special (e.g. royal) clients.

If anyone knows any good books on the subject, I'm all ears.  I'm sure I have a few books myself that cover the topic at least in part, but I haven't looked recently.  Anyway, it's an interesting history, rich with examples of diverse barter systems and monetary systems. There might even be a few examples of moneys created by governments, though these were certainly rare.

Letters of credit and bills of exchange were in widespread use throughout Europe by the 18th century, but they began in late medieval  times with, IIRC, the Italians.

If Drogulus insists on putting the cart before the horse, that's his problem. All he is really doing is trying to redefine barter. But there is a large amount of evidence to support the classical idea of barter before money being something that actually existed.

[JBS]

     Barter in or between money economies is not controversial. You raise a good point, one that I neglected to make, that the frantic search for a barter economy is related to the quest to make precious commodities retroactively money and not a commodity for nonmoney and money use. The quest has failed, no one denies the value of gold in money terms or other terms. It's the value of the money idea, one of the greatest ideas in prehistory, that is being denigrated.

     Palatial Credit: Origins of Money and Interest


      It's an expert view. It's long and detailed.

Having read it, it clarifies the matter.  What you and your experts call commodity money everyone else calls barter. All you are doing is trying to define money into existence and define barter out of existence, but you can't escape the fact that early societies traded commodities for other commodities. IOW, they bartered.

[BasilValentine]

Letters of credit and bills of exchange were in widespread use throughout Europe by the 18th century, but they began in late medieval  times with, IIRC, the Italians.

If Drogulus insists on putting the cart before the horse, that's his problem. All he is really doing is trying to redefine barter. But there is a large amount of evidence to support the classical idea of barter before money being something that actually existed.

I would imagine barter was happening for many millennia before anyone had a conception of money, among and within clans of hunter gatherers with different resources and skills sets. How could it be otherwise?