But.. we could reference "a rise in the general price level caused by an imbalance between the quantity of money and trade needs" [1] (Cleveland Fed; On the Origin and Evolution of the Word Inflation).
On reverting to to 'old' meanings, Adam Smith's The real price of everything...is the toil and trouble of acquiring it isn't inconsistent with Marx as long as toil and trouble is, in the end, people. Or perhaps myths of old beliefs that there was no sectoral, geographical nor temporal stickyness to anything. It's as if there were no sudden and unexpected changes in prices during times of a roughly constant amount of specie backing 'prices' that make 10% look like a storm in a teacup, though was it ever 1:1 or was hope to have the means to provide backing more accurate; specie based currency has a long history of volatility over the world, from West African empires to Asia.
We could even go farther... to say that inflation, a change in prices, is caused by expectations of inflation; that the supply of money is driven by the demand for money... and that gets us to whether demand is liability or asset driven which may be full circle.
I just want a word for what I think inflation means. Like when zimbabwe printed a huge amount of money and that completely broke their currency. That's what I think when I hear the term inflation, and the metaphor of inflating a currency makes sense. You blow some air or whatever into the mix of metal so that you can mint more coins with the same amount of metal. As a consequence the value of an individual coin goes down because it doesn't have as much metal in it as the old coins. A fiat currency based on trust that gets inflated by the increase of money supply is not as concrete but the effect is the same.
So when I hear "food inflation" I immediately thing of wheat breads. You rise the breads more so you can make more breads with the same amount of wheat, but of course as a consequence the value of an individual bread should go down over time because the wheat content is lower. But instead, when the media talks about "food inflation" it means the price of bread is going up and not down.
I used to think that "inflation" is about reducing the value of something but apparently it means the complete opposite. So I guess I need a new word for that. What would that be? Debasement? Should hyperinflation that is obviously caused by the increase of money supply be renamed as hyperdebasement too? Like what happened in Zimbabwe. Or are hyperinflation and inflation completely unrelated phenomenons now?
I just asked my rabbits this question for you. Do they count as who?
They continued chomping down celery tops and coriander.
One of them likes to watch planes. It sits on its hutch in the afternoon watching planes from a local airport fly away, more interested in them on days when the wind's blowing such that when nearby they're taking off rather than days when the wind means they're approaching. The other one doesn't care for planes, but stamps whenever a wasp's nearby. This second one also likes to observe, then crush with a front paw, any ants it comes across or that come across it.
Remarkably human behaviour, though I know not what they think. Is it curiosity. Is it fear? Is something in-built and there is no 'thinking'? And what of us? Do we really comprehend? An Area51 alien is to me as a flying celery-rabbit on a magical boat with radish tops for wings is perhaps to these rabbits, if they've ever thought to imagine. They do seem to dream. That is, it's completely within bounds of their known reality. As outlandish as the very real, lived, imaginations of a schizophrenic delusion may be, and my observing it based on my 'norms', it's still somewhat based on the individual's experience, or imagination, of their reality, their experiences.
Perhaps there are aliens. Perhaps they exist in differing dimensions. Perhaps they exist as stars blinking to one another, perhaps they exist in my underpants or in fact are my underpants, what do I know, we are all in our (bounded?, there is always a bound...) existence, as Spinoza pointed out, of "Substance, its attributes, and modes".
The nature of what's being learnt. Some things require a continuity - to understand B, prior A is needed (or helps, to understand faster).
The method of learning. Book/theory-based, or practical? For either, what's the nature of scaffolding (self, or via resources) to help leap the chasm? If testing one's self, what's the complexity and can that complexity be broken down into simpler (or more discrete) parts, (perhaps testing working better in smaller parts)? Perhaps A isn't fully (or at all) required to 'know' B, depending on how it's learnt. Which goes on to -
The nature of the learner (at that point for that task). Someone that's looking to solve a task, somewhat surface, or someone that's interested and will go deeper into edge cases or approach with greater curiosity?
[I'm skipping the nature of the learning/knowledge, since 'resolving DNS' is a pretty externally verifiable result. However it might be fruitful to consider the nature of the learning is not only 'resolving DNS', and even if 'resolving DNS' fails, learning always happens (intended/unintended, positive/negative, a can of worms there).]
You point out that 'easy' and 'hard' are motivators that might have unexpected, or the reverse, effects vs. intended, depending on the reader. When putting it into those 3 parts, perhaps this shows the usefulness of framing.
Heads-up: You might want to email dang as your account seems to be shadow-banned. Your recent comments of the last couple of hours show as [dead] (logout and see).
Walls represent, indeed are, non revenue generating assets with recurring operational costs. It makes sense to release tied-up capital by selling them off, then leasing back. The operators of the walls can reduce costs by operating walls at quantities that afford economies of scale, provide innovation as mentioned in the article through perhaps providing spaces to artists, or even radical wall transformation perhaps by installing and partially replacing with solar and battery packs, neighbourhood social facilities, and more.
The owner of the wall benefits from core property revenue stream plus innovative applications. The prior title owner benefits from lower cost compared to direct management, free capital not tied up in the wall, and from innovation provided by the wall operator. Win win.
When thinking at scale, it's incredible that walls are so late to financial innovation.
> the question of whether historic emissions somehow entitle a country to future emissions
As a national of a developed country, I am entitled to make more greenhouse emissions than the poor.
As a national of a highly developed country, I refuse to, or otherwise fail to, make the changes to achieve 'different growth' that I demand of significantly poorer countries seeking to up their living standards, because these changes threaten my quality of life.
The article also mentioned the beer ration could be passed to families.
Which had me thinking of various pecuniary benefits armies pass and why. Salt -> salary is well documented, on the opposite side slightly less so but still somewhat known was for conquering armies to compensate farmers for essentially pillage as the monetary compensation can't buy much grain nor meat when the army's eaten the village's as well as that of surrounding villages. It also wasn't unusual for state coffers to run dry also, delaying soldiers' salaries, plus graft - several banks still around were founded on the basis of lending to a liquidity starved crown, a modern placation and guarantee of support in the classical baronesque sense perhaps.
And I became curious about all the other money-like tokens, like these beer rations, backed by the promise of a commodity, that floated around in those time, and in ours today. Meandering thoughts, the best kind.
Is it? At least for Roman soldiers there is no evidence at all that was the case. It just seems to be a myth originating in 18-19th centuries (like a lot of things in popular history).
It is somewhat documented, well documented perhaps.
Correctly documented?
I never finished the recent popular book 'Salt'. After a few chapters it became tedious, repetitive, plus the book consistently omitted tying text to sources. A frustrating read.
As I didn't in fact tie Salt to Roman soldiers' salaries, that was your reading, simply salt -> salary, I'm curious what references you could provide for different etymology? I'm genuinely interested, I rarely reply to replies.
tl;dr: There is a genuine linguistic connection between "salt" and "salary", but there is no evidence soldiers were ever paid in salt, or given an allowance specifically for buying salt. Possibly "salary" meant "money for salt" with "salt" used metonymically to mean any trade goods, similar to how "fish" was used in Ancient Greek, but even this is pure speculation.
Salt, and salt-derived commodities (salt-cured fish, vegetables, meat) were major sources of income for societies and governments for quite a long time, so the etymology correlation probably has some legs.
Like a lot of historical things, there's a certain amount of guesswork involved, but it hangs together pretty well. It's unlikely that we'll find the Noah Webster of 100 BC who puts it down on a clay tablet.
Doesn't make sense either, as you can't do much with salt except use it on food as seasoning or as a preservative, which are both useless as salary since you still need to pay for your actual food and other expenses.
It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with.
> It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with.
The Roman Empire towards its end in the west had suffered from a lot of inflation, so coinage was either too expensive for everyday use (i.e. gold-coins, each of which would be a year's salary for a soldier), or worthless (basically just lumps of base-metal).
I think at a certain point taxes were required to be paid in goods rather than coin which really does show that your currency is worthless (when even the state refuses to accept it!)
> It's well documented that the word salarius is derived from salt, it's just very unclear why.
It’s not unlikely that the connection between these were was already merely etymological by that time and made barely any more sense to the Romans as it does to us.
I feel this quote
> “The app right now is really just the first building block in a much larger vision for how we want the social web to work,” Graber said.
Highlights a difference in ontological approach.