What salary would be "enough" for you

[Cutlass]

Thereby causing society to revert to a barter system and rendering the currency worth no more than the material it is made of?

Thereby ruling the world.

 

[Traitorfish]

Thereby ruling the world.

You think that a huge supply of low-grade alloy will allow world domination?

 

[Cutlass]

You think that a huge supply of low-grade alloy will allow world domination?

It will if several billion people are willing to go to work for me to get a share of them.

 

[Traitorfish]

It will if several billion people are willing to go to work for me to get a share of them.

But why would they? Sole accumulation of all the world's money would render money itself worthless, and so force the adoption of an a non-monetary system, or perhaps the introduction of the new one. After all, money isn't innately valuable, so you wouldn't actually be offering them anything more than a grand system of IOUs which they could very well choose to pass up or to instate on their own. The only way that this could result in world domination is if you accumulation was part of the construction of a centrally planned autocracy, which is a rather different scenario.

 

[Cutlass]

All plans have to have a starting point.

 

[Traitorfish]

All plans have to have a starting point.

And the absence of one was my criticism of yours.

 

[Cutlass]

I'm betting on the fact that people will see i have all the money and be willing to sell me their labor. I don't expect to be disappointed.

 

[Traitorfish]

Well, I have the world supply of legitimate money, which is to say all three existing Traitorbucks, and nobody is bowing at my feet. I wonder why not?

 

[Cutlass]

Money, ultimately, is nothing more than a medium of exchange. What matters is who is willing to exchange what for how much. You have failed to convince anyone that Traitorbucks are worth anything in exchange.

 

[Traitorfish]

That was my point, yes! And if you were to accumulate the entirety of the world's money, it would become nothing more than so much more low-grade metal- to be a valid medium of exchange, regular exchange must occur, otherwise there is no way to value the components of that medium, and, as such, no reason to accept them. That's why a Traitorbuck is worth more than the continent of Africa, and less than a grain of sand.

 

[Cutlass]

But people will have a memory of my ill gotten gains being worth something, and will be desperate to get back to what they are familiar with.

 

[Traitorfish]

But people will have a memory of my ill gotten gains being worth something, and will be desperate to get back to what they are familiar with.

But that relies on a heavy dose of unpredictable irrationality, so it's entirely unsustainable- it would only be a matter of time before people realised that their economy no longer runs on money (and economy demands exchange, and exchange cannot happen when the medium of exchange is frozen) and so it is essentially a pointless IOU. It would quickly be demonstrated that your money was effectively worthless, and so all faith in it would be lost- it's not as if a currency hasn't been abandoned before.
After all, "what they are familiar with" isn't Cutlass effectively owning the planet, and it's not as if grabbing for the nearest dollar bill is going to return the to that state of affairs.

 

[Cutlass]

But I wouldn't have all of it indefinitely. Just long enough to be the only one with it. Once mission accomplished, we could go back to a money economy with me having nearly all of it. Just passing it out a bit as a time as necessary to keep the wheels greased.

 

[Traitorfish]

But any money not in circulation is effectively non-existent, so the economy would stabilise around the existing "supply". All introducing more would do is create inflation, so even if you did manage to pull off this scheme, all you'd really be able to do is get a few short-term bargains.

 

[Cutlass]

It doesn't have to be out of circulation for very long. Just long enough to gain control of it. Then I'd start spending.

 

[Traitorfish]

Unless you spent it all immediately, it would still remain out of circulation. That's one of the reasons that we prefer folk keep their wealth in banks, property and investments, rather than in a sock under their mattress.

 

[Cutlass]

I never said i'd hoard it. Just that I wanted it all, just once.

 

[Traitorfish]

You don't have to hoard all of it, you just have to hoard the majority for anything more than about half an hour.

 

[Cutlass]

Who said I was even going to hoard it that long?

 

[Archbob]

$50k is not enough if you like big houses. By big I mean those around 3500 sq feet in size. I plan to have one.