one thought about economics

21 Jun, 2025

last modified 2 months ago

I would like to start from the beginning on this one, because it's a bit of a hike. Also, I'm going to try to start using better capitalization now, because I think it makes for better readability; who'da thunk it...

I recently made a small and beginnerish toy for myself. It's a little dummy HTML file that resembles a Bear blog, with a linked but blank CSS sheet. It allows me to futz around with a blog's styling offline¹, which is really fun. I wanted to eventually share it, too, so I prepared some things to do that... and then I got distracted, and one thing led to another, and I wrote a ridiculously in-depth tutorial on its basic set-up and usage aimed to people who don't even know what Visual Studio Code is.

I tend to do this "involving the lowest common denominator" thing a lot - I posted about my struggles trying to make Vampire: the Masquerade outsider-friendly a while back. It's mostly because I like explaining things, and because I think it's cool to make things inclusive. It doesn't mix very well with my perfectionism (nothing does).

This tutorial, specifically, made me want to write something I've been meaning to stab towards for a bit now - I wanna make a guide to Bearblog for complete beginners, that is, people who don't even know what Markdown is. Because I'm really almost one of them! I'm not a techy person at all, I don't really know how to code, I just know how to read and how to look things up on the internet. Some people will joke that "that's all you need", but they make computer science degrees for a reason. I'm comfortable with my level of knowledge, not in the least because I'm looking to raise it, but I'm also acutely aware that the only way the tech literacy crisis will reduce is by, uh, teaching people how to use tech.

So I started writing about Bearblog. And the thing about me talking (or writing) about Bearblog is that I'll bring up its business model, every single time². And then I'll get distracted. Because I have, uh. Getting Distracted Disorder. as it were.

And thus, after an hour of trying to write about Bearblog, I ended up writing about economic inflation. ...Which is less weird when you know I'm from Argentina, a country which is famous for undergoing hyperinflation (among other things³).

And as I was writing, I realized I was understanding things better by explaining them to myself. This happens to me with some regularity and makes me happy every time. Upon actually rereading what I wrote, I realized it was Economics 101 - and I say "probably" because I'm very ignorant of the field, my education in it is poor to non-existant - but I decided to share it anyways, because I'm super-duper proud that I managed to rub my two braincells against each other. It was very hard!

...and also, to be super brutally honest, I have met people online who would probably benefit from figuring this out, too... (anecdotally, mostly yanks)

Since these thoughts are off topic for my original post, it gets its own. It's mostly all written up and there's little that's making me antsy about posting it (unlike another outtake/darling sent to a farm upstate that I've mentioned before...), so it's a decent candidate for actually sharing (if you ignore the embarrassing subject). I still let it marinate, mind you, but not as much.

So: Inflation. Economic inflation⁴. The purchasing power of a certain quantity of money decreasing. Which means you're more poor than you were yesterday despite having the same amount of money, because the money you have now holds less worth.

Obviously, in such circumstances, people have to save their money. But here's a thought: this doesn't actually mean they spend less. Or, rather, their total expenses are less, but under inflation, it's actually beneficial to spend in bigger sums.

Consider deflation, which is the opposite of inflation. The price of things is going down, and the purchasing power of your money is going up. You are richer than you were yesterday. This phenomenon actually disincentivizes buying things, interestingly enough⁵, because it's cheaper today than it was yesterday, and therefore, you could've spent less money if you'd just waited a day to buy it. Repeat ad nauseam because if every day the price is going down, then every single day it would've been cheaper to wait until its price was lower to buy it. Eventually, you just never buy it at all.

This affects big prices the most, because inflation and deflation work based off a percentage, not a flat rate. There arises an incentive to spend several low quantities of money, rather than one lump sum.

I like examples, so here's one: imagine you want to buy two videogames. One of them is an US$9 indie game, and the other is an US$50 triple-A game.

If you buy the US$50 videogame and there's deflation of 40% the next day (to put down a big old number), then you could've saved yourself US$20. But if you buy an US$9 videogame, then the next day, you could've saved yourself... US$3 and 60 cents. Which is less than $20.

The same phenomenon happens with inflation, but backwards. If you don't buy something now, it will cost more tomorrow, and therefore, it's beneficial to buy things immediately when you can, rather than wait and watch their price increase.

To continue with the videogame example, imagine you want to buy both games. If you buy the triple-A game tomorrow and the indie today, you'll spend a total of US$79. But if you buy the triple-A game today and the indie tomorrow, you'll only spend US$65. And if you buy both games right now, you'll only spend US$59.

So inflation doesn't really encourage saving money and hunkering down. In fact, what it encourages is bigger expenses, because spacing out smaller ones will end up with you spending more. In fact, what it actually disencourages is saving up, because your money becomes worthless so quickly that it's better to spend it rather than save it.

...And I dunno, it's interesting, because I think people often assume it's the other way around. Deflation is seen as a good thing while inflation is seen as a bad thing, but they're both bad things, actually. So I dunno. We're fucked? maybe.

...Where's the picture of the chimpanzee when you need it...?

well, this was a way lower effort post than usual, which is gonna be more meaningful once I polish up that aforementioned scary outtake (and get over myself re: sharing it⁶). But this really didn't fit in the post, and I only realized once it was mostly all written out, so it might as well have its own home. never kill your darlings, or however it went

ah, it's also flag day as I post this. neat stuff, go look at a flag near you (one piece merch works fine). and thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the post!

#✨ #🌕