Thank you for the thorough response! You engaged with the argument seriously, provided definitions, and cited Rothbard directly. This is the type of engagement I love to see on Nostr!All your stuff is visible, save for the last one.
You say you have a hard time knowing what to respond to. I think you actually identified the crux in your postscript, and I want to start there because it clarifies where we disagree.
You write that hoarding "is far more likely to indicate a low tolerance for risk" than high time preference. But risk tolerance and time preference are different things. If the hoarder's choice reflects risk tolerance, then you've conceded that hoarding doesn't demonstrate time preference at all. It demonstrates something else. The original article's claim was that hoarders consume the price of uncertainty avoidance. Your postscript agrees.
### On the Identity Between Time Preference and Interest
You frame hoarding and investment as two ways of "overcoming" time preference. I think this obscures a critical asymmetry.
When someone lends at 5%, they reveal their willingness to part with capital for one year in exchange for 5% more capital. The rate they accept tells us something about their time preference: at 5%, they'll trade present for future. Investment expresses time preference through the rate accepted.
When someone hoards, they refuse all offered rates. They will not part with capital at any price currently offered. What does this reveal about time preference? By the logic that connects interest rates to time preference, refusing all rates means demanding present possession so strongly that no future premium compensates. This looks like high time preference, not low.
You could argue the hoarder simply hasn't been offered a sufficient rate. Fair enough. But the HODLer mythology doesn't say "I'm waiting for better lending opportunities." It says lending itself is inferior to holding. The refusal is categorical.
### The Reductio
My original blog posed a test case: if more hoarding demonstrates lower time preference, then 100% hoarding demonstrates the lowest. But if everyone hoards everything, no one lends at any price. Interest rates go to infinity; capital becomes unavailable. And infinite interest rates reflect infinite time preference by the standard Austrian framework.
You didn't address this, and I think it's the strongest argument in the original piece. If "low time preference = more hoarding" leads to "lowest time preference = highest interest rates," something has gone wrong with the definitions.
### On Expected Appreciation
You argue the hoarder expects money to have greater value in the future, and this expectation justifies hoarding the same way expected returns justify investment. I don't think this works.
Bitcoin is a good. When you lend it, you part with the good now and receive it back later plus interest. Interest compensates you for time without the good. When you hoard it, you keep the good now and bet on what it will trade for later. These are different activities. The lender knows what they'll receive: principal plus rate. The hoarder is speculating on an uncertain outcome. Expected appreciation is entrepreneurial profit or loss, not compensation for parting with capital.
Voskuil puts it this way: speculation is consumption of the cost of playing the game, supported by liquidity. The cost is, at minimum, the opportunity cost of not lending. The hoarder who expects gains is consuming the entertainment of speculation now, plus forgoing interest now. These are present expenditures.
You might respond that the hoarder's expected return exceeds available interest rates, so hoarding is rational. I agree hoarding can be rational. The question is whether it demonstrates low time preference. An expectation of profit from price movement tells us about risk assessment and market predictions. It doesn't tell us about willingness to trade present goods for future goods at a known rate.
### On Rothbard and Crusoe
You cite Rothbard on Crusoe deferring berry consumption. But Crusoe's berries are consumables he plans to eat. His choice is between eating now and eating later, a straightforward time preference in consumption.
Money hoarding differs. The hoarder doesn't plan to "consume" the money later the way Crusoe eats berries. Money exists for exchange. The hoarder holds it indefinitely, using its liquidity services continuously in the present while forgoing interest perpetually.
You note that Rothbard elsewhere says hoarding is "irrelevant to time preference" (MES Chapter 11). This seems to support the original article: hoarding neither expresses nor demonstrates time preference because it refuses the exchange that would reveal it.
### Where I Think We Actually Disagree
You seem to treat time preference as any choice involving present versus future. By this reading, hoarding defers consumption, so it demonstrates low time preference.
My article uses a narrower definition: time preference is revealed through the exchange of present goods for future goods at an interest rate. By this reading, hoarding doesn't demonstrate time preference because it refuses the exchange entirely.
I think the narrower definition is correct because it preserves the identity between time preference and interest rates that makes the concept useful. If we broaden "time preference" to include any choice with a temporal dimension, we lose the connection to interest and capital markets that gives the term analytical power.
The HODLer who refuses to lend at any rate isn't demonstrating patience. They're demonstrating that present possession matters more to them than any offered future return. Whether you call that high time preference or something else, it doesn't look like the civilizational virtue the Bitcoin community claims.
rafftyl on Nostr: Here's how your Articles page looks like in Yakihonne: ...
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