And there is no need for the government to be involved in that either. If there was really predictable price fluctuations between years, investors could make money buying up commodities on good years and selling during bad years (and they do.)
I just said that it have been used successfully as a way of buffering prices, without the need of burning anything, in comparison to this "creative destruction" that he sees as necessary.
The comment I was answering, talked about a government buffering mechanism as something wrong and destructive (burning real wealth). I just pointed that this kind of mechanism is not necessarily destructive.
In the next paragraph he proposes that the only way to go out of recessions is the "creative destruction" of capitalism. This is effective destruction of real wealth. It seems, that if the markets decide to destroy real wealth, then it's OK.
My answer was only about that and I was not saying that the buffering mechanism created demand.
Interestingly enough, even if I was not claiming anything about that before, there is a buffering mechanism that would create demand, and keep inflation in check: Job Guarantee as a buffer mechanism of jobs.
http://www.epicoalition.org/docs/buffer_stock_employment_mod...
I am not totally convinced about the idea myself, but I think it deserves more attention
This has been done successfully but without the burning. Just keep the price stables buying when the price fall and selling when the price goes up.
The idea of a buffer should be easy to understand here in HN. It can be done with all kind of things: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=23578
This "creative destruction" doesn't look very rational, don't you think? Is it not the goal of an economy to provide a good life for the human beings in that economy?
We should be able to do better than destroy capital in order to start again the game, but this time with less people owning more of the pie.