It affected behavior in ways that in hindsight were very counter-productive to economic stability: Every adult person and every business simultaneously tried to spend less, earn more, and hoard more -- which is impossible in the aggregate, because every expense by one person or business is income for another person or business. No matter what anyone did, the currency would lose value week after week, month after month. And everyone felt... powerless, unable to do anything about it.

John Maynard Keynes wrote what I think is the most insightful description of what living with high inflation is like: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."[a]

[a] The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), by John Maynard Keynes.

Cannot one convert their money to dollars or gold and start getting profit from inflation?

UPD: I forgot that in such cases governments usually impose large tax on currency conversion. Obviously you can't outsmart the government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_currency_controls_(2...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-25/argentina...

As Keynes put it, "the process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." Speaking from personal experience, I think he was spot-on.

Please don't misinterpret what I wrote!

I think this is a generally post-soviet thing.

hopefully someone says “no we’re not!” to prove my point.

I mean, where else would you hear about it? Are you expecting random strangers on the street to just angrily scream at you about increasing energy prices and inflation?

Imho one of the biggest giveaways was when German supermarkets started mentioning "inflation" in their discount prospects, first saw that like 2 months ago.

Not that we have it bad here, compared to others, of course.

Cheap energy is how we've created our society. The (huge) problem we're facing is that our economy is based on the (incorrect) assessment that we will have an ever-increasing supply of energy. Barring some miracle invention/discovery (like fission, or a cheap way to produce hydrogen) it's rather the opposite, at least in terms of EROEI.

The difference between the monetary economy and the real economy is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Agree.

> The (huge) problem we're facing is that our economy is based on the (incorrect) assessment that we will have an ever-increasing supply of energy.

I'd add to that: the problem isn't so much that energy sources are currently running out. We've still got decades of fossil fuels left over to run the existing economy.

This makes the problem even harder to solve. We do have the energy. It sits right there, tempting states to grant permission to use it. But states ought to refrain from using it because the ecosphere/climate is in danger.

States globally switching to renewable energy would be much easier than it is (almost effortless), if we were truly running out of fossil energy.

As things are, states that undertake the enormous effort to make the transition to renewables, are at an economic disadvantage, at least in the short-term.

Thus the one big challenge is the political one, of setting up an international treaty that somehow turns this economic disadvantage into incentives for the transition.

People always focus on the price of gas in America, since it's a large expense and they commute a lot, but no one seems to talk about the effect it has on the prices of anything shipped in a vehicle that uses petrol.

Then again, some Americans do things like fill up across the border and freak out when between CAD sometimes having a 25 percent difference and them using pricing in liters not gallons, they paid many multiples of what they intended than much less fuel than they thought they got, despite having clear information on pricing, volume, and approximate currency value.

(It might be a 25 percent difference, but if you looked on your phone or in a currency shop, the difference for currency traders versus the public was only a few percent, it didn't jump around by double digits in a single day, and often if the difference was small people just would take the same amount as CAD in USD to be polite, when they could rightfully tell you pay in CAD, or get out of my shop, I'm not your friend you weird little Pennsylvanian.)

$1.92*3.78 = $7.26/G

Or $5.79USD/Gallon.

Alberta is the cheapest province for gas. Other provinces are more.