LeftRightLeft Spewage

Been writing a series on Tripartite government (nominal democratic state–security state–dual deep state) and hoping to not encounter too much nonsense, but I was unable to stumble into the nonsense, so have to waste my time now getting out the truth (as I see it ok, don’t get all triggered).

You often get people with their guard down a bit when they are live interviewed, and this sort of occurs here on “The CIA, NATO and the US Empire” with Aaron Good. Although I’ve heard Aaron spew reich-wing garbage and seen him write this errant nonsense before. The poor guy needs a bit of a healthy slap. Lucky for him I cannot get my atoms to touch his baby cheeks. A blog post will have to suffice.

Left-Right-Left

Eins, zwei, drei, …

There is too much vomiting up of right-wing economics talking points for me to handle. It’s that sea-sickness effect too, it makes me spew up counter-propaganda, if you can call a bunch of video essays no one clicks on as such! Ah well… one must give-it-a-go.

I resent this though. I would much prefer to be idling away my time discovering what the $\mathbb{C}\ell_8$ rotors are doing as transformation instructions for the two ends of a minimal Planck wormhole (aka. “solving quantum gravity”.).

Today’s contentions:

1. “It’s a debt trap…” — is right-wing spew, so stop re-regurgitating it.
2. “We shoulda’ kept tethering to gold veins …” — is right-wing spew, so stop re-fantacizing it.
3. “The USD is collapsing, hooray!” — is right-wing vomit albeit inverted through a foreign entity prism, so clean it up please, we don’t need any of it.
4. “We need to tax the rich to afford free healthcare and whatnot …” — is right-wing Thatcherite morsels reconstituted after excretion from Maggie’s breakfast exhaust bum tubes. So let’s adopt some leftist nutritional hygiene and not purchase that breakfast cereal at inflated prices.
5. All four above points should at least be thought about for a minute before you reject my brief and amateurish analysis.

Only necessarily brief today because I am not paid nor donor funded to write any of this, and necessarily amateurish only because there are no jobs in academia or public service for dirtbag MMT types (nor for radically minimalist theoretical physicists).

Since I’ve written a lot about “global reserve currency” being a myth, and the “tax payer funded” myth, I will not do those two today. So today it’s just the Debt Trap myth and the Gold Peg myth.

Let me first say, this is all realpolitik considered.

In other words, I know full well many smaller nations think they have fallen into a Debt Trap. And let me tell you, since government policy is largely about responses to what people believe, it is for certain a proper and real debt trap. The point to make is that the thinking and psychology is all false. There is no Debt Trap, just as There is No Spoon — only a collection of metal alloys configured into the shape of an actual spoon.

((Probably not the best analogy, but I will go with it.))

The desire to “return to gold” or to bemoan the fact the USA came off the gold standard, is even more clearly nuts. More Eins, zwei, drei, … marching to the nazi tunes. Leftists being led down garden paths of mainstream right-wing economics into the glorious motherland of Austerity.

Maybe don’t be led like a fool down that path?

If you understood that, why then, you may stop reading. If not, the following werd-gulag of paragraph emprisonment is for you. I hold your eyelids open with metal tongs for the sadistic pleasure. Just kidding, I’d only do that if you singed-off the consent form.

Part-0 Publishing Industry

Check out Charlotte Dennett (here) speaking about the industrial practice of Privishing . (Who was ever in doubt that phenomena should have a name put to it?)

I feel the need to point out that I am doing most of this MMT activism as an amateur, but that does not mean I am wrong about anything.

I believe most people misunderstand the nature and purpose of academic publishing and peer review.

Peer Review is a filter, it has a purpose of getting high quality work into the mainstream journals.

This means less work is needed to check the veracity of articles published in mainstream journals.

This means it reduces the probability some article picked at random in a mainstream journal is mistaken or fraudulent or has errors.

It does not eliminate fraud and errors.

So you still have to do the work yourself to check the article you are reading is correct and trustworthy.

The point of alerting readers and listeners to my status as an MMT amateur is not to devalue my efforts, I think my contributions are better than many paid academics. Rather the point is to beg you to check things for yourself. If you find anything I say or write to be too provocative, please do not dismiss it, you should check & verify for yourself.

In this respect amateur scholarship is often healthier to read. Here is a little bit of good praxis: find a good amateur whom you have checked and verified. Now you have a trustworthy source. (Also, often funnier.) They’ll often be all the better to heed, since they are not getting paid to write or paid to think. Just first, to do yourself justice, check & verify.

I did this for Prof Steve Keen during a time he was not inside academia. I found Steve K to be trustworthy, up until he started spewing nonsense about MMT being “nothing more than accounting.” What a 𝙙ℴ𝕡𝓮𝘺 fool. (Still a good friend I count, of course. All my friends are 𝙙ℴ𝕡𝓮𝘺 fools, just some less 𝙙ℴ𝕡𝓮𝘺 than others. I am the only one who is not… wait a minute, what was that I wrote 10 or 12 years ago… 🤣)

Part-1 There is No Debt Trap

* Debt is not a dirty word.
* There is no such thing as a "debt trap". It is an 
inflation fear trap.
* ... also an Economic Hitman fear trap. The economic 
instability induces  IMF/WB "structural adjustment" 
brainworms.
* ... but this is the circular trap. It is not a debt 
trap. It is a false consciousness trap.
* ... economic hitmen gain power only when the 
population is held ignorant.

Those were my rough notes.

I ꘝꖾꖹꖀꗣꕯꖦ’ couldn’t be bothered writing it all up nice and pretty. I feel more punchy today.

Every debt is simultaneously a credit, all money is always debt (I.O.U. of the issuer), so all money is in all case always credit, so it makes no damn sense to be debt fear mongering. The issue is who — who has the credit, who holds the debt? Is it an unjust balance?

When government holds the debt is is ostensibly terrific, that’s what we want, since the government is the source of the tax credit, so any debt they hold is by accounting identity someone’s credit.

The debt is not the problem. Who holds the equalling credit is the problem.

It is ostensibly very non-terrific if all the government debt (aka. tax credits) are held by the top Ten Percent of the upper class.

It is always a balance, the system is always in balance. Debt is thus not a dirty word. The dirt is when the creditor is a ꖀ𐝥ꗍꖡꕯꖦ and the debtor is a poor working class sod, such as yours truly … who was forced into debt through no steel-will of their own volition.

When a foreign nation is in debt to another nation — that is, Country A issues obligations promising to redeem a foreign currency B (or equivalently takes a loan from the IMF) — then this is a stupid operation, serving no useful purpose, but it is not a “Debt Trap.” The stupid government-A can always repay the obligation, by issuing Its own tax credits. Because there is always a non-zero exchange rate.

If Country B refuses to accept the exchange rate swap … firstly, how exactly can they refuse? How can they possibly know Country A did the forex exchange? (Not a trivial question.) Secondly, why would they refuse? It would only be to be vindictive ꕗ𖧥𖨚𖢧𖧥𖦪𖦧𖨚 — in which case Country A should lodge an appeal at the UN or wherever, formally noting Country B is behaving like a vindictive ꕗ𖧥𖨚𖢧𖧥𖦪𖦧. That pre-empts the Economic Hitmen operations.

But suppose country B nevertheless deploys the Economic Hitmen, and then the paramilitary or Color Revolution forces and false flags to punish Country A? I say… so what? Let them try. Let the fascists come out into the sunlight. But Country A should pre-register at the UN first, to allow true international collective security a chance at preventing the Economic Hitmen or the Physical Hitmen from doing the coup.

One has to add, this is all modulo the almost inevitable blackmail operations upon the decrepit elites of Country A. But if you have elites who are susceptible to blackmail, then your false Debt Trap psychology problems, I am sorry to tell you, pale into insignificance.

All this said, please do not issue debt in a foreign currency in the first place 𝕗𝕗𝕤. This will then avoid all the hassle trying to overcome this “Debt Trap” false psychology. There is no Debt Trap.

But it is a mild trap of sorts, let’s be real.

The trap is the Inflation Boogeyman trap.

If you do find down in the basement room of your central bank the obvious payment clearing operations (software thingamies), for keystroke issuing your own tax credits to pay the foreign debt off (pointless debt obligation you stupidly once upon a time accepted) then the media and political pressure will be to avoid “hyperinflation.”

Which at least firstly reveals the Debt Trap was fake knowledge all along.

Let me then tell you, a one-time depreciation of your fiat currency from a massive foreign debt obligation clearing is a one-time adjustment in your price level. It is not inflation, and cannot lead to any inflation.

The source of continual inflation would be if you leave the debt outstanding and just keep paying interest on it. Do not do that. Realize you made a foolish mistake, pay the debt off, and swallow the one-time price adjustment. It will not kill anyone. Raise you domestic minimum wage only as the proper re-gauge.

((I wonder if I need to pause here to mention the “you” I am taking to is government, not a household. They’re not the same thing in relation to the State I.O.U. One is the issuer, the other the user. If a household issued their own I.O.U. they’d be the issuer, the State might be the user — but why would the State ever accept your IOU? Oh right, that’s correct, the State needed to buy some stuff off you, so you loaned them your IOU so they could pay you for the goods. Got it. Huh. But wait … what’s this? … you slapped on a massive rate of interest and refuse the State currency for exchange? Guess you placed the State in a Debt Trap.))

“Aha!” you say, “We want continual imports that the foreign power demands payment for in their currency!”

Indeed, well they are entitled to payment in their own currency, why should they hold yours? Yours might depreciate faster? But who the hell cares!

Just make the payment in your currency as a swap, and tolerate the pass-through inflation, then say sorry for the mistake and the disruption to your people. You may find there is no inflationary impact. You may find there is. You should not care. In both cases you make the gauge adjustment through your minimum wage, or job guarantee, or other counter-cyclical adjustments, it could in the end be a tax adjustment (either up or down, often downwards — to give more discretionary spending power to the lowest waged, after all, you were getting imports for all this, were you not? … You weren’t you say????).

Keeping it again more real… while you cannot get Debt Trapped and cannot suffer inflation even if you think you are in one (it is a Mirage, but a mirage has real psychological behavioural effects which can kill) – you can get a lot of egg on political faces. I believe this is a serious danger. Politicians will squirm and do horrific things to avoid egg. And this, while an amusing imagery, is no joke, and is deadly serious. All the more reason to never allow your government to borrow a foreign currency.

Just remember:
(a) they never needed to,
(b) if they still do so they are either ignorant or fraudulent,
(c) due to aforementioned realpolitik you maybe have a case down the road to take your government to The Hague for crimes against humanity — it can be that severe.

We have to up the stakes just so, because austerity policy does, in fact, kill people.

Lesson 1. Always remember, the mostly automatic fiscal adjustment (normally increased government spending) aka. the stabilizers, follows after the one-time price adjustment, it is not the cause. (Unless the government deliberately wanted to cause a one-time depreciation of the currency for whatever reason.)

Lesson 2. A cause of continual upwards adjustment in the price level (aka. inflation) — almost the only significant source outside of catastrophic war or famine/drought/plague — is automated net government spending for no supply, otherwise known as government bonds and Treasury security interest payments. So, maybe stop this? (Yes. Stop those yesterday! They are highly and obscenely regressive.)

Lesson 3. “Debt Trap” rhetoric is for 𖢑𖥕𖦪𖥕ꛘꕷ. The hyperinflation boogeyman is also a false trap for 𖢑𖥕𖦪𖥕ꛘꕷ to fall into. The only real trap is an egg-on-face one-time upwards adjustment in the price level, and it is entirely avoidable. If Country A consistently promises foreign debt redemptions (promises to deliver a foreign currency on demand) then it pretty much deserves what it gets. The people of the Country do not deserve such leadership. Unfortunately, “Country A” really is Its People, so this is all highly tragic. Almost biblical epic tragedy, given all the real lost output resulting that can never be recovered. Compound interest applies here, take damn good note of that!

Lesson 4. Never fall for the Debt Trap babble spewage. If you find you have, don’t compound it by falling for the Inflation Boogeyman Trap. If you find you have then please vote yourself out of political office for heavens sake. You have no business leading or advising a government.

Part-2 The Gold Peg is Just a Peg

Getting Off Gold Was a Good Thing. Aaron seems to think it was a bad thing? Did getting off BW prolong the Vietnam war? No it did not.

Recall what a gold peg is and is not:
After enforcing coercive tax liabilities upon us, so that we accept their otherwise worthless scorepoints, the government promises to extinguish our liabilities if we supply them with either the tax credits they alone can create (private banks cannot${}^\dagger$) or give them some gold.

The USA stopped doing this in 1930’s, I guess they were anticipating the Vietnam war?'

${}^\dagger$((Private banks can only issue the scorepoints in return for a promise to pay back the credit, this nets to zero tax credits overall, but it can have a positive effect on increasing circulation of the currency, which helps drive production. The problem with this circuit occurs when someone decides to be thrifty and save 😱 some of these credit-backed scorepoints. This “breaks” the circuit — or more precisely it is leakage. That’s bad. Savings is very bad behaviour in an endogenous money circuit. Which is why governments universally find they almost inevitably have to supply exogenous currency, even though people in government seem to have not single clue why!))

(((This cumulative exogenous currency injection is misleadingly called “the national debt”. It is in fact the national and foreign non-government sector net savings, to the penny! Government Debt = Private Savings. An accounting identity. Which one do you want to see going “up?” 🤣)))

A gold peg is a promise to also redeem the tax credit for gold, which is an entirely superfluous and silly extra layer. Ministry of ꕷꕯꝆꝆꔇ currency operations level comedy…. if only it were not so crippling and tragic we couldv’e been having a good laugh. (Well, ꕷꖾꕯꖡ, it still won’t stop me from laughing.)

Note that by imposing the tax liabilities, the government already generated sufficient demand for it’s otherwise worthless scorepoints. So why would they also promise to redeem for gold metals by the ounce? The reason is for a price anchor.

But this never works, it is crippling, in more than one way it prevents government from running (among other things) full decent employment in non-🅱𝘂𝓵🅛🅂𝖍𝗶🅃 jobs.

The only 𖥐𖦪𖠢𖢧𖥣ꛘ𖨚 who want a gold price anchor are rich ꕗꗇꕷꖡꗇ𐝥ꕒꕷ and dupes who don’t realize their children will probably be involuntarily unemployed or in bank debt as a result. So stop wanting a gold price anchor I tell you!

The only thing abandoning gold redemptions in the 1930’s did was prevent deflationary bias and crippling bank runs. So it was a very good thing. It was essentially a move domestically in the USA to a labour standard, not a commodity standard, which is the proper monetary policy for a price anchor. After all, the state currency is a social unit of account, and it is therefore only proper and natural that social value, aka labour, is the price anchor. It is doing K. Marx one better, defining the labour value by fiat.

NB: note that we can avoid triggering too many marxists here. You might define Austrian Economists as those who want to return to gold to be able to say, “Haha! Marx was wrong. It’s a gold theory of value!” Ignoring them — using the lethal weapon of derisive laughter Bruce — we can see we still have a labour theory of value, but it just becomes more annoyingly bothersome to state it in terms of the State’s unit of account, you’d have to bother analyzing the conversion from the gold price to the labour price. But this can be done, and no production ever occurs without some labour, although it is 99% energy input, the labour input is still socially necessary, if for no other purpose than monitoring the robots so they do not go rogue. Thus, in a society of entities called people, there is still always a labour theory of value, and the State is still (maybe very awkwardly) telling you what the value is in “$” terms.

Internationally Bretton–Woods had perhaps a noble goal, on Keynes’ side, which was to develop international trade equitably, so the nations needing to net import could do so without currency depreciation. But it could never have worked even with the baleful USA take-over of Keynes’ plan. Why not?

Not for any monetary arrangement reasons, but because of those policy wonks missing a whole lot of realpolitik, not the least of which was the criminal deep state that was emerging at the time and the Cold War. As well as the fact we have never had a proper Capitalist system, it’s always been an oligarchy. (This is why K. Marx’s dynamics never worked, and never could have worked — even if there once was Capitalism, the tendency is towards monopoly, and very shortly thereafter oligarchy = highly anti-capitalistic. That’s correct, K. Marx “admired” a fantasy system, basing volumes of words that sold a lot in book stores and even the great oligarchy of Amazon dot com, around this fantasy.) In any case, Bretton–Woods did not work.

But it was not the gold peg that was the problem. That was always a farce. The gold at Fort Knox was getting shipped offshore, about 50% loss, but the amount of gold subscribed too was well over the actual supply, well before the Nixon administration stopped promising gold bullion redemptions. Note that the main point is that they never needed to ship gold bullion for redemption, that was mere policy choice for regressive deflationary psychology. Hence it was always a farce. Why?

The answer is obvious, such monetary veils and farces are always part of a system of power elite control. Whether the elites know it or not (sometimes once suspects “not” is what applies in many personality instances — the elite libertarians = goldbugs by birth.) I’ll even bet some among the power elite were themselves fooled into thinking the gold was the money.

NB: a massive cause of the troubles in the 1970’s (stagflation and whatnot) was the policy mistake of the USA oil industry to give up on the Texas Railroad Commission price setting authority, effectively handing it over to the Saudi Cartel. I am actually not certain what all the history of that was — as in “no, all the history!” — but it seems extremely fishy and nefarious. Blackmailing? CIA? Israel–Mossad? Hard to say. But it cannot be denied the need of oil for the Vietnam War was a big factor in the loss of price control by the Texas Railway Commission (TRC). This however had nothing to do with Bretton–Woods or a gold peg.

History shows us, if you want to actually win a war, any war, you come off the gold peg.

I should caveat this note, by also noting that the 1970s stagflation stemmed primarily from OPEC’s 1973 oil embargo — which was partly retaliation for US support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, causing price quadrupling, alongside the 1979 Iranian Revolution disruptions, wage-price controls, and then exacerbated by the brain-damaged Volker shock (interest rate hike $\Rightarrow$ massive unearned incomes for the super rich for zero real goods supply). Vietnam War oil demands (peaking mid-1960s) strained US supplies but did not directly cause TRC loss of control. No credible sources link this to nefarious blackmail plots or otherwise, but I would think it does all trace back to zionist and deep state interests. Apparently Kissinger wanted the oil price shock, despite the outward appearances of shuttle diplomacy to mitigate the OPEC shock.

A credible history of the era is this piece by David Gibbs . You can also find other credible sources confirming USA complicity in the Oil price shock. It is, despite what Wikipedia or other outlets might tell you, very nefarious fish smelling … at least near the bad end of the stinky spectrum. Aaron Good and Charlotte Dennett (here) I think – or it might have been Aaron with Wilkerson and Vogler (here) — also discussed this complicity/collusion.

It is pretty damn horrific when you think what the Oil Shock did, and did later accomplish, it arguably was one of the principle reasons Neoliberalism gained purchase over left-wing governments, turning them almost overnight into overtly right-wing governments. Has ever before in history such a dramatic switch been flipped? (Taking into account the flip of the Republican Party of Lincoln to the racist party of Goldwater and Thurmond, which was more of a slow dance into stinking mud.)

((You’ll have to ignore Gibb’s “financing the US debt” nonsense. As always, read with MMT filters to avoid getting queasy…. or is it in order to become appropriately queasy?))

(((Wait a minute, my anxiety is peaking, I have a panic attack onset … no wait … I actually do live in New Zealand, sorry, just forgot that for a second.)))

Note that it is not even Exceptionalism to take the Treasury/FED off the “gold standard.” It is just a lawful policy choice. Which should reveal to you why the USA never truly was on a gold standard. This is why I put “gold standard” in quotes, since the US dollar was always fiat, it was never gold. The redemption for gold was nothing but a highly regressive price anchor. It baffles me why leftists like Aaron want to return to that system, or thought it was a good system for constraining government spending.

It never once constrained government spending.

A genuine leftist who is wise should never make that other argument either. If you think we need to constrain government spending then you are arguing we cannot enjoy optimal “free” public healthcare, free public education, free housing, free water, free electricity, free internet. Yet all those items are really public goods commons, and so should indeed be monetary cost free. The cost is the real cost of workers pulled into the public sector to provide these services, since they are then no longer available for hire into the private sector. That is the cost. It is monetarily a benefit for the private sector, since all these public servants get paid by government keystrokes, creating the currency with which the private citizens can then pay the tax. The government workers fund the private sector in tax credits, not the other way around.

Why do leftists not want to know this?

(Forget the right-wing libertarians, even if they are peaceniks like Col. Wilkerson and Scott Ritter, they will never want to know this, they are lost causes, at least in this one particular regard (in other words, I’ve already forgiven them before they speak nuttiness about the money system). Though I have found in-person (or via email) they are very nice people.)

The psychology of “losing gold supply backing the currency” was pure outright reich-wing lies, but all the leftists fell for it. Firstly, tax liabilities have always backed the currency, not gold.

Secondly, gold commodity was only a price anchor, not the backing, and a regressive price anchor at that, it benefits only those with lots of government scorepoints, as deflationary bias always does.

Pause: do you understand this? There is a huge distinction between what backs a currency (the promise of redemption) and the price anchor. The two are not the same.

On a pure fiat currency (non-convertible, floating exchange rate) the deletion of tax liabilities is the promised redemption. The backing of the currency is the IRS who enforce the tax liabilities. Two different things. Note these are however always coupled.

The modern drop in the wage-price compared to gold-price is only a symptom, not cause, of inequality. The cause of inequality is government policy — mainly two particular policies writ large,

1. basic income but only for people who already have money and in proportion to how much money they already have (aka. issuance of government bonds), and
2. using mass unemployment under the pretense of “fighting inflation” — a false pretense.
3. … and other policies, you name them, there is a screed of pro-ownership class policies, but the above are the main evils. Why? Because as I have said, the government dictates the price level, and so is always telling you how much your labour time is worth.

The gold price could to any damn thing, who cares. It is only the fact mining of gold is a relative dribble, that gold price is fairly stable, hence a reliable gauge. But the wage/gold ratio is irrelevant, what matters is the wage/food price and other similar ratios. You should never care about the gold price. It is almost crypto. What use has a bar of gold metal ever been to you that a government scorepoint or hundred was not of more use?

Little Summary:

• Pegging to gold is a (highly regressive) price anchor, it is distinct from commodity currency.
• The modern price anchor is Labour, and that is the natural anchor.
• Having a gold peg when the currency naturally “wants to be” a labour value anchor is a cause of massive destruction, mainly in the form of involuntary unemployment via austerity policies.
• On a properly enforced gold peg most nations will not be able to optimize their real resources, so will not have the public healthcare and housing and transport and water/electricity the people justly deserve — justly deserve for tolerating a government, period. (Any government of any variety.)

The Real BW Lesson

This is one I want to most emphasize today:

History shows us, if you want to actually win a war, any war, you come off the gold peg. This includes all so-called “wars on poverty,” and “class war”!

Exactly the same logic applies for any “war.” If we want to win by eradicating poverty and class hierarchy, we have to “come off the gold peg.” So thanks to – first FDR domestically, and then Nixon for getting that done for us! No looking back on that is required. No trips to New Hampshire are required.

Part-3 Importance of Understanding Capitalism

Steeve Keen far too often seems to use the definition of capitalism as “private enterprise,” and endogenous money circuit.

This is bad praxis.

Capitalism is exploitation of labour, pure and simple.

Or let’s hedge a bit, and say Capitalism is best thought of as exploitation of labour, pure and simple. Because this then encompasses various other systems like authoritarian statism and fascism. They are all capitalists to me. I like to cast a big net to catch big fish.

Well, that’s my definition ok, take it or leave it. Call it my dirtbag lens or fishnet.

Capitalism, in this dirtbag fishnet lens, has nothing to do with the monetary system, markets, or credit, nor even ownership of the means of production. (Don’t be a pedant, I know this misses important little minnows, but if you wanna tell me which ones in order to help feed the hashtag discovery algorithm, please go ahead.)

Whether commodity + labour markets are also existing is entirely beside the point. Markets can co-exist with pure socialism too, or whatever polar opposite or anti-thesis of Capitalism you wish to imagine (workers control the bosses… wait, what …?).

What’s the point of emphasizing this class structure of capitalism as the essential structure defining capitalism?

The point is only readily apparent once we understand the true nature of actually existing capitalism. Which is almost unrecognizable as anything Ricardo, Smith, Marx, Keynes, et al wrote about. Which renders all their ancient scrolls completely obsolete. You waste time by reading them. You will not get a true and accurate critique of capitalism from Marx or Lenin. (Although, I think Lenin comes closer to an accurate critique.)

In recent times, the best critique I have found is American Exception , and the Devil’s Chess Club . It hits on almost everything I would have suspected but not had the stomach and time to research myself.

I will not elaborate, since a brief summary cannot do justice. I’ll just reiterate a question I raised previously, which is what about other mafia-states?

Is little young New Zealand not in fact also run largely by a criminogenic dual deep state underworld and overworld (dirty tricks deep state and media corporaitons and upper class brainrot aristrocracy-within-egalitarian-facades?)

One must at least ask the question.

I see it as like my old critique of the public education system — that it is more about conformance, rather than genuine promotion of an ethos of life-long learning. But, you see, the official NZ Curriculum does promote the ethos of life-long learning. So one scratches the old noggin and wonders where that gets broken? Is the break at the imposition of standardized testing and summative exams? Or is the break more insidious generalized teacher-administration brainwashing by neoliberal materialism (education is for getting a useful but compliant workforce). Or am I worrying about tea leaves in my coffee cup?

Well, clearly not, because no one here in Aotearoa, except delightful miscreants and beautiful weirdos, seems to even want to understand MMT. (To you all I salute you now and forever, you are the unsung saints of our day & age.)

And because NZ politics and news media are drenched with neoliberalism, even when these actors do not know it, or do not admit it (“tax payers fund the g$\ast$…”) — I would argue we do indeed have a deep deep state oppression, stifling our egalitarian culture and democratic impulses.

With Neoliberalism a nation’s wealthy elites do not need a mafia + clandestine services deep state to control the population. The schools take care of that for them.

In a phrase Aaron often uses which every math geek will enjoy, the USA is waaaay overdetermined in this regard. The mafia could have retired to Florida and lived the easy life of no crime had they just noticed neoliberalism would be doing their job for them without all the worry about snitching, blackmail, back-stabbing, and rubbing out. I guess it takes some retraining to turn a mafiosi into a polite respectable disaster trader. Plus, I guess sometimes bank terrorism is insufficient to cause a big enough disaster to trade, so I guess America just has to do it bigger and better than other mafia states and cause the Best mayhem and misery at the Olympics of Cashing in on Crises. I concede, your are the Best Mr and Ms America, you won that gold. You don’t have to keep reminding us though, heck.

Would it help if we just let you thrash us at rugby? To ease up on the wars for oil a tad? No? Well, it didn’t hurt to ask.

Completely orwellian also it is to claim the public schools are hot beds of commie marxist critical race theory. Maybe they are, maybe they are not (I tend to think many schools are, but that’s a good thing) — the problem is none of the commie–marxist critical theory is doing squat to emancipate the working class. Where is their theory of labour value? (It is in MMT.) Where is their theory of the price level, and hence inflation psychology? (It is in MMT.) Where is their theory of the cause if all unemployment and poverty, lost output and social pathology? (It is in MMT.) Do any of these pomo leftists acknowledge MMT is more important than Marx? No. Hardly a single one of them. Eternal shame on them all.

They are almost nowhere to be found expect for the commies and marxists in groups like RealProgressives. These are an endangered species, we need to get them breeding.

You can surely complain that RealProgressives are a bit loud and obnoxious, so maybe are not getting enough sex?, but that’s what you might expect of someone lying with their face in the gutter with a police boot on their necks. Why are you begrudging their loudness Bijou? Huh? 🤣 And who is even listening to them? Most people have their routers or radio receivers tuned to Pop Music and Celebrity crud.

This is the same for Prof Keen’s articles tut-tutting engineers like the Mars King for failing to understand his Minksy software. And Steve K’s articles pointing out 𝒎ℴ𝙧🄾𝖓𝕚𝗰 mainstream economists do not understand Capitalism. I am sure they do not. But if they did would it make any difference? No it would not.

This is essentially the same as the flaw in Aaron Good’s goldbug and Debt Trap rhetoric.

Cheney And Rumsfeld already understood MMT, and it did not raise one iota of public service goodness in their diseased brains.

By the same token, when Nixon took the USA out of Bretton-Woods (a fixed exchange rate agreement, not a ‘‘gold standard’) — it should have been a great opportunity for progressive to push for full employment and sustainable development. But you can take a fiat currency system and use it for evil ends too. A peg to gold did not stop the Vietnam War. Neither did abandoning Bretton-Woods.

My problem with Steve Keen’s stance on “My software saw the GFC and the mainstream could not because they did not understand currency” — is that this seems very pedantic and clownishly naïve. Not saying Steve K is naïve, just that it comes across as naïve. Why?

Because in many ways causing a global meltdown and mortgage default could easily have been part of the whole overworld plan. Once must at least not discount it. The raison d’être of the power elite crimongenic and plutocratic elements is to occasionally cause a few crisis, since they are always the ones who can cash-in.

Nevertheless, you aught to study and understand Steve Keen’s analysis in order to at least avoid being duped or a rube, or a dangerous idiot like Aaron Good sometimes appears. (No disrespect intended, the idiocy of leftists like Aaron is just innocent ignorance.)

But just understand also this knowledge is not sufficient. One can take ProfKeen’s knowledge and use it for endless war.

What prevents this abuse of the monetary system, pray tell?

Call me the naïve one now, but I think a huge counter to the abuses is to inform the public about MMT too! Then we are all on an equal sure knowledge footing. It does the leftists at NovaraMedia, Jacobin, TMR, BreakingPoints and elsewhere no damn good if the refuse to absorb the MMT analysis. No good at all. As I have written before, it is like getting handed non-violent but Ninja level weapons for your class war… and failing to use them.

What idiocy of the Grace Blakeley’s of the world is this?

In the immortal words of El Tucco : “_Heh… If you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.”

Here’s the thing though:

The MMT Ninja weapons are (i) totally Ninja, and (ii) radically non-violent.

Without them you get leftists egging on the likes of the folks at BreakingPoints et al for going full Tankie. My friends, violence is never the answer, and you will never defeat the neoliberals with violence, they have the deep state on their side.

One you gain enough popular support for a effective working class emancipation movement you will find you have already won, and the physical non-MMT weapons can be laid down and left too rust … or recycled for solar energy guff.

For certain the academic economists were not “in on” such disaster capitalism, but if you mind-meld Naomi Klein and Aaron Good and a few others, then you cannot deny pushing the private debt levels to ridiculous levels was most likely a very deliberate policy, or influence on government policy and regulation-by-failure-to-enforce-regulations.

Sound too conspiratorial to you?

Well, that’s why I mentioned this is an amateur website. You should do the research to draw your own conclusions. But don’t come and tell me mainstream economists misunderstanding capitalism is a big problem. It’s a small fraction of the real serious problems a decent society faces.

Caveats

I have people attack me on ’the socials’ for being pro-capitalist and “despising leftism”. This is deeply unfair, very hurtful, and could not be further from the truth, firstly, you have no idea what I think at night or in daylight, secondly, just follow my writing … it is clear I am pro-worker and anti-capitalist. This does not mean I have to enjoy everything coming out of leftist indie media. What I dislike about leftist indie media is precisely when it supports and boosts fascistic tendencies. “How could this ever occur?” you might ask. Obviously no pomo or leftiepol wants to boost fascistic tendencies, but when they spread lies about monetary economics (or promote purely Identity Politics — diversity within the socioeconomi classes) this is exactly what they are doing.

I do not see any other option but to aim a bit of non-lethal friendly fire at other leftists, because my MMT bullets just bounce off the right-wing Tory elements of society, and I dislike wasting my keystroke ammo.

That said, do not ever forget the MMT Ninja weapons are powerful, and can be deployed by any old sod, they are historically the most effective so far in the utility belts of right-wingers, and that just has to change! … otherwise, to use a worn out but apt phrase … we are screwed.

Not Understanding Capitalism

I forgot to put in the link to where ProfKeen was off again complaining people do not use his software. I think it was here: Steve Keen here — I am at the point where I think such discourse is a bit redundant, silly, missing the points, and all manner of misdirection and wasted energy.

My view is that it is really about removing the root causes of suffering. I always paid attention in this regard – in a different context — to the likes of Peter Bergen and John Pilger. Bergen was very clear in the early days of the “war on terror” if I recall. He emphasized the importance of poverty/occupation drivers of jihadism over pure ideological and strategic drivers, he critiqued aspects of the war on terror as potentially counterproductive without addressing underlying al-Qaeda grievances and networks.

((This is just what I dimly recall, maybe it is a good topic for another day, if I can find an MMT education angle.))

TODO
Note on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Jihad
* Notes on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_War,_Inc.

Anti-Drugs

A friend of mine was recently pushing the use of hallucinogenic drugs as “cool,” and backed by mathematics!(???). I cannot begin to describe how ꕷꖡꖹꘝꕯꕒ that is, but it is useful to have the sex, drugs and human traffic from American Exception as a series of case studies in how drug culture promotes fascism.

Is there any doubt at this stage?

I am not against people who feel they need to use drugs for recreation, I am against the culture that spawns the need for anyone to think psychedelics and the like are a great way to deal with postmodern pain (late stage capitalist culture).

Having had ketamine injection myself for severe back pain, I am also not against medical uses of psychotics. However, the hallucination and dreamlike states are side-effects of the medical uses, not the cause of the medical benefits. In the case of ketamine for anti-depression, it is a fairly marvellous usage, heals the glutamate receptors. But the wonderful hypnotic side-effects are just wonderful benefits, not the purpose. Contrast with the anti-histamines I have to take because my daughters’ cat makes my eyes so itchy I cannot sleep — bitterness of those alkaloid based drugs reminds me the side-effects are not the reason to administer the drugs!

There is a better healthier way to enter dream-like states. Can you guess what it is?

I am so ꘝꖾꖹꖀꗣꕯꖦꗱ tired today man.

This would all be moral high-horse-ism if not for the studies of the likes of Peter Dale Scott and Aaron Good, who maybe accidentally, have been highlighting the fact that recreational drug use supports imperialist empires. Via the deep state of course, not via mere tuning-in and dropping-out, though the latter is also a CIA boosted cultural operation.

The very least you can individually do for the effort to somewhat denude the deep state is to stop taking drugs. Ignore all the Nancy Reagan/ Tipper Gore nonsense, they did not know the half of it.

Somewhat masochistically, though I do not mean it masochistically, I would argue it is better to not artificially dull the pain of modernity, if we are to fight against neoliberalism, we must, unfortunately perhaps, feel the pain. (But not in the Clinton way!)

What was “the Clinton way”? again? I am sure it was he loved seeing your pain.

As with Peter Bergen’s stance, I would humbly suggest finding ways to remove the root causes of depression, and not succumb to drugs. I was prescribed SSRI’s and NDRI’s, but no one should view such drugs as more than band-aids. In my casenwhen I wanted to stop taking them I had several months of random anxiety attacks, out of nowhere. Ever since I have refused such prescriptions. Those drugs are evil. They are good perhaps for acute instant panic disorder alleviation, but none of them address the root causes of your inner mental self terrorism.

For although you may feel your mind is terrorizing yourself, you should never think this way… if I may gently suggest … because more likely you are perfectly healthy in mind, even exceptional, and are rather more likely in need of love and experiencing instead a total lack of support from a loving society, because neoliberal society is unloving.

Sometimes you have to face the monster and do battle. I have found exercise and writing to be pretty good weapons to defeat these monsters. Longer term far more beneficial than any drugs. I do believe there is a similar remedy for anyone, maybe for you it is singing, or playing piano, or knitting. (Apologies to extroverts, I cannot think of your suitable remedy, but if it is a big fun party, I’d urge you to do that without the booze & drugs … and maybe even without the sex … leave that until way after the party with the one you love, the delayed gratification can be sublime and beuatiful.)

Such things as singing and knitting can appear superficially like mere distractions, but this is not so, they have multiple good feedback effects, and enhance your capacity to help other people. This is the best way to help yourself, without it being overt ꕗꖹꝆꝆꕷꖾꕯꖡ “enlightened self-interest.” The only enlightenment is when you have no self-interest.

Not Wanting the Scorepoints

I should say, you can certainly drop a few thousand into my Ko-Fi fund to “buy me off” to say certain things. It might even be fun. See if you can get me to say something without telling me the words.

But I cannot be bought to say anything I do not wish to say.

How is this possible? Well, one way is to not give a damn about the score in your bank account. I have a very $\mathbb{Z}\setminus\mathbb{Z}^+$ scorepoint account, and that’s allowed me to say whatever the heck I please. The constraint is that I cannot marketing & advertising promote anything, so cannot propagandize or spread what I have to say. But do you think I care about that?

I could not care less. People have this “nasty & pesky” little quirk of repeating things they almost subliminally hear or read, nasty of course if you have a fascistic or neoliberal point of view. So this habit of decent information having a tendency to spread around is a wonderful thing for the rest of us, and is why I never care about promotion or being a big name influencer. I am anti-all-that anyway.

I know I’ll have contributed some small “vote” in social influence when the big names like Bri Joy Gray or Kulinski or whoever, start denouncing UBI and promoting the Job Guarantee. Hell of course may freeze over twice before that happens. Although… I think BJG has obliquely argued a JG is superior to UBI, though I would bet she hardly understands why. She clearly has the intellectual capacity to understand why. So hell may freeze over one and a half times before I hear her completely and fully articulate the reasons. She’d need to get over her celebrity-ism and talk to Mosler or Tcherneva to do so I reckon, or Yeva Nersisyan.

Not that I don’t enjoy Bill Mitchell and Randy Wray, but they’ve already had a crack at BJG, and proved ineffectual in getting the JG to stick. Or maybe the JG did stick with BJG, but then the relevance and importance of the JG did not. The more hair-on-fire issues swamp the base goodness. This is what is so stupid about most celebrity clickbait media. By getting distracted from the base needs of working class people, and getting distracted by the horrors of war, we lose capacity to fight for base economic justice.

Base economic justice is an enormously powerful anti-war force. More powerful than mass protests and mainstream media OpEds and academic journals and think tank whitepapers. More powerful than oil & currency.

There would be no genocidal wars if we had economic justice. If Israeli’s had a Job Guarantee they’d be able to give the middle finger to the military job de facto income guarantee — the income guarantee with 10% guarantee of on-the-job-death. It is no use pointing out to me that hell will freeze over four times before the fascist state of Israel offers their people a JG. But the Palestinians could have. And the rest of the world could have, which would have left Israel looking like a foolish world basket case.

Someone tell BJG that Mosler presented a BJG (Base case Job Guarantee) plan and currency stability plan for the Palestinian state. No one in the headline Left took any notice.

Back to the first point: you cannot be extorted or bribed by “cloud capital” and the rentiers and crypto-mafia if you (a) have no government scorepoints in your bank account, and (b) do not care for them anyway, except base survival.

One Waterside worker in 1951 Aotearoa said at the end of the lock-out to his wife, “You know, I wouldn’t mind this going on for longer, It’s been tough, but I’ve learned to live without a wage, and it is a lot better feeling than thinking about having to go back to work on the docks.”

How were these Watersiders surviving? It was an underground grocery delivery network, operating in the calm and dark of night. Ordinary people, neighbours. No mafia black market involved. It was not the useless ꕗꖹꝆꝆꕷꖾꕯꖡ asceticism of monks.