Parentius Caesar

Due to Iran–Israel war flooding indie media [FN-1] , I escaped into some based history today with Michael Parenti. The Assassination of Julius Caesar

Julius Parentius

No doubt old school Parenti fans will point out “this is nothing new,” but what struck me was how this talk stands up as a terrific first introductory lecture for students who study history. Using the case of Julius Caesar as an example, Parenti covers all the things an honest and wise history student should cultivate for their profession, and of course amateurs too.

The other thing that piqued my interest was how similar Parenti’s analysis of how to do history well sounded an awful lot like Quantum Mechanics! How? It was when he talks about the old school historians pretending they were “situating” themselves “in the time.” Doh! You cannot do that and be a great historian, as Parenti points out. If you judge the past by the standards of the past you end up being a sheer 𖥐𖦪𖠢𖢧𖥣ꛘ. The purpose of the study of history being far more important than the reading and hermeneutics of the texts. Besides which, Cicero, Plutarch, Tacitus, Gibbons, Syme, et al, were not even situating themselves correctly as decent scholars of any type. Their POV was that of the ruling classes. (I’m not going to explain why this reminds me of quantum mechanics, unless you are a paid subscriber and wannaknow.)

It was only a shame Parenti still did not seem to comprehend the nature of money. I am sure he’d pin-point it something like this:

“Yes, but who cares?! You control the levers of power and you control the money, regardless of the legal and institutional arrangement.”

“He is sovereign who decides the exception.” Of course I cannot argue with that, but a spiritual perspective on MMT does more than Parenti might have imagined. Why?

Because you should know the actual operational arrangements to show people that the governments — and their wealthy overloads and criminogenic underworld helpers — are doing things so illegal that it’s not written up in any legal code. (Causing mass unemployment.) You might ask, “Well,what’s the point in pointing this out if we cannot do anything about it?”

I think the answer is obvious.

Knowing both aspects of how the system works;

• Monetary arrangements (MMT),
• The criminal enterprise exploiting the (actual existing) MMT system, [FN-2]

gives us the educative power to organize the proverbial masses to simply not accept any of this neoliberal realism. Neoliberal capitalism is not baked-in to the fabric of society, you only think it is, and thinking it is baked-in is all that makes it appear baked-in. You just need to stop thinking that way. Then neoliberalism appears plainly fragile and ephemeral, even if it takes another few decades to wash the stench away.

My contention is we will never get there if doomer prone activists keep thinking “we are doomed” and do not lift a finger to do anything about it, such as teaching their children the truth about monetary systems and how the wealthy and criminal class exploit this system. Not just that they exploit us, but how they exploit us! 90% of it is by keeping you ignorant.

It is always about morality & spirituality, not about financial “pay fors.”

Only the ꕒꗍꖀ𐝥ꗍꘝꕯꖡ investor class cares about the “pay fors” since they’re not the ones “paying for.” They’re the parasites sucking the currency blood out of others, in one way or another. An investor is not making anything of real value — as an investor. If they make stuff like BBQ burgers or hand woven baskets in their spare time, then during that time interval they are not investors, and so are perhaps darn good people. I want to make then darn good people all the time not just some of the time.

Mini Epistle to Parenti

Huge mistake of epic proportions @9:50 the government creates the currency by fiat when it spends (marking up bank accounts with a computer). This does not come from a tax payer" — that’d be counterfeit. It is also a reich-wing Thatcherite-Reaganite neoliberal myth, so stop parroting it like 𖡮𖦙ꚶ𖥐𖢉𖥣ꛘꛪ ꕯꕒꕯꗞꖡs. Nor do governments “borrow” their own currency from a banker. You never borrow your own I.O.U. The tax credit is an I.O.U.of the State (“We owe you redemption for extinguishing one unit of your tax liabilities.” The government always redeems.) Hence tax return (‘revenir’ ~ “to return back to the issuer” is not a funding operation. The purpose of tax liability is to create unemployment by design (people seeking to exchange their labour for tax credits). The purpose of bonds is interest rate maintenance plus basic income but only for people who already have money and in proportion to how much money they already have ~ obscenely regressive pro-inflationary policy.

But far worse is leaving a single worker unemployed when your tax liabilities caused their unemployment, and cause all unemployment in that currency. It is an epic tragic crime against humanity governments routinely perpetrate, the real social pathological costs of unemployment and the lost output in a mere decade today exceeding the real costs of all wars in all human history.

Government can always fully employ everyone they unemployed-by-design, without inflation pressure, since the private sector bid for unemployed labour is by definition ZERO. It is an epic policy mistake of biblical proportions to leave even a single person unemployed when they might otherwise be working towards public good purpose, a crime against humanity. Government spending (unless insanely corrupt) never has caused hyperinflation in all history — and that’s a finding from a reich-wing institute! (CATO bros.) ⇐ they wanted to find a causal link to inflation from government deficit, they could not find any. The government deficit is just the private surplus, it accommodates insatiable savings desires. Savers do not cause inflation. Monopoly price power, supply shocks, and the wage bid cause inflation.

Private firms never hire the long-term unemployed, they bid for already employed workers. The government has no such competition when hiring the unemployed.

Hyperinflation is always a supply shock (famine, pestilence, war, etc) and the government deficit expands as an effect, not the cause. Otherwise people will die in the street. This expansion is always at the economic base, so alleviates somewhat some inequality, until supply is restored. But that should tell you deliberate pro-inflationary policy even when supply is plentiful is a good policy if there is political tolerance, it reduces the burden of past debt and erodes the purchasing power of hoarded government scorepoints (the currency). So helps reduce inequality.

Don’t Power Shame Me

It’s easy to be a Tankie and abuse us Dirtbag MMT’ers of “not having power,” and hence being feckless and powerless. Where is your Tankie power though?

True power is found in the Love of the people, not in weapons and political seats in Parliaments. If you have a seat in Parliament and still think you need to get taxes from people who already have the currency, then you are as powerless as me, but in a different way. You are powerless because of your ignorance, and you will never enjoy the love of the people.

we can however slowly gain the love of the people. the only sure method for this is education. Spiritual education FN-3 . Not STEM.

Extending the MMT Job Guarantee

Over time I’ve become less enamoured with the JG and think we will do much better with high wage jobs in the public sector proper. (This is actually Tcherneva and Wray’s opinion too. Expand the public sector first! then see who still needs the tax credits, and give ’em them.) They’re two of the four or so JG GOATS in the world. The JG is “there” in place permanently for the hippies and anarchists who do not wish to work for a government department/program. The JG should be fairly small program.

It’s not wage slavery. On the JG the government need only tell us what we can do,an that can be written as liberally as society desires. “Do anything that is not illegal but which benefits your local community.”

Definiitions: This is not slavery. It is service. Big difference. Slavery is not voluntary. While you never volunteered to have tax liabilities imposed, you came into the world as a member of society just like everyone else. There are no complaints about this except from the ignorant and techno-singularitarians (same crowd).

You can, I guess, always call being compensated for your labour with tax credits a “form of slavery” but in my mind that muddies the public water and serves no useful purpose. If you are free to help your community in whatever way you can contribute, then the government scorepoint compensation is justice — the opposite of slavery. You never have to give it all back to the government.

It can look like slavery if the Neoliberals (or their ilk, their bastard children the fascists) are in charge of the score-keeping system. That’d be Parenti’s point.

And here’s the thing: everyone can work! — as long as they’re not on life support. Actually, even a person on life support after some trauma is a valuable person. What is their “job”? It is trying to recover, and failing that their role is educative, to remind their local community we need decent healthcare systems, since we might be in their position some day in the future.

For that sort of work one deserves compensation in government scorepoints, since secondary markets in those scorepoints arise for real goods for sale your income can purchase. Such as paying the nurses caring for you a decent wage with generous lunches and vacation benefits.

Your Contract with Society might not have been requested at birth, but everyone is bound by the same. The political issue is to get rid of the free-riders,the scum bosses, and rentiers, not to get rid of wage work. Wage work is the goodness (since free now of scummy bosses). Worker Cooperatives and all that goodness. Unless you want 𝘥𝖊𝙘🆁𝖊𝚙🄸ꖡ communism where your worker cooperative makes everything, you’ll otherwise need the social scorepoints (the state money) since that gives you consumer choice in the market where other Worker Cooperatives are making nicer things than your workplace can fabricate.

What about today’s unemployed? Well, my dear reader, even they are working. I’ve known of this sort of work. Most unemployed people are working damn hard trying to avoid depression and suicide. It is extremely hard work, harder than writing a blog no one reads (at least writing is a source of pleasure).

If they are lazing around their parents home playing on their PS3 or XBox (it won’t be a PS6 will it?!) you aught not blame them. It’s small pittance of compensation for avoiding depression and suicide.

Moreover, it’s never the lack of government scorepoints causing the depression. It’s the lack of meaning and purpose that kills. Some people, unfortunately, judge meaningfulness by how many government scorepoints they have in their bank account. Like GDP, that’s a pretty rough sort of measure, and prone to silliness. But it is-what-it-is. Social position and shopping for groceries depend upon it. The point to make is that no one needs to be deprived of these scorepoints. Even if they’re not getting wage compensation, they are still working in one way or another. The role of government is to make sure our work is not official unpaid internship in “staving off depression & suicide.” The literal job description of millions of people. Massive policy mistake! — undermining the vitality of the whole community, except those who are so wealthy they are insulated and quarantined from even the thought of poverty (like Uncle Milton Fartmann: “Everyone is happy, the unemployed exist by their own free will.”)

MMT Lesson: All unemployment is a policy choice of the government. People are unemployed through no fault of their own.

For this I have an anti-UBI aphorism which I will call the JFK Aphorism Mark-II

“You can 𝖇𝖆𝒔𝕥𝖆𝗿𝓭𝘭𝕪 make some of the people unemployed all of the time, and you can make all of the people unemployed some of the time, but it is less criminal to make none of the people unemployed all of the time.”

Footnotes: