Mushrooms and University

A few comments today on medicinal psilocybin use and research. But the university topic will go further, because we read in last weeks New Zealand capital city last surviving newspaper, The Dominion Post, that universities are being starved of funding, may need to fire thousands of staff, and cut back research. Thousands of staff is enormous for a small nation like New Zealand, not small fries.

Thanks to my good friend, you know who you are, for prompting me to post this one.

Medical Mushrooms

I’ll report what I’ve heard, I do not know any of this for certain first hand. I will use Paul Stamets’ report . It is not fully reliable because he is squarely on the psychedelics are great side of the story. But he seems like a trustworthy sort of character. He openly talks about the dangers of using psychedelics.

First thing is the least toxic psilocybin mushrooms have been reported by US FDA scientists as the least toxic and most beneficial psychedelics they have ever tested. I will leave it at that for now, because I want to report or opine on the research and public policy side, not the pure science side.

I will do this just with a couple of comments I posted on Paul Stamets’ video clip. I think this aught to be sufficient for Ōhanga Pai readers, who I presume are here for the macroeconomics and social justice. Understanding the macroeconomics is the critical thing for emboldening and empowering your activism if you have a cause.

One last qualifier on the “science”: I had ketamine administered once for severe back pain that hospitalized me (the pain, not the ketamine). It was obvious to me the ketamine had potential anti-depressant effects, but it turned out later ketamine can help regrow damaged glutamate receptors in the brain, a major cause of chronic depression. So that it’s not a mere palliative, it is a potent active medicine and curative, far superior to symptom treating drugs like SSRIs and NDRIs.

Also, from the trip I had, I would not say ketamine is strongly psychedelic, at least not personally, it is merely psycho-active, personally. It made me talk a lot about theoretical physics on the way to the hospital in the ambulance. I would not want to take a stronger dose, and would not need to, I don’t need trips, I know they are dream-like states, not spiritual experiences. (If you want to redefine the meaning of “spiritual” as a mere mental series of surreal inner subjective events, I am not going to argue, but then we are talking about entirely different phenomena. Please just respect my usage of the word.)

Spiritual experiences tend to be very nasty and grotty. You know you’ve had a spiritual experience when you help someone, and probably suffer, but feel euphoric as a result because you feel you have done some good in the world. The suffering is not the aim of it though, helping others is the aim.

Here are two comments I want to share that I left on Paul Stamets’ talk.

1. Stamet’s mentions how the placebo effect appears to ruin randomized double blind control trials (RCTs). But I thought that was nonsense talk.

@35:00 don’t be silly Paul. An obvious placebo group is not a reason to drop RCTs. The data you get is just different. Plus the researcher can still be blind, via an intermediary data gatherer assistant. Plus, in the first case you are not out to measure the placebo effect per se since in the real world you want the placebo effect to be active in any case, if at all possible, if it is a beneficial effect. If at first we cannot reliably determine the significance of the placebo it does not matter too much. It means you need to gather more data not less, to tease out the placebo effect significance. More research, not less.

2. Paul mentions he has a mantra, “nature provides, I don’t.” Which sounds a bit anti-social to me. If you are going to advocate for use pf psilocybin and supply them, then how about getting yourself bloody well skilled mate? Have some social responsibility? Here was my comment:

@37:00 well that’s a big f-ing problem. If Stamets, with decades of user experience, is “not skilled” how tf do we resource the workers needed to safely administer psychedelics? Seems to me ketamine is a better way to go at least for depression, known to act directly on the glutamate receptor damage in people with chronic depression. (You can fact-check me, I’m not an expert.) Also, get those neoliberal and fash bastards out of political office, and institute full employment and green sustainable working class prosperity, euthanise the rentiers, and you remove most of the need for “cures” for depression and anxiety, you reduce the anxiety, fear, uncertainty and depression of living in the working class. (Learn MMT? justsayin’.) Then you will have the fiscal space to employ the few psychiatric nurses needed to administer psychedelics for people who truly need them. Treat causes first, not symptoms.

Obviously I am not trying to shame Stamets here, just a friendly, “what about it, mate?” To turn the mirror around: I’m not thoroughly skilled in MMT analysis, but I am constantly learning and have the desire and motivation to do so precisely to be of public service and not merely “let nature provide.” You cannot yet get a degree or certificate in “MMT Nursing” but I enrol in Bill Mitchell’s university courses and diligently complete the assignments to become a better “MMT Nurse.” I’m never going to be the best MMT Nurse. But if no others arise in large numbers, I’ll do what I can.

As for use of psychedelics in medical practise? I am neither for nor against. I do not think people need to use psychedelics to gain spiritual experiences, clearly. The psycho-active side-effects of medicines are tolerable in many cases, and are certainly no good reason to not use them as medicines, if they produce superior healing effects. If we banned medicines and foods because they have unwanted side-effects we’d have very few legally available medicines and almost nothing legally available to eat.

University Research

On the points just made: more research not less is what I call for, especially when the placebo effect is confounded by obvious psychoactive effects. Especially when the “tax payer” is frikin’ not funding it. No one’s wallet shrinks when our NZ government employs university researchers. It’s the exact opposite, someones wallet gets thicker, with no inflationary bias, the funding helps accommodate private savings desires — until tax is paid.

Well that means employing more people in university research, not less. That means employing the administrative staff to clear the paperwork burdens, not unemploying them.

But what is neoliberally infested New Zealand doing? F-ing unemploying university staff. It’s Gross, incompetent politics, and disgusting anti-social governance. The government is supposed to be the preeminent public and social purpose institution of all, but the neoliberals run governments as an anti-worker and anti-social institution who by policy choice, not market necessity, serve the wealthy and the capitalists, who themselves have no problem finding bread to eat and real estate to speculate upon.

Honestly. A neoliberal politician today needs psychedelics to cope when they wake up to reality, to the horrors and injustices they have perpetrated. Same with anyone who thinks the government needs to get money off rich people before it can issue the currency. They’re not only ignorant now, but since MMT has become headlined they are disgusting frauds and willfully ignorant, and that becomes a crime against humanity, and over time only more of a crime, less of an innocent ignorance.

Power of the Pen Activism

I know it feels pathetic, but the word is powerful. It’s just you have to use it, not stay silent. So I wrote an email to the journalist who published the “Crisis in Our Universities” headline in the Wellington Dominion Post. It is up to him to desire to read and enquire into the truth, I’ve given him the chance. I re-publish my email here so other activists can do some Copy & Paste and re-use. Edit for your purposes, and write to me if you think you can improve such letters to journalists. I especially like shorter letters that get to the point without being impolite.

((Journalists, ironically, suffer from attention and reading deficit disorders. They have very small mental capacity to absorb new knowledge. The gossip columnists and click-bait writers focus on the spectacle, not enough on the truth. And let’s be honest, 90% of political opinion columns degenerate into gossip, and are not informing the public of the available policy space options available to governments.))

Journalists are supposed to be our mirrors to the world and speakers of truth to power, but too many journalists remain among the ignorant on matters of macroeconomics, and that, like the lack of trained psychiatric nurses, is a big f-ing problem.

I’d say the lack of honest and courageous journalists is the bigger problem. Too many of them have libertarian tendencies or have drunk the neoliberal austerity koolaid. Sometimes this derives from a protestant work ethic, but they’ve then got it all horribly backwards.

The protestant work ethic, for what good it is, tells you to employ people, not unemploy them. You do not therefore “tighten the belt of government”! That’s a false metaphor in any case. The government is the provider of currency “bread and water” metaphorically, so needs to issue for public purpose, unconstrained, not withdraw the sustenance because “they will run out of this bread”. They cannot run out of NZ dollars, and are not beholden to bond markets for finance.

If a useful resource (think willing labour, first and foremost) is not being employed, government can always employ it, without question, and without driving up prices, because the unemployed resource bid from the private sector is by definition zero. The horrific social and lost real output costs of not employing all willing labour is enormous, exceeding, in the matter of about a decade, the costs of all wars in all human history.

Here is the letter I wrote, feel free to copy, edit, re-use:

Dear Mark,
I greatly appreciate your journalism, and congratulations on getting the headline in the Dominion Post. Could I humbly suggest a few ways to massively improve your public education concerning university funding?
      First, and I think most important, journalists need to inform the public that the government cannot run out of their own currency, they issue it by fiat. Taxes are not a funding operation for currency sovereign governments, they are a demand mechanism (we need the governments currency to pay tax liabilities, fees and fines). Imposed tax liabilities (not tax return) creates demand for an otherwise worthless currency token, it does not create supply of these accounting records (aka. tax credits) for the issuer of the tax credit (aka. NZ dollars here in Aotearoa).
      Same with Treasury bond issue: they do not fund the government, they are interest rate maintenance operations. No one can possibly pay a dime in tax or buy a bond until the NZ government first issues the NZ dollar. Banks can only legally issue credit, they cannot create net NZD financial assets.
      Secondly, there is no public purpose served by unemploying available sustainable resources, and the NZ government can always employ any available resource without causing inflationary pressure. If the real resources are available and not employed by the private sector, by employing them the government cannot cause any price pressure, since by definition the private sector bid for those resources is zero.
      Thirdly, the quantity theory of money is an myth. It is empirically false, plenty of data shows when currency supply increases firms will prefer to bring on idle capacity rather than increase prices, if there is sufficient market competition. Most firms have a lot of idle capacity.
      The government is a currency monopolist, and can thus always choose to set the price and let supply float, like any monopolist. As a simple point of logic they are price-setter, not price taker. Our politicians and officials do not understand this, because they are operating under the myths of neoliberal and neoclassical economics (fallacies due to not appreciating the government has a simple public monopoly on the currency and legal system). The result is policy advice and implementation that is needless austerity.
      Fourth, there is no public purpose served by artificially constraining university staff and research budgets if the real resources are already available ((including labour). By staying clear of university concerns the government is not in fact being “hands-off” they are wilfully imposing needless austerity, such depoliticisation attempts are a gross abnegation of public responsibility. The NZ government has already interfered in public education by simply being the issuer of the currency, if they fail to issue enough to meet the needs to pay taxes and the desires to save, they’ve generated needless unemployment (people needing to earn the tax credit who cannot get the tax credit). This is a tragic policy mistake, to fix it government needs to either lower the tax liabilities or hire all the people who they unemployed by issuing too many tax liabilities to meet the aggregate desires to save.
      Savings in NZD are a demand withdrawal out of circulation, they are anti-inflationary, so if people still have unmet savings desires the government has not issued enough currency, and have generated needless unemployment. The governments fiscal deficit is our (private sector) collective savings, to the dollar. Why do people keep saying they want the government deficit to be reduced? It can only be out of gross ignorance. This would reduce net savings of the private sector.
      Lastly, if you desire to learn about the reality of monetary operations and fiscal policy space available to a government like NZ, which operates a fiat currency on a floating exchange rate (which is critical) then may I suggest you read the two attached, easy-to-understand books? If you have any questions I would be happy to answer.       
Regards,
Dr B. M. Smith.

I think I attached Warren Mosler’s books. Depending on who you correspond with you might attach Stephanie Kelton’s or Randall Wray’s books. I also send them Pavlina Tcherneva’s A Case for the Job Guarantee. If my correspondent is someone who might by chance be read by people in power, I can justify paying the fee for the ebook licence key.

I know not all MMT activists have the cash to send, frankly I often don’t either, and I’d like to write more letters. Under such conditions a pirated ebook is not a crime on my books. Sure, I could get arrested for failing to pay a fine for sharing, but I’ve already paid Kelton, Wray and Tcherneva enough in royalties to last a lifetime, and I paid my dues by cleaning up Mosler’s two books in nice $\LaTeX$. Plus none of what you are reading now is behind a pay-wall. If you want a copy of any of the books for education fair re-use just let me know.