Bat BRICS

Real Progressives had another round of discussion about BRICS and the SWIFT system, SDR’s and other related issues of international currencies. While the purpose is good, I think a few things are worth noting, and I will be mainly making a critique from a dirtbag leftie perspective. Some folks who like the concept of BRICS might not appreciate this, but I hope you read this and offer corrections if you think any are needed.

Short synopsis:

1. It does not matter what currency a government is forced to pay in, since there is always a forex rate, even for some of the poorest nations. The issue is how to make the swap to make the payment, not the currency unit.
        And the seller, generally a private sector agent motivated to sell, will most often make that exchange.
2. The issue is the fear of inflation — but when has a payment forced in USD ever been inflationary? I can’t see the mechanism for inflation only because USD units are being demanded.
        Numeraires don’t cause anything.
3. In any case, if exports are not strong then inflation can get passed through if more imports are desired and the government supports more imports at an increasing rate. It is the rate of increase in this case (or import price hikes) that mostly effects inflation. But in this case the imported inflation is not the weaponization of the dollar, but your weak economy demanding more than it can itself supply.
        This falls under the heading of Deficiency of non resident savings desires (if one were to be writing a FED briefing. lol)
4. The USA can weaponize payments layers in many ways, it is through the transport layer, not the currency unit, e.g., by refusing payments, imposing preferential prices/penalties, blockades, etc. That’s the actual weaponization occurring. That’s the proper case to make for say a BRICS transport system$^{}ddaggaer$, but you’ll need a lot more than BRICS units. Proper UN trade facilitation and dismantling and reforming the WTO to be not a neoliberal attack dog.
        However the US would have to interfere with payments between others for the BRICS payments to be a benefit. This is only significant for currency-users, not currency-issuers. So the USA really have no power at all through payments layers to cripple any nation, they don’t need to do it that way. Nations get crippled by USA “dollar hegemony” only because they do not understand the power & purpose of their own existing currencies.
5. Ultimately a seller of US goods with a US bank account will receive USD, but you cannot call this weaponization! It is called “desiring a US bank account”.
6. You say, “But what about pass through inflation?” OK, but when has that ever crippled a nation? It’s all fear mongering. The source of inflation to worry about is not coming from the payments layer. It comes from greed and corruption, which BRICS is not going to fix.

BRICS will help in moving where and who the more corrupt oligarchs live and exploit. It might be a very good thing for the USA (absent active lefties in the BRICS nations).

MMT is only a lens for all this analysis. The true solutions to the oppression of the working class are spiritual. By which I only mean compassion, solidarity, honesty, trustworthiness, wisdom. Armed with these spiritual tools the working class can advance and defeat oligarchy. MMT adds to the critical Knowledge component of Wisdom.

$^{}ddagger$Did someone just say “One Belt One Road”?

For the Global South the Problem is not the Payments Layer

This reminded me of when years ago some MMT activist wanted privacy respecting payments systems. I told him the means already exist, such as the GNU Taler software (for online payments only for now, but that’s not a huge downside). Full buyer anonymity${}^\dagger$. The seller is however not private. This is by design, so they don’t escape the NIPA accounting.

“But we have to protect anonymity of exploited workers like prostitutes…,” came the cry.

Wrong! We have to protect all workers, and sex workers should not be even worrying about the payments layer they use. The protection of all workers is not through the payment layer.

Also, I do not see any sex workers organizing underground movements to overthrow the oligarchs. But if they are, then great! But the payments layer they use for work is neither here nor there.

You know, this strain in MMT circles is really just the same old colonization of people’s minds that the Austrian Schoolers and goldbugs have. Investing far too much hope (for their ideological values) in currency systems.

It is the same with the UBI crowd. Giant mind worms. Appeasing people with scorepoints they did not have to earn is fools gold. The parallel currency folks are doing things infinitely better — they understand the purpose of the tax-driven currency system running on top. (Mini lesson: it is to deliberately create unemployment, so the state can then get rid of the unemployment.) As long as the State fails to fill the unemployment gap (same as spending gap), a local parallel currency can always be successful in eliminating local unemployment, with zero inflation pressure.

What MMT is very good at is clarifying one’s perspective, so that the monetary system of accounts is the least of our concerns. It removes the bad Marxist cobwebs of “the commodity form” which was always brain rot. This allows what is brilliant about Marxism to shine brighter.

${}^\dagger$ (Up to NSA level belligerence in brute force reverse engineering the flows of funds & goods to infer buyer identity. But no currency can protect you from that spy craft.)

Do foreigners get forced to pay for goods in dollars?

Answer: No.

Comment (a). It is a fundamental misunderstanding of monetary systems to think the USA can force anyone to pay in US dollars, meaning need to get US dollar scorepoints into their bank account first. While there is a fee, international payments systems — mainly forex desks or dealer banks or platforms like Western Union and other — allow you to pay for goods sold in USD with your scorepoints in your bank account.

But even this misses the point. The dollar is just a numeraire. Anyone will accept your currency for payment. The issue is how much you must give them above the fair exchange rate. If you are in the black markets or dealing with a real piece of sh1t monopolist, they might demand more than the fair exchange rate.

Back in the old days when you travelled it was always handy to have a few USD bills in your wallet, since everyone accepted them. But how the hell did you get those greenbacks? Goodness knows… right? You musta’ run a counterfeit press. “Ye godz! Dollar hegemony!”

As I say, still goldbugs colonizing your minds. Even some MMT’ers who should know better.

Comment (b). Too many lefties are placing hope in freedom from the “US controlled” payments systems and “US dollar hegemony”. Both these are myth-making, which while not directly lacking class conscious nevertheless seem on that verge.

Do governments get forced to pay for goods in dollars?

Answer: No.

They can always pay in their domestic currency. What seller is going to refuse the sale?

If the purpose was to simply prevent a poor nation from getting the goods, that does not require some evil government control of the SWIFT system or anything else like it. The exporters just get told to not ship. No payments layer is in sight.

To think it is the payments system or the currency numeraire is to have a colonized goldbug mindset. MMT should free you from this.

However, I cannot stop governments from being stupid and self-imposing dollar hegemmony on their people. They do so all the time. They should be corralled by the worker party and ridiculed and taunted to death with the Monty Python joke weapon.

A Kiwi Lesson

Little New Zealand told the US nuclear powered vessels to find somewhere else to dump their waste. A few threats were promised. Nothing bad happened. Sure, New Zealand has no oil or lithium etc., so we’re lucky. But that’s a parochial perspective. Whatever shaky foundations the United Nations was laid upon, the collective nations of the world do not have to sit back idly while poor mineral rich countries continue being exploited. Even then, where does the exploitation arise from? It is not from the USA all alone, it’s from corruption of the leaders of those poor nations. They’re greedy. BRICS will not stop them being greedy for scorepoints — it does not have to be USD accounts. Sorry it is so banal.

Don’t write to me complaining I don’t understand Realpolitik please. Any powerful nation can exploit the weak, and it has nothing to do with needing to control the payments layer. If you think it is, and you think BRICS is a partial remedy, I think you are the more naïve. Like any tool controlled by the elites, BRICS can be used for good or for bad. But it is the wrong place to place your hopes.

You need to place your hopes in what you can control.

I can’t control what word spew Jeffrey Sachs, Richard Wolff, Yanis Varoufakis, and Michael Hudson emit, though I can hope their hearts are in the right place.

What can a dirtbag leftie control?

We can control who we associate and organize with, and what we do off work hours to organize (and how much time we waste looking at our smartphones). So that’s what you aught to place your hopes in. (I trust Grumbine recognizes this as enough of a giant middle finger to the fake democracy of “electorialism”.)

Further Realpolitik and Inflation of Name Tags

The flip side of realpolitik you can have with MMT Lens understanding is that it can work the other way against the hegemon. They cannot invade every country refusing to host their warships or refusing to let the US corporations be the ones extracting their mineral resources. International solidarity of nations. Sounds like we need to set up some organization called “The United Peoples of the World and Their Puppet Representatives Talking a Lot”.

What “did in” Ghana back in the day? It was greed for the revenues. Damn stupid. What was the big rush to develop into a high tech sophisticated society? They were already more sophisticated than the USA apes. They just didn’t know it because Hollywood and all that carry-on which feeds the world false ideology that to be sophisticated you need nice new whiteware in your home, stocked with CocaCola, and these days own a s̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶a̶r̶a̶t̶u̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶v̶e̶i̶l̶l̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ smartphone.

A nicer looking place to store your beer. Very sophisticated.

The solidarity among the BRICS nations is by far the more hopeful thing for their people. They can have a flash new payments system, but the more important thing is standing up to help each other when an imperious nation imposes sanctions and whatnot. Where were we all when Cuba was in need of us? Nowhere to be found, to our shame. (Actually, I don’t know, maybe NZ exported to Cuba? We would not in 2025 had the blockade begun now.)

Cautionary Tale though.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Pessimistically, that’s how I see the BRICS when viewed only as an escape from payments blocks by the US Treasury and/or Customs/Trade agencies. Yes, the USA leadership and elites are like “the evil empire” but there is still a lot of that greed and materialism going round. It occupies entire lifetimes of activism contributing to slowly stamping it all out a tiny bite at a time.

Don’t pin your hopes on the currency system. It is not the place for justice. Make it so your MMT understanding frees people’s minds to focus on what really matters. Our collective power, not the scorepoints. Once “the people” Reclaim the State , the scorepoints can be then used wisely, instead of how they are used today. Will this happen in our lifetimes? I don’t know, but I see enough de facto Accelerationism that I think it highly likely.

I still don’t know if that is good or bad. It’s the Mother of All Bandaid Rippings Off! Each little hair torn off in the adhesive to capitalism’s blood clots is an innocent dead person. So… yeah, probably better to get it ripped off sooner than later. It is a confused metaphor I know, I don’t know what the wound and bandaid’s are analogies for, you can dream that up yourself. I’m thinking the wound is capital exploitation of workers clearly, most of whom today do not even see themselves as exploited. So there are other Bodily symptoms too, like depressions and suicides and oxycontin epidemics. If I was Cutrone I guess I’d say the bandaid and Panadol is a dictatorship of the Proletariat?

I did not think this essay would come to such a bloody end!

I just wanted to warn friends to be careful in what they say about BRICS. If you rant too much about the “US dollar collapsing” you risk looking a fool and the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Or Chicken Little. I’m not sure which.

I guess the US dollar collapsing is Boy Who Cried Wolf, since before the US dollar collapses, the US government might just cease to exist an hour earlier. I don’t know how, but it’d be in the abstract. Like the GOP somehow manage complete and utter fooling of a majority under fake populism, and then whoever is in the Whitehouse just plays golf forever and stuffs their face with fast food, while in secret leaving the entire Sate apparatus over to Musk and Co. to run as a lab experiment.

In that case the USD might come and go on a bi-yearly basis as they figure out whether cryptotokens can be actual currency or not, and whether the the US dollar scorepoints are not in fact already cryptotokens (hint: they are — ever tried to crack a Bank? You’ll need at least Kali-Linux for that).

I’ve lost track of how many people, both left-wing and right-wing claim “the US dollar will collapse”. The lucky thing for them the Boy Who Cried Wolf parable is no longer modern era applicable. The media is not holding the alt-media or the media to account for bad calls. Or when they do, CNN style, it’s always “We said a lie, but when on air guys, just say it was miss-reporting.” 24 hours later all is not forgiven, it is just not remembered.

Having got that bit of cynicism off my chest, I am well aware I’ve taken the fragile side, not the anti-fragile. So it is a bad move. It always pays to be the doomsayer, since no one holds you to account if nothing bad happens, but if something perchance bad happens you’re the Nostradamus.

Having got that bit of cynical cynicism off my other chest, who is going to attack me when it happens and say I was an idiot for not seeing the US dollar collapse? Luckily probably no one. It won’t matter either, since I do not own any investments. I’ll just work as usual to get the new government scorepoints even as those libertarians refuse to call themselves “big government.” What are they? “Scientists and futurologists of legal dispute resolutions and Ai driven tax credit scorepoint accounting.”

In other news: wtf happened to Bill Mitchell? I love the guy. But he’s such a Doomer. It does not help to say, “civilizations collapse, get used to it”. Hell no to that.

Normally I’d shoot myself for saying this, but sometimes, just sometimes, it pays to be a pollyanna. Too much digging into ecological collapse forecasts and Degrowth circle groupthink, I think, can lead to depression. But that’s a killer. I know.

The 𝔣𝔘ℭ𝔎ℑ𝔑𝔊 right-wing ℭ𝔘𝔑𝔗𝔰 know how to wish their world into being, they never suffer from depression. They just take action… by finding a new neck to stomp upon (also called charging rents). On the liberal-left wing there is too much doomerism and hopelessness. It is all warranted, but it is useless. So take it, but don’t hold onto it, pass it along.

However, as someone prone to lifelong social anxiety and depression I know it is not easy to have a pollyanna outlook. Heck, why do I? Everything in your heart & soul begs you to be an honest realist. I think it is like the Jimmie Hendrix effect. You need to take drugs to just get back to normal person mental state. The thing is, you just never fool yourself into thinking you are not being a polyanna. That’s the trick. You have to know you are a wild optimist, and so are not fooling yourself.

If it helps, I could mention something about quantum probabilities! The future is not determined by the past folks, it just isn’t. Call me if you want to learn more about that! It is not a recipe for pollyannaish optimism, it’s just a hint of a possibility. Sometimes that’s enough to spur good people into action. (One of the insidious things the Obama people sold, was in fact a good thing: hope — it was just too bad they were not offering any for actual over-the-counter sale to the plebs, oxvcontin instead.)

Empires collapse far more frequently than civilizations. The (inevitable) ecological crisis will collapse oligarchic empires for certain, it does not have to collapse civilization. Believe it or not, I reckon it is easily possible to have many current empires collapse with the working class stiffs hardly aware anything happened. Why? Because so damn unequal we are already.

One Tory 𖧳𖧥𖨚𖢧𖧥𖦪𖦧’𖨚 “collapse” is a working class stiffs daylight.

But that’s gedankepolitik for another day, and also fruitless speculation, so only my family get to hear me rant about it.