Murph Turf
Three Bubbles, One Pin Prick
There is a nice Spaghetti Leftist Trilogy from Richard Murphy. I will add just a few margin comments for the record. Please do check out his monologues for yourself and for reference, they are good.
Comments on the Trump Bubble
Arguably the Trump Bubble has already burst, and we are suffering the flood of fascism spilling out. It will pass. The Ai bubble? Hardly. You cannot stop a nerd from believing a program emitting strings that read well are conscious. But unlike radical reich-wing political movements, the computer nerds are not causing any harm. It is the right-wing NerdReich techno-fascists who control the computer tech who can cause harm.
Please do not mistake this for a US 2nd Amendments thing, “Guns do not kill, people do.” — It’s not the same by any stretch. An LLM or CNN/rNN is not designed to kill. That makes all the difference. (Jason Bourne can kill with a roll of newspaper or a sharpie pen, so let’s ban those.)
I was not so sure The Murph has the correct analysis of the DJT era.
It’s quite what you he makes out. In my view, I suspect no one really cares about DJT “delivering results,” except a few saps in the fake-populist petty bourgeoisie.
A deeper analysis has to look at things like Citizens United, and the deeply unholy ‘deep state’ alliances between the (anti)Christian far right and Zionists, and Oligarchs, the modern unholy Trinity. In their worldview DJT has delivered results, no more-so evident than SCOTUS. It’s good for them DJT can be a fall-guy. DJT himself doesn’t seem to care (he’s not even a turd blossom), provided he gets a few more million US tax credits in his bank account. After DJT there’ll just be another reactionary fake populist. It’s a lot like the crypto bubble. It can be sustained in perpetuity because those really pulling the strings are isolated and inoculated from the political and economic fall-out. Meaning if we actually want neocon reich-wing politics to crash out, we have to actively work hard to make it happen, and seeing the grave of DJT is not the way.
Genuine honest, sincere Christians would never vote for DJT, and would never use him for their Machiavellian purposes, and would never seek to repeal Roe vs Wade in the first place (the casus belli for Citizens United). (See the documentary, The Dark Money Game to witness how a sincere Christian turned against DJT and CU, after initially swallowing the reich-wing koolaid of the prosperity gospel.)
Richard also mentions something about “𝖕𝖆𝖎𝖓” being involved in these ‘collapses’. I thought Jeff Rich at The Burning Archive had a better take on “collapse” youtubers. (They’re real influencers, fake educators).
I wrote to Murph:
@6:00 no pain needs to be involved. At least not for good people. The government is not beholden to “financial markets”. Nor are farmers, carpenters, and other crafts-people and artisans. The financial markets are dependent on government. So you had that backwards. If financial markets collapse that’s a very good thing, it frees up otherwise parasitic labour for other purposes. Those Wall St Quants can no be hired by the State to teach the history of their now eliminated and predatory former profession to kids in schools. Lest the kids ever forget.
Comments on the Ai/Crypto Bubble
The crypto bubble cannot burst of its own accord. It is a new type of suport for Black Markets. The way to get rid of it all is to legalize the black market goods. But who the devil wants to legalize assassins for Hire and assault weapons trde?
Some things are illegal for a reason.
I can understand regulating recreational drugs. It makes a more peaceful subculture, young rich kids no longer supporting South American and Asian murder cartels. But some drugs should not be legal.
In a liberal democracy or social democracy, I think we have to tolerate the propensity of some people to do ꕷꖡꖹꘝꕯꕒ things. We do not have to encourage and endorse them! If a King or Emperor tries too regulate all behaviour under the pretense of “protecting the common good” then I call that a spiritual death. It’s not living. You are not truly alive if you have no capacity for turning ꕷꖡꖹꘝꕯꕒ thoughts into ꕷꖡꖹꘝꕯꕒ deeds. The whole point of spiritual growth is to learn to have betetr thoughts, as well as better deeds, the latter will follwo from the former. If you have no such capacity your are either dead, or a robot.
In related reporting, The Primeagen (hardly a raging legftie) had a monologue on the study shwoing a small number of bad samples can poison LLM’s of any size .
Sure. If the thing was conscious can you imagine you can poison it with a little bit of FoxNews? [Rhetorical question yo.]
Hey, I’m not gong to make any Oracle pronouncements. The Murph could be correct than one of these tech bubbles could 𝐜𝓸𝖑𝓵𝓪𝕡𝔰𝓮 soon. I’m just saying I do not see why. There are supports direct from government that prop such scams up. In the case of Ai it’s failure to enforce anti-trust, failure to protect consumers, and direct government fiscal support for the tech-bro oligarchs. For Crypto it is austerity, for want of a better catch-all. Government austerity is what drives demand for ponzi “get rich quick” schemes. But also the existence of black markets too, and the imposed “need” for tax havens or in the case of Crypto just escape from tax altogether.
It is a stretch to claim (needless) government fiscal austerity promotes Crypto, it’s a lot more complicated. But I’ll stick to that as a minor claim. It’s not all wrong.
((For MMT n00bs: “fiscal austerity” can be simplified to taxing more than they spend. K̐̈I̐̈S̐̈S̐̈. Although that K̐̈I̐̈S̐̈S̐̈ is a bit gross, since it doesn’t distinguish military Keynesianism from decent things like full employment, via expanded universal public services and a Job Guarantee. So one should also both K̐̈I̐̈S̐̈S̐̈ and T͛E͛L͛L͛.))
If government taxed real estate instead of incomes, especially taxing to the high hilt non-owner occupied housing, then a lot of tax evasion disappears. And all the other typical MMT informed fiscal policies, and eliminating of monetarist policy, goes a long way to deep sixing the parasitic finance sector, and along with it probably a lot of Crypto.
In any case, who cares? Not I for one. Crypto is a kind of cordoned off other world. It recycles winners and losers, like a Casino. You can avoid most of the rot by just not gambling. Do not participate!
Same for drug wars. Just don’t take drugs, then the drug lords go away. I know, easier said than done in some cases Too many Banksie The Culture wannabe acid communists. But for Crypto, it’s a lot easier to not participate.
I admit there is some leakage of crud into ordinary people’s lives, since a bit of continued government austerity can be immorally justified by neoliberals appealing to crypto, although goodness knows why epopel fall for it still. You know what I mean — KingNeolib: “We’re deregulating it all, so people have the freedom to get rich quick and all that… so just say ‘thank you’ you miserable plebs.”
((Lord forgive them, they might not know what they do.))
Comments on the Neolib Bubble
Onyl really had minor objections to some language framing. But IU think they are important.
The Murph argues that a fair economy will balance or focus on Moral Purpose, not “balance the books”.
This is a beautiful monologue. Everything good I can endorse. Please run for PM? 🤣 However @7:00 it’s not about “balance the books” — that’s false rhetoric and false framing, so do not frame it that way. The books are always in balance or some accountant made a mistake and has to fix it. We already run MMT systems. The correct reich-wing framing is that they want fiscal flows in–out of Gov to net to zero. Totally different to “balancing the books”.
He mentioned that we can design an economy that gorws wages, not just empty statements about growing GDP”. I wrote,
@5:14 no, no no, — no to “growing wages”. Yes to “growing real wages”. It’s not about the nominal wage nor inflation (a fake boogeyman) it is about the real goods your whole income can purchase, not what $1 can purchase. A follow-up:
Inflation is neither good nor bad, it all depends on how it was generated. It can be good by design — increase the floor wage with a Job Guarantee continual upwards adjustment. This achieves what all soi dissant lefties say they want — a wealth tax on hoarded tax credits. Are they prepared to back it for real then, even if it is “too easy” being by de facto ? Or are they all going to become right wing Thatcherites again and cry about inflation? (Again, since as they do by spewing “me tax dollars paid for it…” Thatcherite nonsense.)
It’s again a vital distinction. Who the hell cares if their wage is rising if the price is rising faster? Who the heck cares if their wage is falling if prices are falling faster?
Yeah, I recognize people care! They’re all fools. What can I tell ya’? I’m just here to promote true knowledge, nto false psychology. But my all means, if you think it serves justice then continue to spew lies.
In my corner of spiritual geekdom, a lie is never going to lead to justice. There is some sort of metaphorical principle behind that, no doubt wrapped up in why and how we are conscious sentient Beings. But that’s a whole different blog site. Spiritual econmics is what Richard Murphy preaches, and it is good. All it means is promoting and acting for love, compassion, kindness, honesty, wisdom and justice… and yes, mercy even for the “wicked” (a relative concept, glass houses, stones, and all that).
Richard is one of the few MMT’ers I know who promote spiritual economics, and that’s what Ōhanga Pai was supposed to be about. You have to however take some syntactic turpentine, isopropal, waterjet, &c., to cleanse my blogs of the cusswords to reveal the gems. Richard is more straight-up and boring, the Monty Chartered Accountant of Dirtbag spiritual MMT. It’s a good thing.
"In any case, who cares? Not I for one. Crypto is a kind of cordoned off other world"
Well, if you simply ignore the black market ability to destroy capital flow restrictions, and the child trafficking and criminal fraud, it's cordoned off.
Major corporations companies like Amazon are quite eager to start up their own stable coins because it becomes a giant dollar slush fund for them. They hang onto dollars exchange for these coins, which they use as currency. It's a combination of loyalty points and gift cards as a scam.
The scale of this fraud now woven in by its chief beneficiaries in the White House cabinet can only expand as more and more parts of the financial system integrated into a black market system. Not that many large banks have already been caught in more traditional forms of money laundering.
The $40 billion being handed over to Argentina to a first order of approximation is a free hand out of public money in order to cover the short positions of a lot of hedge funds that banked on Argentina's peso exchange value. But no one with resources in that country has any reason to hang onto the peso and they use the stable coin exchanges to trade their pesos basically for dollars. Argentina has no sovereign control over capital flight.
"This achieves what all soi dissant lefties say they want — a wealth tax on hoarded tax credits. "
The problem with this thinking is that it ignores the real economy, where inflation rewrites the social order (h/t Blair Fix who may have been referencing another quote). A red queen scenario is insane. You don't need inflation you don't want inflation small merchants don't want wildly changing prices in either their inventory or the wage price structure. They benefit from a drive or an incentive to engage in commerce certainly, yet a fire storm of price changes controlled by the largest companies in the world is not good
The people who suffered the worst inflation, the Germans have long sought for price stability. The proper way to gain a price stability and impose a tax on surplus means of exchange, because I refuse the reductionism that the means of exchange exist only as a tax credit, is demurrage of some form. Gesell's stamp script or the much older Bracteates systems are known to be price stable. You should get around to reading his book on the natural economic order. As I think I've measured before the preface is a little bit hard reading because 19th century sentiments, but largely they're given an expression as a platform to vent his rage as a merchant over creditors, starving him of the means of exchange so he could make a living.
With Bracteates the entire money supply was reminted on a bi yearly basis. The entire money supply was destroyed and recreated once or twice a year. Exchanging 4 old tokens for 3 new ones was a 25% tax vs losing all its purchasing power.
The city mint obviously had to issue 100% of the money supply, but that was the money the city government used for cathedrals, fortifications and public works that are still enjoyed today as tourist locations in Magdeburg, Germany. They didn't have inflation. They financed major public long-term, works by cathedrals without economic crisis. They didn't need growth for a thriving local economy.
Those with surplus means of exchange had little choice but to spend the money or lend it out, even at a loss, to minimize their own tax liability. With the simple addition of some other tax obligation, people could take their surplus means of exchange to settle their tax obligation.
I much prefer the idea of either a limited surplus amount, which replicates what happens with credit card loyalty points. One could choose to pay off one's tax obligation with anything that goes over the limit. Simple and effective with little recourse to avoid and every incentive to pay tax (you get 100% value for it).
If your surplus means of exchange is simply going to rot like bananas, it completely alters incentives surplus as any merchant will tell you about any of their inventory, especially perishable ones.
Liam is not reading what I write it seems. You almost have the exact wrong view, almost maliciously at one point...
This insinuation, for example, is gross and disgusting, I wish you would take it back:
"The system is designed to protect itself. You can’t reform it from within because it selects for people who think like you, who are smart, well-intentioned, and convinced that if only they were running things, everything would work."
--- dude. Do you even know who I am???? There is NO WAY the system selects for people like me. It's almost the exact opposite. No one like me gets a sniff of power. If we did, then yeah, things would be a lot better (I would guess). Excuse my immodesty. The system selects against people like me, objectively and in almost all ways. Yes, it protects itself, it protects the wealthy (not me) --- that's the Capital Order (q.v. Clara Mattei). It does not select for people like me at all. People like me are not trying to protect the system.
We are trying to educate others about MMT, and how this knowledge permits (as in liberates) moral clarity and public good purpose.
We already "implement MMT" — it is the existing monetary system. But this is not the cause of the rot. An accounting system is not a cause of anything.
So everything economic justice activists have to say is against the power structure that prevails. It's not putting lipstick on a pig or perfume on a rotting tomato.
It is because MMT is neutral that it permits moral clarity and good people to operate will then result in good outcomes. If well-intentioned people are in power, they can do maximal good with an MMT monetary system. What I agree with you about is that the other aspects of current political economy are NOT selecting for kind and compassionate people in power. We get quite the opposite: technocrats and neoliberals and fascists. MMT has nothing to do with this, precisely because none of these characters understand MMT. (You cannot blame the school bully for being nasty and brutish just because they do not understand gravity.)
To sustain and invigorate the moral imperatives in any politics (art of governance) you need morally inclined people, but in addition they would need the raw knowledge of how the monetary operations function. That's knowledge of MMT.
If we did not have MMT systems then it would call for whatever that other knowledge happens to be.
To answer your question:
I cannot redesign the political strucutre, it is a community effort, it'll take a long haul. MMT education is part of it, but only a small part, the minimal requirements part. The rest is class consciousness raising, and also moral and spiritual education --- so that if good people do gain seats in political office, or the civil service, then they are not corrupted by money, self-aggrandizement, neoliberalism nor fascism, and see no use for war and colonial conquest, and can see how to eliminate poverty and unemployment over-night. My role in this is as a humble educator, and I seek no higher role.