Mastodawn

NeonSnake Mar 16

A week or so ago, I made a statement along the lines of "I don't understand the arguments *against* the credit theory of money"

@KevinCarson1 here does a fantastic job of fleshing those out, on @C4SS

https://c4ss.org/content/61050

Capitalism in Inches and Pounds: A Parable

The argument that capitalists are needed to provide workers with means of production, and profit is their reward for doing so, is nonsense. All capitalists have are paper or digital claims on the right to allocate means of production or material resources. All of the actual material resources — means of production and raw materials...

Center for a Stateless Society

Kevin Carson 6d ago

@neonsnake @C4SS Just today I had an "ancap" who goes by the name Hogeye Bill (who, I found out when I checked his feed, also turned out to be an Epstein defender dismissing Virginia Giuffre as a gold-digger) show up in my replies at Bluesky attempting to argue against the piece. He was so immersed in Austrian "money theory of credit" and "advance theory of capital" assumptions that he didn't even realize, after supposedly reading the piece, that I *didn't* agree with him that the capitalist performs a "necessary function" of "saving and building capital," and that it naturally "compounds".

NeonSnake 6d ago

@KevinCarson1 @C4SS oooff at the Epstein thing.

It's one of those things that sort of intuitively makes "sense". You and I , after all, save money to afford stuff. Stands to reason that Pete The Peasant saved his money until he was able to purchase, like, half of Essex, right?

Which...fine?...I guess...until you know how it actually works.

If you still keep up the pretence of people squirreling away gold under the mattress after knowing how it works, then...hey, I've a bridge to sell you, I suppose.

Kevin Carson 6d ago

@neonsnake @C4SS Shit, I read a college textbook on banking and finance that said banks "aggregated savings" to provide investment capital, and this was a fucking ECONOMIST pretending they don't just create money and credit.

@KevinCarson1 @neonsnake @C4SS

I just had a sudden memory of sitting in high school economics class thinking, "this...this just seems like a big scam..."

Took years to unlearn thinking I wasn't smart enough to understand economics.

Violet Madder 6d ago

@CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @neonsnake @C4SS

Not just a scam. Death cult.

NeonSnake 6d ago

@violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

I have vague memories of being a teen and my Dad* "explaining" to me that banks lend to their customers from the savings of other customers, and also invest savings into other companies.

I'll be totally honest, I still think I'm not smart enough to understand "that" side of economics. Like, everytime I feel I've got a handle on MMT, I read something that makes me completely doubt my understanding of it. I have an acquaintance who is *very* high up in one of the banks in the UK who has told me that no, banks don't create money out of nothing, and that everything has to balance every single day at 4.15pm.

I "believe" him, but I couldn't follow his arguments at all, and there's a chance that in fact they do create money out of nothing, but his way of thinking (liabilities vs assets or something) was at odds with my own - very limited - understanding.

I further believe that this is, in part, deliberate. I've got a vague thought that the whole thing is confusing to us mere lay-people, to keep us from just...going off and ignoring it altogether and doing our own thing.

(In a very, very, very small way, I'm involved with some LETs in my local area - which is literally just a spreadsheet we use to keep track of who owes who what lol)

*My Dad was a Certified Accountant; eventually at CFO level, which might make it even worse 😬

@neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

I feel like it's important to mention that without guns, currencies are worthless and so is property.

NeonSnake 6d ago

@johnzajac @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

I've just had a kneejerk "hard disagree" reaction to this.

On reflection, I suspect it's because we might be approaching both currencies and property in different manners.

I believe that currency - the very strict sense of something that all relevant parties agree to - can be a useful tool for tracking obligations. I have no ties to *government-issued* currencies, however. Just a unit of measure, I don't massively care what it is, and I absolutely do not believe that it needs to be valuable "in and of itself"

Likewise with "property" - property has a lot of different definitions, but in the sense that my house and land is my own, and that it's of a "reasonable" enough size (ie. not stupidly large to the point that I'm excluding others from reasonable use), then the concept has value.

Is your view on both different to mine?

(I live in a country where "guns" are not a thing in the same sense as the US, so allow that as well, my conception might be a little different. Memory serves, you're US-based?)

@neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

Yes, in the US.

In the context of contemporary manifestations of currency and property, it's the guarantee of the State - e.g. the guarantee that contracts/debts/deeds will be enforced through overwhelming violence, ostensibly according to law of some kind - that underwrites them.

I use "guns" broadly;

@neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

police and prisons are the "guns" of the State. Militaries are "guns". In many countries, people are allowed to simply shoot you if you're "on their property".

"Murder?! What murder!?! They were on mah LAND!"

(which is wild, tbh)

@neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

But I think while you and I probably agree on substance, there's a real distinction being explored here: if you aren't willing to enforce your ownership of your "property" with violence, then what does "property" even mean? That you have a right to be there? That others do not? That others do not have the right to supplant you?

You were "there first"? 🤷‍♂️ It's hard.

As for currency, "units of exchange" and "currency" are different...

@neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

...because currency is a unit of exchange, but not all units of exchange are currencies. Because the reason a currency has value is that it's backed by a treasury, which exists bc of a guarantee of violence

Which means that in practice, currencies are a unit of violence that we exchange, and their value is commensurate with the potential violence behind them

Which really puts a whole new spin on the idea of capital and capitalism, tbh

Daniel Lakeland 5d ago

@johnzajac
you may find this paper extremely interesting

https://capitalaspower.com/2021/05/cherizola-from-commodities-to-assets/

one of the great papers in economic theory I believe

@neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

Suaste Cherizola, 'From Commodities to Assets' – Capital As Power

From Commodities to Assets Capital as Power and the Ontology of Finance JESÚS SUASTE CHERIZOLA May 2021 Abstract Assets are a crucial concept of the practice and mindset of the capitalist class. Critical analyses of capitalism, however, tend to admit that the exchange of commodities is the foundation of the analysis of capitalism. This article […]

Capital As Power

Daniel Lakeland 5d ago

@johnzajac
apologies for multiple posts, my server is acting up and timing out on posts.
@neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

Kevin Carson 5d ago

@neonsnake @johnzajac @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS Yeah, IMO it's true of "currency" and "private property" in a narrow capitalist sense, but not in the broader sense of denominators of value for exchange or possessory rules.

NeonSnake 5d ago

@KevinCarson1 @johnzajac @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS

Yeah, you've put it into words better than I did (cf. your other reply as well)

Simon Brooke 5d ago

@neonsnake @johnzajac @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS tracking obligations is how societies get into trouble. No matter what systems for tracking obligations you adopt someone will successfully game it — to the point that, as we see now, the least deserving walk away with most of the wealth.

You can have property or you can have a good society. You can't have both.

Kevin Carson 5d ago

@simon_brooke @neonsnake @johnzajac @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS No, horizontal tracking of obligations as such does not inevitably lead to concentration of wealth. The concentration of wealth depends on a compounding process, and without the legal enforcement of what Polanyi called fictitious commodities, that enable rent extraction -- rent on land, interest on credit, intellectual property, etc. -- that compounding cannot occur.

Simon Brooke 5d ago

@KevinCarson1 @neonsnake @johnzajac @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS go to #Gaza.

Most people there do not have food. A few people have access to trucks or snuggling tunnels that cross the border. They have plenty of food.

Those who don't have food must buy food today, or else they starve. Those who do, do not need to sell food today — the prices may be higher tomorrow, when people are more desperate.

So the poor will always pay a premium. Markets always, automatically, benefit the rich.

NeonSnake 5d ago

@simon_brooke @KevinCarson1 @johnzajac @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS

At the risk of imagining a spherical cow - that's a market which is hugely managed by state forces and not, by any means, free.

I get it, in that circumstance, but it's not what I'm talking about here.

Kevin Carson 4d ago

@simon_brooke @neonsnake @johnzajac @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS What they're going through is horrible, but it's a stretch to tie it in with any particular form of money. The limiting factor is the physical lack of means for creating consumption goods, which is the result of military destruction.

Kevin Carson 4d ago

@simon_brooke @neonsnake @johnzajac @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS They're paying a premium because no one's allowed to produce enough food.

Violet Madder 5d ago

@simon_brooke @neonsnake @johnzajac @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

Obligations/debt gets us into the old custom of jubilee, and Jesus flipping tables, and the usurer having no heart and such.

Basically comes down to hoarding.

Cultures tend towards being more egalitarian in areas where food is pretty reliably available year round, vs more hierarchical in places where it has to be stored during long periods of scarcity, or places that have big defendable concentrations of wealth such as a location with a big salmon run.

Things get dangerous where there are points of leverage for bullies to exploit.

Which could be handled if everybody else recognized bullies for what they are, instead of thinking 'oh hey this guy has all this stuff because they're cool and smart and better than me' and serving them.

And the minute one poor person agrees to turn around and hit another poor person so the rich guy gives them a treat, it's all downhill from there. We should smack the rich guy instead for making such a rude suggestion.

NeonSnake 5d ago

@violetmadder @simon_brooke @johnzajac @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

Sure, but we all have obligations, whether explicit or implicit.

We all do stuff - hopefully - for other people, and we track it, in many different forms - sometimes very explicit, and sometimes we just think "you know what, Steve is taking the utter piss"

It's not about hoarding, it's about division of labour and keeping a rough or rougher idea of who owes who what.

Violet Madder 5d ago

@neonsnake @simon_brooke @johnzajac @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

A big issue I've always been concerned about, is the reductionist way prices flatten relationships.

I've forgotten where I read about it, but there's an advantage to uneven transactions-- this thing I did for you last week doesn't quite match the value of the thing you did for me this week so I should give you another thing. The remainder is another excuse to continue interacting, an ongoing process of constantly checking where we stand with each other and keeping things in balance.

I paid you $50 for the thing, we're even, period, caps the situation with a finality that obscures any lingering imbalance that's hard to quantify with a calculator.

Monetary values erase emotional values. Emotional labor gets left out of the economy. Emotional and social obligations languish-- leading to moral bankruptcy.

Stephen Dioxide

@violetmadder @neonsnake @simon_brooke @johnzajac @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS This is a gift economy, which I studied long ago. It's predicated on the exchange of gifts, but it's vital that you never give back the same thing or something of exactly equivalent value, because that's seen as returning the gift, even rejecting the gift. Instead, you make a different gift. And we continue.

Violet Madder 5d ago

@Steve @neonsnake @simon_brooke @johnzajac @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

Yeah, that!

@violetmadder @Steve @neonsnake @simon_brooke @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

Well, transactionalism - the implosion of all interactions to transactions - is a key pillar of neofascism, for the very reason you cite: essentially, the small imbalances that build up create resentment, which further isolates people and drives them into individualist ideologies.

And individuals do not, as a rule, have any power in the face of the State.

It's Power Consolidation 101. Why they didn't expect MSP.

NeonSnake 5d ago

@johnzajac @violetmadder @Steve @simon_brooke @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

You don't need to collapse everything into some kind of Galt's Gulch transnationalism by any means.

NeonSnake 5d ago

@violetmadder @simon_brooke @johnzajac @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

This is where - in my opinion - a certain amount of fuzziness needs to come in (and comes into account with time-banking etc)

I might be able to spend 3 hours cooking for someone.

They might be able to spend 20 minutes going to shops for me.

That might well be that they've given me "everything" they have; and their 20 minutes might be equal to my 3 hours.

I always recall the Magnificent Seven:

"I've been offered a lot for my work, but never *Everything*"

😉

I wondered where that quote came from!

CC: @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

Kevin Carson 5d ago

@johnzajac @neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS Yeah, absentee-owned land, gold-backed money, etc., are worthless without guns. But people can still agree on accounting units for mutual trade, without any "currency" (in the sense of some commodity that has a defined independent value), and possessory rules existed throughout most of history -- i.e. commons-based village land systems -- with no state enforcement.

NeonSnake 5d ago

@KevinCarson1 @johnzajac @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS

Kevin has put it into words better than I did, but essentially I believe that there is value in a mechanism of exchange (which does not have to be state-backed, and I think is better if it isn't, for all sorts of reasons), which I'm loosely terming "currency" - that term may not be the best, which I accept.

"Property" is more difficult - I 100% believe that people should have the right (however that right is enforced) to a private space; by this, *I* mean a house and a plot of land to call my own.

However, I cannot possibly cover all the nuances - someone in a city might only want an apartment and a balcony, for example, and the "appropriate" amount of land/space is inherently variable, depending on location etc.

Would I be prepared to use violence to defend my 10% of an acre? Yes, actually, I would.

And I'd also be prepared to use violence to defend my *neighbours'" 10% of an acre, because I feel that given where we live, it's a not unreasonable amount of land to claim for a family.

On the other hand, would I be prepared to use violence to defend the acre that a neighbour has claimed "over there", that is forests and fields, that I used to go foraging for blackberries in, and I used to sit on the riverbanks and pass the time?

lmao no, they're on their own on that one, and I'm too busy making blackberry jam anyway 😜

"Property" is hard, and the distinction between "personal possession" and "private property" can be a little slippery, but my general view is that people should have a right - again, how that is enforced is up for grabs - to a "personal place" to live. But I wouldn't protect someone's "right" to something like a common area, if they wish to charge people to use it and are not "using" it themselves.

I recognise that that is vague, but "property" is an inherently vague subject at the best of times, and does not lend itself to black and white rules.

Violet Madder 6d ago

@neonsnake @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

From what I understand, ONLY central banks get to create money from thin air. They are the specially anointed ones who get to pass it out. Used to be physically made, now it can be just a keystroke so it's all even further divorced from reality.

And yes the more arcane and esoteric the whole thing is, the more special the power of its initiated clerics becomes.

Kevin Carson 5d ago

@violetmadder @neonsnake @CorvidCrone @C4SS As I understand it money has always been created out of thin air, but the myth of "backing" by gold reserves or whatever has served to limit the creation to those who possess gold.

Simon Brooke 5d ago

@KevinCarson1 @violetmadder @neonsnake @CorvidCrone @C4SS

https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2014-03-18-a-circular-history-of-money/

https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2023-02-08-on-money/

A circular history of money

Stage 0I don't know what money is, but I'll give you this nice shiny piece of metal for that loaf of bread.Stage 1

The Fool on the Hill

Violet Madder 5d ago

@simon_brooke @KevinCarson1 @neonsnake @CorvidCrone @C4SS

"When one person lacks food and another has surplus, the one who lacks food must trade today or go hungry; the one who has surplus can afford to wait for higher prices. Consequently, markets always systematically benefit the rich"

Oho. THAT is a very tidy point that I hadn't seen in such a nutshell before.

NeonSnake 5d ago

@violetmadder @simon_brooke @KevinCarson1 @CorvidCrone @C4SS

Yes and no.

I started this thread for a particular reason, so I feel I have the right to step in.

The people in Gaza - and I absolutely do NOT want to minimise their suffering here - are not suffering because they are existing under the free market conditions that was in my head when I spoke, but instead are under the yoke of an irredeemably evil State in the form of Israel.

Again, *please* don't take this as minimising their extremely real suffering, but it's only tangentially related to my initial post.

Kevin Carson 4d ago

@violetmadder @simon_brooke @neonsnake @CorvidCrone @C4SS It ignores the fact that the relative distribution of food itself is a dependent variable reflecting power relations like the distribution of land, or the availibility of access to means for producing food. As well as the fact that it's a variable that will change over time, if there are no legal barriers that prevent competition between producers of food. Major differences in wealth occur when access to land is controlled by landlords, and there are barriers to producing food.
Ironically, the Austrians and marginalists also ignored supply and demand as variables that change over time, and used that assumption to *justify* differences in wealth as the legitimate result of such static conditions at any point in time.

Reminds me of a fake children's book that I wrote about someone writing back in 2012, called "The Tit Tat Trouble." The story wasn't written, only references made to it by the characters in the actual story, but it's about someone who wasn't that great a farmer and a big winter made them need to borrow food from their more successful neighbor. Things kind of went predictably from there to the farmer's daughter fleeing the guards determined to make her property of the neighbor so they'd get paid back tit for tat, until the guards froze into popsicles from sheer spitefulness. Kind of going for a Grimm Fairy Tale style feel.

CC: @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

Nic The Briny 5d ago

I love this:

"Accumulated wealth is a measure of opportunities for generosity that have been missed."

@KevinCarson1 @violetmadder @neonsnake @CorvidCrone @C4SS

NeonSnake 5d ago

@KevinCarson1 @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS

This is the bit where I get baffled.

I fully understand that at points in history, "money" has been backed by gold, silver, whatever. Ok, fine.

What I never understood is the people who thought that this was a *good thing*.

Making "money" scarce always baffled me as a concept, particularly when posited by people who...don't actually own any gold etc.

Stephen Dioxide

@neonsnake @KevinCarson1 @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS Following this thread, and trying wrap my head around it (never having studied these topics in school). I get that money can be, should be, understood as nothing more than an accounting system, and that anyone can extend credit to anyone else. This would preclude, or at least discourage, large-scale accumulation. In this sense, it's similar to timebanking. But, I doubt you'd convince people the general population that one hour of labor is equivalent across professions.

NeonSnake 5d ago

@Steve @KevinCarson1 @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS

" But, I doubt you'd convince people the general population that one hour of labor is equivalent across professions."

Doesn't need to be.

How familiar are with the Labour Theory Of Value?

Stephen Dioxide

@neonsnake @KevinCarson1 @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS Well, I read all about it in Kevin's book, Mutualist Political Economy. It makes sense to me, but I also know that an awful lot of people are dismissive of it.

I guess what I'm thinking about is how, in a post-capitalist economy, the way we allocate value to each other would change in ways that are hard to imagine today. If people didn't have to worry about dying of starvation or exposure, they'd be a lot more generous towards each other. That's when we'd be able to relax enough to start treating money as just an accounting system.

NeonSnake 5d ago

@Steve @KevinCarson1

I've knocked everyone else off this thread for now, except you and Kevin.

(Mainly because he knows very well that his "The Iron Fist behind the Invisible Hand" was formative for me, and probably saved me from turning into a miserable AnCap lol)

I believe that in a post-capitalist world, our relationships will be very different.

My stance right now is that -absent state intervention - we would, most likely, guarantee a basic standard of living to all. I think we'd just do it, without needing any compulsion. I base this on my experience during the early days of Covid.

I think that as we got "further" away from each other - not necessarily geographically - that trade would come into play, and we'd start checking whether obligations are being met; within that, I think we'd be checking in on "why" obligations are not being met.

I read a book some years ago by Becky Chamber whereby they have a "trade" system, but also it's incumbent upon them to say "oh, crap! Dave hasn't put anything in for the last month! Do...do we think he's okay?" and it would trigger a "Let's make sure Dave is ok"

This is a world in which I want to live, and I try my best right now to live in. I *do* have a spreadsheet of "obligations", and I also have a set of "ah, do we think Dave's okay? He's been super quiet, folks" notes as well.

Stephen Dioxide

@neonsnake @KevinCarson1 I think you're right about all this, and as such, it follows that the State stands in the way of people connecting directly to support each other.

I have a hard time picturing how we get from here to there, but then I remember it doesn't have to all happen at once. We can take certain steps right now, like using FLOSS, and solve problems like universal communal housing and cooperative pharmaceutical research down the road.

NeonSnake 5d ago

@Steve @KevinCarson1

I think it takes all of us.

Like, I "know" what FLOSS is, but I'm not yer guy for that. I'm super ignorant about it.

I want someone who can show me that, and also someone who show me (or just do for me!) darning and mending my clothes.

Me? I can cook *really well* and I can guide you on how to do so.

I'm also pretty handy with cars and with DIY.

We need *all sorts* - all of them!

Gimme that. Gimme "you" that knows how to get me off of bloody Google, give me someone who can darn my socks, give me someone who can... (and so on and so on).

Give me the broad spectrum of skills. That's what I'm trying to build.

Stephen Dioxide

@neonsnake @KevinCarson1 It might have been more precise to say that we can start wherever we are. As someone once said in a very different context, we can't do everything at once, but we can do something at once.

On the topic of FLOSS, don't worry about changing your software. Save your word-processing documents in the ODT file format, not DOCX, and you're most of the way there. Seriously.

Violet Madder 5d ago

@Steve @neonsnake @KevinCarson1 @CorvidCrone @C4SS

Art in particular requires an economy where generosity is possible. People need to be able to reward art by FREELY expressing their appreciation. When competition makes every transaction inherently adverserial, where everybody is accustomed to paying the least they can get away with and forgets about fairness, that torpedoes the whole thing. Scarcity and insecurity breed hostility. When artists are struggling, doubling down on copyright and FORCING people to pay for things at gunpoint just makes things worse. Hardly anybody can imagine what it would be like to just give each other nice things because it's cool.

A world with open source stuff, cooperation and so on-- anything nice, basically-- has to start with people getting their basic needs met so they can stop clawing at each other.

Right wingers love that lifeboat analogy, where they can justify tossing people overboard if they can't fish or whatever.

That's a fundamental difference in paradigm. Avarice vs generosity, cruelty vs care, oppression or freedom.

Kevin Carson 4d ago

@violetmadder @Steve @neonsnake @CorvidCrone @C4SS All markets do is provide a mechanism for establishing market-clearing prices, in regard to those goods and services that are exchanged via price. They are secondary to property rules, and to the social and institutional structures in which production takes place. And markets do not determine which production takes place in the cash nexus and which takes place outside it. All those social-institutional structures are prior to markets, and markets only function in cases where those structures rely on them. My guess is that, in a postcapitalist and post-state society, most people would be born into primary social units like micro-villages, multi-family cohousing projects, etc. And a very large share of production (most fruits and vegetables, manufactured goods that could be produced in a microvillage's micro-manufacturing shops, etc.) would be produced within such units rather than exchanged via the cash nexus. Markets would involve the surpluses exchanged between such units, particular goods that such units specialized in producing for sale to other units, producer goods that require production on a larger scale than such units, and minerals and raw materials auctioned off by commons-management bodies democratically accountable to the primary social units in a given geographical area. The typical work week for producing enough to live comfortably would be well under 20 hours, and the non-cash nexus internal economies of such social units -- which contain enough people for pooling risks, costs, and productive effort -- would be the primary locus for mutual aid and support for the production of art.

NeonSnake 4d ago

@KevinCarson1 @violetmadder @Steve @CorvidCrone @C4SS

I'm a little less convinced about the housing situation (micro-villages etc), but that's very possibly because I've spend *most* of my life in English suburbia, so I'm very used to rows and rows of 3 bedroom semi-detached houses, and have difficulty imagining other scenarios.

On the other hand, that still lends itself to the sort of arrangements that, say, Colin Ward envisioned. Or (and I've totally blanked on the artist) there were a set of inspiring illustrations from, I think, the 70s of what a self-sufficient terrace or village might look like - communal vegetable gardens, solar, buildings given over to workshops/kitchens and the like, playgrounds and parks.

Despite probably looking like I'm defending markets to the hilt, I too actually would like to see more stuff move away from a "cash" nexus. At the moment, much of what we call "reproductive labour" is carried out without involving markets - including things outside your own family, like baby-sitting your neighbours' kids for a few hours, or feeding their dogs/cats whilst they're away, or whatever, and we don't really give it a second thought (I very much appreciate that "reproductive labour" has it's own issues by being unpaid)

I'd like to see "feeding people", for instance, move into that "outside the cash nexus" space - but in order to do so, a massive sea-change needs to happen in terms of giving people access to (again, for instance) the space/technology/knowledge to grow their own food.

It's doable now, to a greater extent than many people think, but - at the moment - it will involve a level of "markets", as most people *have* to have access to currency; most people have bills that can only be settled with currency, and at the lowest level I can think of, taxes on property which are unavoidable.

I think that moving away from the cash nexus as much as possible - and using other forms of tracking obligations within our communities - so as to leave as much cash in people's hands to pay those ever-increasing bills, is a good start, and is something actually material that we "can do next Tuesday", as it were.

Kevin Carson 3d ago

@neonsnake @violetmadder @Steve @CorvidCrone @C4SS IMO such arrangements, along with micro-manufacturing for direct use, would emerge primarily in response to capitalist crises of unemployment and underemployment, supply chain disruptions, etc., coinciding with the potential for subsistence through cheaper and smaller-scale tech. But I can easily imagine burbs being retrofitted into microvillages, with a neighborhood machine workshop, home-based micro-bakeries and sewing shops, lawns converted to edible landscaping, etc.

NeonSnake 3d ago

@KevinCarson1 @violetmadder @Steve @CorvidCrone @C4SS definitely; I think it's a thing that one can encourage in the meantime, in as small a manner as possible, so that the resilience is there when needed

Kevin Carson 3d ago

@neonsnake @violetmadder @Steve @CorvidCrone @C4SS Could the '70s illustrations you saw have been in Radical Technology?

NeonSnake 3d ago

@KevinCarson1 @violetmadder @Steve @CorvidCrone @C4SS yes! Yes, I think it was - I think I'm conflating something I saw from Colin Ward with something very similar in principle

Corvid Crone 5d ago

@neonsnake @KevinCarson1 @violetmadder @C4SS

"What I never understood is the people who thought that this was a *good thing*."

Propaganda. Education for the purpose of sustaining the status quo reinforces this idea.

People who support gold or silver backed currency are afraid of inflation making currency worthless. I don't think their reasoning is correct, but it's the reasoning that must be dealt with for them to overcome this belief.

Kevin Carson 4d ago

@neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS According to Michael Hudson, IIRC, even in those periods the "backing" was fictitious. They created money with little to no regard for the actual gold reserves in the safe, and then after the fact appealed to the existence of the stockpile of gold to reassure those who thought money had to be a "thing."

Kevin Carson 5d ago

@neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @C4SS I have trouble getting a handle on the technical aspects of it myself. But both the Greco/Lietaer types and the MMT types have a good grasp of the general problem, which is that money is created out of thin air at no real cost to anyone, but the people who are empowered to create it can still charge a fee for it because the owners of accumulated wealth have a legal monopoly on the function. TBH some of the MMT policy proposals sound pretty Rube Goldbergian and unnecessarily complicated.

Daniel Lakeland 5d ago

@neonsnake
Banks absolutely create money when they lend... its so obvious that its kinda crazy that even banks dont know what theyre up to.

The first thing you need to do to understand this is define money. M2 works pretty well, basically thats the sum of checking, savings, and all cash in the hands of citizens (not bank vaults).

Next, when a bank lends you $1000 they put it where? into your checking account right?
@violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

Daniel Lakeland 5d ago

@neonsnake
And noone else's checking account goes down. They dont decrease my account to lend to you, that'd be completely illegal. so, the total money went up! end of story. that banks dont understand this is totally WILD. But its also kind of intentionally obfuscated.

(note that if a bank sells you a CD the total money goes down, and if you buy a treasury bond the same, or pay taxes... those destroy money.
@violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

[email protected]5d ago

@CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @neonsnake @C4SS Also learning to write fiction appears to have been the best way to comprehend economics