NeonSnakeMar 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
Show threadKevin CarsonMar 16
@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".
Show threadNeonSnakeMar 16

@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.

Show threadKevin Carson6d 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.
Show threadCorvid Crone6d ago

@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.

Show threadViolet Madder6d ago

@CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @neonsnake @C4SS

Not just a scam. Death cult.

Show threadNeonSnake6d 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 😬

Show threadJohn6d ago

@neonsnake @violetmadder @CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @C4SS

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

Show threadKevin Carson6d 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.
Show threadNeonSnake

@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.

Mar 17 at 3:58pmWeb