Mastodawn

NeonSnake 6d ago

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.

Corvid Crone 6d 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.

Violet Madder 6d ago

@CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @neonsnake @C4SS

Not just a scam. Death cult.

NeonSnake 5d 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 😬

Violet Madder 5d 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.

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.

@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 3d 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