@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.

@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.

@CorvidCrone @KevinCarson1 @neonsnake @C4SS

Not just a scam. Death cult.

@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 @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.

@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.

@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?

@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.