MMT for Anarchists, Libertarians, and Conservatives

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

Gold isn't money.
The national debt is great.
Federal surpluses crash the economy.
Taxes don't fund spending.
...what is this nonsense? Trust us! It makes sense once you understand the pieces. Dylan and Nima discuss MMT basics from a conservative standpoint.

 

 

We cover a ton of points in this video:

•  The statist origins and nature of money 
•  The cause and effect relationship between taxation and government spending 
•  The differences between a currency user and a currency issuer
•  Why government debt = private sector money
•  The meanings of the words "debt", "deficit", and "surplus" as they pertain to the federal government
•  Why debt surpluses cause economic crashes
•  WTF happened with Weimar, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela and how hyperinflation occurs
•  Theorize why normal inflation occurs

We understand this all sounds like blasphemy to the libertarian-tuned ear, which is why it's so important that it is discussed. 

Like always, I appreciate your feedback. Thanks!

 

UPDATE! 1/14/18 New Video
MMT for Conservatives Part 2 - What You've Never Been Told About the Economy

Nima and I discuss:

-The concept of Credit Money and the Statist origins of money
-Sectoral Balances: how foreign trade can affect money supply and economic conditions -Floating vs. Fixed Currency Systems: the arbitrariness of the gold standard
-Why do governments sell bonds? Do they actually fund spending? No. They are essentially risk-free assets for rich people.
-What do federal reserve interest rates do? Nothing.
-If interest rates do nothing, why does the Fed control them?
-What does Quantitative Easing do? Turns out it's nothing to worry about.
-The basics of the private banking system

 

 

UPDATE! 1/20/2018 New Video
MMT for Conservatives Part 3 - Special Guest Warren Mosler

Dylan and Nima bring on Modern Monetary Theory founder and lead spokesperson Warren Mosler to discuss the topics gone over in the previous two videos and more. Including but not limited to:

• -Why MMT is so distasteful to conservatives (and everyone else)
• How US bonds don't fund the government
• How interest rates ACTUALLY affect the economy
• What quantitative easing does to the economy (virtually nothing), and why everyone freaks out about it (and why they shouldn't)
• What actually happened during the banking bailouts of 2008 (it's nothing like we've been told)
• Basics of the banking sector
• How the US is utterly overtaxed and the damaging economic effects of transactional taxes (sales tax, VAT, etc.) -Proposing an idea: wiping out ALL federal taxes and replacing it with a base 5% property tax. No more IRS.
   

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

Debt surpluses cause economic crashes because:

• "Surplus" means more money is taxed out of existence than spent into existence, thus the net supply of private sector savings diminishes.
  • All US economic crashes were preceded by a government surplus. The 2008 crash followed the Clinton surplus years.
• The private sector, still wanting to do business, begins to rely on private creditors for their funding.
  • Private creditors, unlike federal government debt, need to be repaid.
• In order to pay the interest back to the private creditors, more private credit needs to be relied on, as federal debt isn't available to do so with.
• At some point the private sector can no longer take the private sector debt load and the whole thing comes crashing down.
  • The private sector credits get scared and disappear into their shells, refusing to hand out any more credit.
• Without federal debt or private credit to access cash, the private sector becomes frozen. There isn't enough money for it to function.
• The economy begins to rebuild itself when more money is returned into the system. This can be done a variety of ways:
  • Increasing spending (injects more money into the system)
  • Reducing taxes (stops taking money out of the system)
  • Increasing exports (goods leave the system and money comes into the system)
  • Increasing interest rates (interest rates paid out by the Fed is money that floats out in the system like federal debt)

With the massive reduction of taxes coming with the new tax law, as well as the increased manufacturing opportunity suggested by the new low corporate tax rate (businesses come back home, bring their money, and start exporting goods), we may have just seen the economy literally being turned back on. The tax breaks for individuals and small businesses are nice bonuses and I'm happy to take them, but the REAL impact comes from the lower corporate rate.

Looking at this from a macro scale, the amount of money no longer being sucked out of the system, and the potential money coming back into it, is so exciting it almost has me giddy when I think about it.

Moral of the story: federal surpluses BAD. The crash economies.

 

[Tyler H]

Why is this topic so important to you?

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

Because economics is an important topic that affects everyone.

[Tyler H]

I hope that didn’t come across as though I assumed it wasn’t important, I was genuinely curious why you thought it was. Maybe I miss a lot of your other posts, but this topic seems to be your main focus on the boards. 

[Jsbrads]

In a state of anarchy, there was a simple common stone that could easily be fashioned into a “hand ax”. No shaft, just a stone, one side for holding, and with a significant quantum of work, the other side was formed into a stone blade. These work improved stones were used as currency. 

https://www.livescience.com/18751-hand-axe-tools-money.html

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

6 hours ago, Tyler H said:

I hope that didn’t come across as though I assumed it wasn’t important, I was genuinely curious why you thought it was. Maybe I miss a lot of your other posts, but this topic seems to be your main focus on the boards. 

The reason I find it important is because if if MMT is an accurate view of the economy, and I think it is, then conservatives are encouraging disaster thinking they're spouting economic virtues. Liberals, of course, are also encouraging economic disaster--but I think they're either too stupid to know what they're doing or they know exactly what they're doing and they want that economic disaster. I have a strong suspicion that conservatives are simply working with bad information. My intention of creating these videos, and specifically posting them here, is I feel that someone like Stef is "low hanging fruit" when it comes to someone with a large media presence, because he will spend so much time with a single listener.

I'm thinking of requesting to be on the show with this topic. Nima has already called in. Stef seemed very open to his ideas, but continued to spout the same "we're putting our grandchildren in debt" nonsense afterwards, so we know he didn't get it. I think I would get it across better than Nima did, my knowledge is simply lacking in comparison. :/

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

1 hour ago, Jsbrads said:

In a state of anarchy, there was a simple common stone that could easily be fashioned into a “hand ax”. No shaft, just a stone, one side for holding, and with a significant quantum of work, the other side was formed into a stone blade. These work improved stones were used as currency. 

https://www.livescience.com/18751-hand-axe-tools-money.html

Yup! I've heard about that.

[Tyler H]

So it’s a matter of preventing economic disaster so people in general don’t suffer? 

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

Yes. It's also a matter of moving significant amounts of power of the democratic party. I suspect that there are a large number of left-of-center voters who would switch sides if they suddenly heard the republics saying "you can keep you benefits AND we're going to cut your taxes". This could massively stall the communist/globalist threat staring down the West.

Furthermore, understanding the actual functioning of a money system is vital designing and planning any societal structures, statist or otherwise. If we want to save the American republic and the West in general, we will need to understand how to do that properly. If we want to move on to a stateless society, we're going to need to understand how money works to redesign it without the state.

[Tyler H]

My statey sense is tingling when you talk about designing a system of money. What do you mean by that? What is wrong with allowing a free market emergence of trade? Do you see anything wrong bitcoin?

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

On 1/6/2018 at 1:20 PM, Tyler H said:

My statey sense is tingling when you talk about designing a system of money. What do you mean by that?

It should be more than tingley. I openly said statist.

Understanding how the current statist monetary system works is vital if it's going to be used for anything, particularly defending and resuscitating the West, and if we're ever going to be able to replace it with something else.

On 1/6/2018 at 1:20 PM, Tyler H said:

What is wrong with allowing a free market emergence of trade?

Nothing. What have I said or written so far suggests that there is something wrong with allowing free market emergence of trade? My goal is statelessness. Literally in my previous post I wrote: "If we want to move on to a stateless society, we're going to need to understand how money works to redesign it without the state."

On 1/6/2018 at 1:20 PM, Tyler H said:

Do you see anything wrong bitcoin?

Many things. I don't see BTC replacing fiat any time soon, especially now that I understand what gives fiat money value. We simply have no idea what the future is going to hold for crypto. Statist money has existed for 5000 years, crypto for... what, 10? It's the wild West out there for crypto now and we're going to need a few more years of dealing with it before we start to see a clear picture of its impact.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

Woo! Nima was able to get an interview with a lefty about MMT!

While I, like Nima, totally disagree with Grumbine's solutions, this may be the first time I have ever seen a REAL left vs. right discussion about anything that didn't start (or end!) with the left throwing ad hominems. Totally worth watching.

[Goldenages]

Well, lefties always love to hear theories about how to squander other people´s money

 

regards

Andi

[Tyler H]

On 1/8/2018 at 11:54 AM, Dylan Lawrence Moore said:

It should be more than tingley. I openly said statist.

 

This is the quote I was referring to-

On 1/6/2018 at 1:54 AM, Dylan Lawrence Moore said:

If we want to move on to a stateless society, we're going to need to understand how money works to redesign it without the state.

 

If you don’t have a state, who is “designing” money? 

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

9 hours ago, Tyler H said:

If you don’t have a state, who is “designing” money? 

Anyone who wants to. If Bitcoin doesn't become the first private money, I bet it will be the pre-cursor for the one that is. I know it gets a little confusing when I talk because I say that money is a state-created concept. For the sake of simplicity, I do this when talking about the basics because I don't want to throw too many elements in right at the beginning. However, Nima has argued this and I agree, anyone can make a money system by simply demanding the tokens that they create for services. Bitcoin does with bitcoin miners: in order to access the blockchain, bitcoin miners only accept BTC. This gives value to the BTC in an analogous way that taxation gives value to fiat.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

MMT for Conservatives Part 2 - What You've Never Been Told About the Economy

Nima and I discuss:

-The concept of Credit Money and the Statist origins of money
-Sectoral Balances: how foreign trade can affect money supply and economic conditions -Floating vs. Fixed Currency Systems: the arbitrariness of the gold standard
-Why do governments sell bonds? Do they actually fund spending? No. They are essentially risk-free assets for rich people.
-What do federal reserve interest rates do? Nothing.
-If interest rates do nothing, why does the Fed control them?
-What does Quantitative Easing do? Turns out it's nothing to worry about.
-The basics of the private banking system

 

 

[Tyler H]

On 1/12/2018 at 11:56 PM, Dylan Lawrence Moore said:

Anyone who wants to.

Ok, no argument there. 

 

On 1/12/2018 at 11:56 PM, Dylan Lawrence Moore said:

I know it gets a little confusing when I talk because I say that money is a state-created concept. For the sake of simplicity, I do this when talking about the basics because I don't want to throw too many elements in right at the beginning.

Why don’t you call state-created money fiat? I think your use of the term money is causing the confusion you wish to avoid. At least I think it was for me anyways. 

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

5 hours ago, Tyler H said:

Why don’t you call state-created money fiat? I think your use of the term money is causing the confusion you wish to avoid. At least I think it was for me anyways. 

Because there isn't any evidence of the existence of non-fiat money, yet. I think cryptocurrency is leading the way in becoming the first non-state currency (i.e. where the value of the money isn't based on force), but I also think it has a long way to go. We've had 5000 years of state money to understand and, what, 9 years of crypto? At this point in the game, we simply don't know what a private money system would look like.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

New MMT video with WARREN FUCKIN' MOSLER. Nima and I got Warren Mosler on to discuss the topics that we went over in the previous two videos. Warren drops economic truth bombs that rattled me inside and out. Including by not limited to: 

• Why MMT is so distasteful to conservatives (and everyone else)
• How US bonds don't fund the government
• How interest rates ACTUALLY affect the economy
• What quantitative easing does to the economy (virtually nothing), and why everyone freaks out about it (and why they shouldn't)
• What actually happened during the banking bailouts of 2008 (it's nothing like we've been told)
• Basics of the banking sector
• How the US is utterly overtaxed and the damaging economic effects of transactional taxes (sales tax, VAT, etc.)
• Proposing an idea: wiping out ALL federal taxes and replacing it with a base 5% property tax. No more IRS.

Federal spending isn't restricted by taxes and a country needs a national debt in order to have money. The country isn't going broke, it's not selling off our debt to our grandchildren, hyperinflation is not around the corner, and China doesn't own US debt. #learnmmt

 

 

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

New video linked above!!