While the politics is much more fun, I think some logic might be more useful.
(I wrote this to Pinkos Have More Fun yesterday, but I would have written something very similar otherwise.)
The real danger to Capitalism is not Socialism, but today’s Capitalists.
Henry Ford paid his workers twice what he needed to, because he understand those building the products had to be able to afford them, in order for the system to work. On the other hand, Jeff Bezos is going to suck everyone and everything dry, then use that power to suck some more. People are linear and goal oriented, but nature is cyclical and thermodynamic. What goes up, comes back down and you don’t want to cheat on the foundations, in order to put more gold in the penthouse.
What our liberal culture has forgotten, is that money is the social contract enabling mass societies to function, but we treat it as a commodity to mine out of society.
As a contract, with one side an asset and the other a debt, it is a very useful medium of exchange, but very poor store of value, as every asset requires a debt.
Yet because our culture is based on the individual and we experience money as quantified hope, we try to save and store it. Medium and store are quite different functions. For example, in the body, blood is the medium and fat is the store, or for cars, roads are the medium and parking lots are the store. Don’t get them mixed up.
We need to learn to store value in tangible assets, like healthy communities and the environments they require. We mostly save for the same reasons, raising children, housing, healthcare, retirement. If these could be invested in as community assets, rather than everyone trying to save for them individually, we wouldn’t have an atomized culture, dominated by finance.
Think how this money is saved. For example, government debt is considered the safest investment, but much of that gets spent on the military and its myriad adventures. Basically we are presuming to save surplus wealth, by blowing up other countries.
The Federal deficit really started climbing with the New Deal. Roosevelt wasn’t just putting unemployed labor back to work, but unemployed capital, as well. Then WW2 shifted much of this borrowing over to the military and the die was cast.
Where would that current 20 trillion Federal deficit have gone, otherwise? Derivatives? Apple stock?
The government doesn’t even really budget. To budget is to list priorities and draw the line at what could be afforded. They just put together these enormous bills, add enough goodies to get the votes and the president can only pass or veto it.
If they wanted to budget, they could break the bills into their various items, have legislators assign percentage values to each item, put the bill back together in order of preference and have the president draw the line. “The buck stops here.”
That would leave prioritizing with the legislature, while the president has executive responsibility to the actual amount of spending. Those left out wouldn’t have the power to override the process and the president wouldn’t want to appear irresponsible, so actual reductions would occur.
Yet how could Wall Street function, without those tsunami waves of government debt, to provide public responsibility for private wealth?
What if the government were to threaten to tax, what it currently borrows?
The fact is that we own money, like we own the section of road we are using. Its functionality is in its fungibility. It’s not our picture on it. We are not responsible for maintaining its value, ie, trust in it. Nor do we hold the copyright and the Treasury takes that seriously.
People would quickly learn to start storing value in more tangible assets. Like networks of responsible friends and not just trusting the money.
As the executive and regulatory functions of society, government is its central nervous system. As the value circulation mechanism of banking and finance is the heart and arteries.
As it evolved from chieftains and elders, to kings and nobles, government became a private business, but as monarchs lost sight of the fact that their relationship with society was a two way street and they had to make wise decisions, to the benefit of the society, in order to be served by it, the relationship broke down and government became the semi-functional public utility we have today. Currently banking is having its Marie Antionette moment. It is as if the heart were telling the rest of the body to go suck dirt, the blood belongs to it.
It is not that banking can be a direct function of government, as politicians live and die on the hope they inspire, so printing more money is a cheap high. Look at the pressure Trump is putting on the Fed. Like the head and the heart, they are separate and serve separate functions, though to the entire body.
As it is now, when the government starts to have difficutly issuing more debt, those sitting on piles of treasuries will be trading them for public assets, from parks and highways to water and mineral reserves. Those managing this process will do it as smoothly as possible, as they know who their future employers will be. That will be true oligarchy.
So if you want a strategy for socialism, here are some thoughts to consider, rather than Modern Monetary Theory and just showering free cash on people. Money is a promise. When it loses that trust, it is worthless and the institutions doing it are close behind. There are many ways that which goes up, comes back down.
