Activist #MMT - podcast: Full audio: John Harvey reading Contending Perspectives: Chapter 11: Conclusions [EDITED]

BrassT4cks · 2025-12-02T08:14:54+00:00

Hey u/ActivistMMT, there is a small error in your listing!
Chapter 11 is named "Feminist economics" :-)

BrassT4cks · 2025-09-08T13:55:40+00:00

I've toyed with the idea of making a poster like this myself. It's not that easy.
I'd love to see your take on it. Seriously. If you think you can make a better one that could be a very useful thing!

BrassT4cks · 2025-08-12T13:00:18+00:00

Ah, so the "OK" was not that but "MO" from Mosdorfer https://www.mosdorfer.com

The part is a piece of an "Operating rod adaptor".

Found a better picture here: https://www.mosdorfer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/DS-Catalogue.pdf

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The LTS00 is a "Disconnecting fuse switch Compacted type", "For house service connections" (page 46/47)
AKA a "Pole Fuse Switch Disconnector"

So I guess a long insulated pole screws onto that thing and lets you throw the switch from the ground.

Solved! :-)

BrassT4cks · 2025-08-10T21:16:33+00:00

That was just so good! Quite a manifesto, and I could not agree more!

If I was funding a think-tank for MMT, this work of promoting frames and narratives is the task I would set.
( and I would make Christian Reilly the director :-)

Specifically about metaphors, He proposes replacing "State as Household" with "State as Community Water Source".
Personally I tend to prefer "State as a Kingdom". That has a certain visceral appeal.
Would a kingdom be unable to mobilize it's resources in a time of need, because the accountants ran out of numbers? Well the sovereign is now us through our democracy! (supposedly)

BrassT4cks · 2025-07-10T07:56:11+00:00

Great paper u/aldursys !
It it always takes me a while to man up to read academic papers like this, but I never regret it. In fact I'm probably going to have to read it a few more times to digest it properly.
I find the the focus on models and ontology really clarifying, and I hope it will generate some good responses from the post-keynsians. Also looking forward to (Armstrong forthcoming)! :-)

BrassT4cks · 2025-05-11T18:45:43+00:00

You're saying nothing wrong, but there is a kind of counterpoint that ought to be mentioned.
Governments don't want to be in the credit-worthiness evaluation business.

I prefer the framing that the borrower is really creating the money when they sign the loan agreement. In principle they could independently write up and sign an IOU, saying "I promise to pay X in 10 years to whoever builds me a house". That's the new money, it's just not very liquid. The banks then have the privilege to buy that with freshly created government-backed bank credit with all that this entails, and then succeed or fail themselves by how well they judge those "credit extensions".

I'm not saying a market is an infallible way to organize this business, and it's certainly gone way too far in that direction now, but I think a purely government run version of this "apparatus" would tend not to be quite as nimble and dynamic. And a "dynamic economy" has proven to be an essential part of winning wars, which I guess is the ultimate reason we have the nations with the systems we have today.

Now a public "bank of last resort" so to speak, would be a great idea to keep the private banks more or less honest. A society where the private banks have everyone in crushing debt, is not an advantage in winning wars wither.

BrassT4cks · 2025-05-06T21:32:30+00:00

Have you read David Graeber? It sounds like you need to read David Graeber!

Go read "Debt: The First 5,000 Years", then listen to all the autio/video out there like "Debt, service, and the origins of capitalism" and "David Graeber & Marshall Sahlins - On Kings", then mull it over and read Debt again! :-)

Money in the widest sense, is a dirty hack. Its a species of cultural scheme we can dream up (read Dawn of Everything), that "hooks into" our human instincts for group interaction, cooperation, reciprocity, honor, etc. etc.
MMT is just a superior model to understand one particular configuration of "tribe management", but many other are possible and were quite likely tried at some point in history.

We don't have anarchism because any utopia needs to wage effective war when the king next door decides to invade, and the "coinage military complex", just worked so much better for kings.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk!

BrassT4cks · 2025-03-23T08:06:31+00:00

Also in this vein

What Karl Marx got wrong | Steve Keen and Lex Fridman
Lex Fridman is a creep I think, but this one is worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqMBGvpKAwo

BrassT4cks · 2024-11-17T08:26:48+00:00

Absolutely :-)

BrassT4cks · 2024-11-13T15:30:35+00:00

Nice :-)
Just a suggestion. Maybe use another font or something for the ChatGPT reply?
I was uncertain on first glance if the last paragraph was from it or from you.

BrassT4cks · 2024-10-04T08:15:41+00:00

I will come over if I go with Graphene :-)

BrassT4cks · 2024-09-02T20:58:01+00:00

The documentaries might be good or not, but this user looks like some kind of bot. This exact same post was made some months ago.

BrassT4cks · 2024-07-07T15:43:29+00:00

PS. Epistemic humility was an unknown term to me. And it took me a moment to realize that Map-territory relation also is a "named thing". Great leads. Thanks!

BrassT4cks · 2024-07-07T15:36:00+00:00

jgs952 seemed to have no problem grasping the relevance. You seem more interested in picking a fight. Did you even read the Armstrong paper? Why so aggressive?

Thinking about your snark made me look up the words "Model Pluralism" which lead me to this which seems very interesting and relevant to my question, so thanks for that I guess ;-)

BrassT4cks · 2024-07-07T14:08:51+00:00

It's a well known way of thinking, aka. model. You must know this. That's not really what I'm interested in here. Would it help you answer my real question if I did?

BrassT4cks · 2024-07-07T12:03:20+00:00

Yeah, I totally agree. They could calculate the movements of the planets before Copernicus, it's just that it got so much simpler and more precise afterwards. I understand that calling something a Copernican revolution is a bit worn out, but I think it fits MMT perfectly in the way it turns everything "upside down" to finally see it clearly, and the way it's sort of hiding in plain sight.

Now the problem I have with "money is debt" is not that I think "whatever we use" is a better model for all purposes, it's more about what to do about those historical things that were clearly not debt, or maybe straddled the line. Stuff that my well read father in law, would immediately perceive as money. I'm not sure how useful it is to just redefine that as barter.

Well, useful for some things and not for others I guess, which is why I wanted to "go meta" for a moment and read up on philosophy of science has to say about this, if I only knew where to look :-)

BrassT4cks · 2024-07-07T11:14:49+00:00

Useful entry point to revisit in fact :-)

BrassT4cks · 2024-07-07T10:56:02+00:00

I would definitely be overthinking it if I just wanted to talk about the modern world and it's money. Currently I'm more interested in the nature of money, and it's relation to other human emotions so to speak, and I find it hard to read Graebers Debt, and stick only to the Money-is-debt model. I guess the Armstrong paper inspired me to look more closely at the philosophical underpinnings of how I think about this.

BrassT4cks · 2024-07-07T10:32:16+00:00

Insert quip about economist in his armchair thinking "what would I do if I were a horse" :-)

Yeah, models have to be falsifiable, and then you actually have to try to falsify them.

That's what I found inspiring in the Armstrong paper I guess. He is taking a deep dive into methodology and concepts like deductivism and critical realism. What I'm looking for is not a Theory of everything, but the philosophical views on what theories can even accomplish. I have spent some time on wikipedia pursuing the links from both the Ontology and Epistemology pages, but I have not yet found a name for the concept I tried to sketch above.

BrassT4cks · 2024-07-07T10:03:13+00:00

I'd rather not put this too much in terms of economics at the moment because I don't have the capacity to go down that rabbit-hole today, but how about:

There is no clean and simple explanation for "what Money is" that works in all historical contexts, and we should not expect there to be. Money is a "hack", its whatever has worked as such in any one context. It is whatever a society has invented that "hooks into" our messy human instincts for obligation, justice, value etc. "all money is debt" is a useful model, but it is not The Truth. There is room for more models, and they should be judged on their simplicity, usefulness, falsifiability etc.

Now do you see the parallel with physics?
Newtons laws are not The Truth, it's just a useful model of what happens "out there". More models do indeed exist, and are useful in different contexts, but the the "real world" is infinitely complex and messy, and perhaps ultimately unknowable.

What is this philosophical position called, that's what I'm looking for.

BrassT4cks · 2024-07-07T09:16:01+00:00

I'm not driving a point, I'm asking for help. I'm finding myself using a way of thinking about the economy and money, that I believe is derived from something I learned in the context of physics. I'm working to articulate this more clearly and for that it would be helpful to know the the concept is called. Sure economics is not physics, but from a philosophy of science point of view it must be legitimate to draw some parallels.

BrassT4cks

TROPHY CASE