Warren Mosler explains, once again, why the GOP fixation with a gold-std currency is nonsense. This is about as level-headed a discussion as you'll ever see expressed in print. If you ever wondered what all the fuss was about fixed vs fiat currencies, read Warren's essay.
"The ideological issue is whether the primary function of the currency is to be an investment/savings vehicle, or a tool for provisioning government and optimizing real economic performance."
Bingo! I'll add more emphasis differentiating "private savings" from adequately provisioning the incredibly dynamic capabilities of a constantly and rapidly scaling nation. When it comes down to personal hoarding vs social growth, there are simple reasons why cooperative, social species have won vs solitary hermits, no matter how heroic the hermits are. Return on coordination swamps all other returns. It's far more adaptive to hoard coordination capabilities than to hoard commodity assets.
Having a dynamically scaling currency system is a requirement for denominating all the complex transaction-chains that a dynamically growing society executes. In going from fixed (aka NOT agile) to floating (aka, agile) exchange regimes, we're simply voting with our feet, to voluntarily swap SOME, limiting personal options for SOME, enabling group options.
Once people viscerally perceive the options of personally perishing vs banding together to flourish, the decision to go with agile decisions and rapid, floating changes in local valuations gets very easy. It's a no brainer.
The fact that we currently have millions of people who don't grasp those personal vs group options is a sign of our social dissolution, not of our potential.
To survive, we need every person in every profession to at least be aware of evolving reality (say, biology 101?), and also practiced at Outcomes Based Training. That way we wouldn't have Luddites resurfacing every 3 generations, and trying to take us 2 steps backwards instead of another step forward.
This all gets very simple from a systems point of view. To do more things, new tools are always needed, the sooner the better. To rapidly invent & distribute new tools as needed, we need toolmakers, the sooner the better. To both develop toolmakers & ensure safe vs unsafe use of proliferating tools ... we need processes to develop (educate & train) both toolmakers and tool-users. Those layers of organization never stop growing. It's what we are.
That's how complex societies and all systems compete and evolve. The only other option is group suicide, which always looks attractive to those individuals who don't yet see the next train coming down the tracks, nor the need to rapidly distribute & efficiently use totally new tools to escape it.
Yes, there is ALWAYS a lot of noise, with people crying "wolf" and offering a huge range of new tools, mostly not needed. Yet the only choice is to SELECT carefully from the palette of options, to SELECT to train the right toolmakers, and to SELECT to learn to use the right tools well ... all soon enough. We can't abstain from natural selection, except by group suicide.
We're always in a hurry to be a more agile culture, and fixed-value-exchange regimes are the antithesis of agile. Case closed.
This all gets very simple from a systems point of view. To do more things, new tools are always needed, the sooner the better. To rapidly invent & distribute new tools as needed, we need toolmakers, the sooner the better. To both develop toolmakers & ensure safe vs unsafe use of proliferating tools ... we need processes to develop (educate & train) both toolmakers and tool-users. Those layers of organization never stop growing. It's what we are.
That's how complex societies and all systems compete and evolve. The only other option is group suicide, which always looks attractive to those individuals who don't yet see the next train coming down the tracks, nor the need to rapidly distribute & efficiently use totally new tools to escape it.
Yes, there is ALWAYS a lot of noise, with people crying "wolf" and offering a huge range of new tools, mostly not needed. Yet the only choice is to SELECT carefully from the palette of options, to SELECT to train the right toolmakers, and to SELECT to learn to use the right tools well ... all soon enough. We can't abstain from natural selection, except by group suicide.
We're always in a hurry to be a more agile culture, and fixed-value-exchange regimes are the antithesis of agile. Case closed.
2 comments:
Gold bugging and standard would precipitate into world chaos including demise of Israel.
It is patently anti-semitic and would amplify chaos in South Africa and put Russia into a position of superfluous power.
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