Basically the problem is that our whole planet has been gamified. All the Earth’s life, resources and geography have been folded into this sick game where people commodify them into points called money, for no other reason than to score as many points as possible.
Read in conjunction with the MMT analogy of money as points on scoreboard in a game.
CaitlinJohnstone.comDe-Gamify The Earth
Caitlin Johnstone
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From the perspective of a commodity producer, they are seeking M'.
But we are devouring the Earth to maintain our standard of living.
“ Read in conjunction with the MMT analogy”
She still doesn’t identify the word “money” as a figure of speech….
“ All the Earth’s life, resources and geography have been folded into this sick game where people commodify them into points called money,”
Points are an abstraction they are not a commodity…
This is the same reification the monetarists make .., as if “money” (a figure of speech) is REAL…
she’s basically a moron monetarist… reifying scientific abstractions…
A very immature uneducated pov…
Matt, I read her as saying the opposite of the way you read her here. She picked the point analogy to show the vacuity of the nominal numbers game in real terms, which is what counts in the real world.
This is similar to the propaganda war going on now where one cohort believes that winning the imaginary war spun by the narratuve is superior to winning on the battlefield. It's turning out to be delusional and the narrative is now changing with blame being deflected away from where it belongs.
Taking numbers (points) to be reality, the West completely missed the strength and resilience of the Russian economy, as well as the factor endowment of its vast natural resources that the owners of the West covet for themselves. They had no idea of industrial warfare and were mesmerized by "technological superiority" that had little to do with military impact on the battlefield. It was a mirage.
Reality will not be fooled. Or they say, "Reality is the great guru."
In my view, Caitlin Johnstone is one of the most incisive commentators along with being a gifted crafter of words. It would be great if she picked up on MMT.
PP: "From the perspective of a commodity producer, they are seeking M'."
Yes. The "C" in "M-C-M'" (Marx) is just a black box generating profit. What's in the black box is irrelevant other than for rent-seeking, profit being what remains for owners of capital as passive income after production and distribution costs (real contribution) have been met.
Well she’s well trained in writing no doubts there…
But you still have to properly understand what you’re writing about.,,
She’s not trained in Finance and doesn’t under it…
This is similar to the propaganda war going on now where one cohort believes that winning the imaginary war spun by the narratuve is superior to winning on the battlefield. It's turning out to be delusional and the narrative is now changing with blame being deflected away from where it belongs.
Washington has won the propaganda war against Russia. Europe fell for it. If Russia were to topple the regime in Kiev, or forced to occupy more of Ukraine, that would be spun as more Russian aggression, and drive Europe more deeply into Washington's back pocket.
The bad deal that Europe is receiving, will require periodic propaganda boosts. It will be based on a distortion of reality.
Might not be about munnie , if Russians are prevented from associating with Europeans due to decisions made by current leadership there may develop a large cohort of Russians that don’t like that…. a cohort that prefers to view themselves as European…
Tom, if somebody digs up some coal over there and they weigh it and it weighs wtf 1M tonnes does she think that is a mistake too?
Don’t quantify the mass so when you load it on the ship the ship sinks? Collapses the suspension of the trucks?
You have to likewise also measure the value of the commodity for purposes of finance or financial exchange…
People go to University to train in application of abstractions of the Finance and Accounting Science to know how to do this…
Just because she doesn’t understand any of that doesn’t mean it’s this big bad neoliberal conspiracy … she just doesn’t understand any of it or why people are trained to do it…
So she reverts to this “commie Karen” schtick whining about what is just normal Finance and Accounting… that she doesn’t understand because she’s not educated..
Here’s her: “ A fish, a liter of water, a barrel of oil, or an acre of land”
Why isn’t she whining about the liter people? the barrel people? the acre people?
So it’s ok to apply SOME abstract measures to commodities but just not financial ones?
Why not? Too stupid never been educated in any of that?
“We take some water and commodify it into these things called molecules… and numbered sub elements like Hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms…”
She got a problem with that?
That’s simply what scientists are trained to do since the establishment of the Degree methodology in 1860…
She’s from the side of the academe that is producing 10s of thousands of kids every year who think abstractions of Finance and Accounting are REAL and we can literally run out of them…
If she is looking for a problem with something she should have a problem with THAT,,,
She didn't write that finance is unsustainable. Her concern is resource extraction.
She considers 'point-scoring' to be deranged.
In terms of commodity production, there is an incentive for it. Profit-making.
And this is how our economic activity is organized.
However, in terms of geopolitics, point-scoring is futile.
Controlling the Earth's resources in the belief that will make you more powerful than your rivals, or the rest of the world combined, is futile.
All the Earth’s life, resources and geography have been folded into this sick game...
Perhaps Caitlin's article is a critique of geopolitics - the 'Great Game' that supposedly educated men keep chattering about. Geography is a human abstraction.
Right she does it again,,, thinks abstractions of geography are REAL too….
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