<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat<br class=""></blockquote>Subject: Re: [ExI] Deficit spending and never admitting you were wrong<br class=""><br class="">On Tue, May 26, 2020 at 4:58 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" class="">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a> <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" class="">mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> > wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">?Many economists, including yours truly, considered these fiscal and monetary developments reasonable under the circumstances. It was, we argued, a good thing to run deficits in a slump, with little risk that these deficits would create any kind of crisis. It was also a good idea to print money, with little risk that doing so would lead to inflation? Krugman<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">John your theory<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">It's not my theory, it's the theory of a Nobel Prize winner in economics who was proven to be absolutely right in 2008?.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">will get a test very soon. <br class=""></blockquote><br class="">And if it passes that test in 2020 as it did in 2008 ?<br class=""><br class="">John K Clark<br class=""><br class="">We are spending way more of the federal budget to service debt now than before 2008.<br class=""><br class="">If the 2020 isn?t extremely painful, then I would be even more for deep tax cuts. If we can somehow solve budget problems by printing more money, the tax rate should be in the single digits and the money-minting numbers should be in the 16 digits.<br class=""><br class="">I think we are fooling ourselves thinking we can print our way out of trouble. No country can do that, it doesn?t matter what form of government they have.<br class=""><br class="">spike<br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Well, except for Empires and Colonialist systems where the threat and the use of force can prop up the use of your currency and the ‘legal terms’ of your ‘agreements’.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Remember: money, all money, is just trust symbols.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">And if I ’trust’ that you will shoot me unless I agree to your conditions……I guess effective coercion is a form of trust. Certainly, pointing/using guns has been used as a ‘means of exchange’.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Examples:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Salt monopoly in India. (The word salary is derived from Latin for ’salt’ by the way.)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Opium monopoly in China. (Specifically designed to ‘redress’ the trade/currency imbalance between China and the British Empire.)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Beads for land. Manhattan for a bushel of beads? What’s the exchange rate on those? I gotta get me some beads! “Oh, you thought you were granting temporary camping rights? Look at this document in Latin…now look at these muskets….now look at the document…can you now understand everything you need to know about Latin and contract law? Do you need to see some more muskets?"</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">etc. etc. etc.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Libertarian Capitalists engage in such magical thinking. Thinking that corporations, motivated solely by profit, free from taxation and regulation will somehow produce a better society. Why?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">With all the historical examples, why?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">‘Wilful ignorance’ = ‘intellectual dishonesty’=‘propagandism’</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">"The Tragedy of the Commons" is often brought out a downside of (insert left wing idea here). While in fact it is exactly and explicitly the modus operandi of capitalism: pollute the air and water, form a monopoly, claim the land, enslave the workers. These are not bugs in the system: these are the features.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class="">The Boston Tea Party’s slogan was: ’No taxation without representation.’ The implication is that they would have accepted taxation if they were adequately represented.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The Libertarian Capitalist slogan is: ’No taxation I’ve got all the representation.’ i.e. Citizen’s United = they already bought all the politicians. </div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Obviously in response to years of deficit spending there will have to be some sort of response.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Which response are we going to see?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">More taxation & balanced budget amendments OR The Next Big War</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Free market economics indicate that we will see all branches of the ‘exchange rate adjustment forces’ deployed.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">A proxy war with some country that is going into China’s orbit would seem like a ‘logical’ choice; somewhere in Africa this time? (They are almost getting up off their knees after 500+ of colonialism/imperialism so it is about time.)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Stop whining about paying taxes! The alternative is corporate domination and endless war.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Yours truly,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Omar Rahman</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>