This post is about why I do not identify with any existing school of political thought. If you want to know why I have no friends in real life, you should read my forthcoming 180-part series; The Robocube Analytics, A Programmer’s Quest to Discover the Truth About Capitalism, to be published on Medium beginning next week!
If you see capitalism the way I do the world can be a lonely place.
The libertarians and neoliberals will not be my friends because they hate government and they have built their careers around the idea that government cannot even operate without taking something that doesn’t belong to it. This is incorrect and the libertarians hate it when I tell them so. They will not be my friends.
Liberals will not be my friends because they believe that money and even the words which describe it are evil. When I use accounting language they think I am revealing my inferior “transactional” character. They are the ones going after Hillary Clinton for saying “Workers are assets.” Since I use words like “asset”, I must be one of those greedy narcissists. They will not be my friends.
Entrepreneurs will not be my friends because they are too busy keeping their heads down and making that dent in the universe to be interested in a theory of money. I know it doesn’t matter how hard they work or how great their product is because government isn’t spending enough to support a booming entrepreneurial system. But they don’t want to hear that because negativity is bad, and why worry about things you cannot change? Besides, everyone knows that most startups fail, but theirs is going to be the one. I’m not making fun of entrepreneurs. I am one and I feel the same way about my startup. The only difference between me and them is that I made my politics part of my business. But they are too busy getting traction and trying to make payroll to be my friends.
Perhaps the barons of old capitalism would be my friends. Like CEOs and Venture Capitalists and Hedge Fund managers. You would think that if anyone was interested in #FixingCapitalism before it breaks down completely it would be those with the most to lose. But when I tell them that only government fiscal operations like spending and taxing (and not monetary policy) is what changes the amount of money in the economy they say things like “Well, don’t you know about the loanable funds market?” “Don’t you know the velocity of money can increase?” But the loanable funds market only exists in textbooks and the velocity of money is… a subject for another day. The point is I can’t teach these people anything. They learned it in B-school 10–30 years ago, and they are oblivious to the sea change that is happening. I must be just another crank. They won’t be my friends.
What about the hackers? A couple years ago, hackers were really into crypto-currency and they wouldn’t be my friends because I knew that crypto-currency would always be a real asset and not a financial asset, and furthermore, that financial assets are the basis of any sound money system. Crypto-currency was a barbaric concept wrapped in tech jargon. They wouldn’t be my friends then. Now the hackers are moving on to basic income and they won’t be my friends because I say that basic income dilutes the value of the currency and deprives us of the opportunity to invest in public assets like infrastructure, education and defense. They still won’t be my friends.
Bernie Sanders will not be my friend because I don’t believe that punishing Wall St. and the wealthy with higher taxes contributes anything to the cause of #FixingCapitalism. It certainly does not provide the means to pay for free college or universal healthcare or to create jobs and incomes for all of the people that need to be released from our criminal justice system. Money doesn’t come from the rich. It comes from government spending. Understanding that concept is the revolution. Understanding that the public sector needs to run a deficit in order for the private sector to save is the revolution. Trying to expand the public sector by taking it out of the hides of the wealthy is not revolutionary. It is potentially catastrophic. Bernie Sanders will not be my friend if I keep saying things like this, and I will keep saying things like this.
What about Hillary Clinton? #ImWithHer, but will she be my friend? Probably not. She doesn’t understand the essential importance of government deficits to the big picture of capitalism. She still insists that everything the federal government does needs to be “paid for” with tax revenue. Hillary’s base is a blend of liberals and barons. They can’t decide if I am a narcissist or a crank. I like her anyway because she is the only candidate that doesn’t talk about fixing our country by meting out punishment against some group of bad people. She is easy to vote for because she is the only person running for office who isn’t crazy. Maybe she would be my friend someday, but I’d better not assume.
What about the followers of Modern Monetary Theory then? I agree with MMT about almost everything. For example, that US government spending is not constrained by tax revenues. That the rate of interest which the government pays on its “debt” is firmly in control of the central bank, not the market. That there is no income without spending and no spending without income. They taught me much of what I know about balance sheets. Could they be my friends? We are definitely neighbors, but the friendship is tenuous. They say the currency is a tax credit. I say it is an equity. It sounds like quibbling I know, but when I started trying to write the code I figured out that the difference between a credit and an equity is significant. It matters a great deal to our ability to create freedom, fairness and prosperity. For example, with the understanding of the currency as an equity, I believe we can have capitalism without taxes.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty hard to find friends in 2016 when I believe in both capitalism and democracy, and I won’t compromise on either. It’s hard to find friends in 2016 when I refuse to accept the notion that our problems lie with the character and culture of some group of miscreants. And when I insist on the relatively boring hypothesis that our real problems are because we don’t fully understand the consequences of trade within a network of balance sheets.
But it’s all ok with me because I know that the logic of accounting can do things that friends cannot. It can solve our financial problems and unlock a future where we can all get rich, together.
And for that, I am willing to stand alone.
