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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: December 25th, 2023

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  • pearable@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlthe debt
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    25 days ago

    That sort of thing can happen in extreme situations. Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany are the most prominent examples. Both examples involved not having enough stuff. When there aren’t enough necessary goods to buy and people have plenty of money you’re going to get inflation. Using the right combo of subsidies, government run production, purchase quantity limits, reserves, vouchers, and price fixing you can ensure the supply is stable and eliminate inflation even if there’s lots of money.

    That’s true. That happens because people are stuck in the narrative of the government needing a balanced budget, just like a household. It also happens because the owners and the corpos use all their money and power to ensure workers pay taxes and thus decrease worker money and power.

    Yeah, if the population was educated on MMT the ability to bring corpos to heel would be significantly increased. People arguing for it are fundamentally arguing for a change in how we think about money.




  • Sorta, this kind of thinking can only take you so far before the dissonance destroys your mental health.

    Additionally, not everyone believes that just your mental state is yours to control. Many folks justify their own wealth by believing that they deserve everything they have and that people who have less by extension deserve their poverty.


  • I don’t think that’s how people work. An individual can decide to think critically, act selflessly, but when you’re talking about millions of people environment means so much more. A mass of people don’t just do anything. They are the result of their education, media, and religion. When all these things are shaped by people with all the money it’s no wonder that people are bigoted, short sighted, and disillusioned with politics. We live in an extremely sophisticated propaganda machine.

    As long as people are sufficiently comfortable, things will continue as they are. Enough people need to find their material reality shitty enough that they’re no longer willing to eat the shit we’ve been fed all this time. Things haven’t been this concentrated since before the great depression. If we see a similar economic collapse. This time a collapse in the ad/tech market or obscene capital financialization, and we’ll finally see a similar backlash against capital. We just need to make sure we finish the job and the owners can’t slowly claw back political power again.







    • trauma kit
    • tourniquet
    • clotting agent impregnated gauze
    • a couple chest seals
    • trauma sheers
    • small OTC pharmacy
    • sun screen
    • lactose pills for friends
    • booboo kit
    • tampons and pads for friends
    • Armytek Zippy keychain flashlight
    • a couple 5 ah phone batteries so I can give one away if I need to
    • tool kit
    • tailor’s measuring tape
    • long titanium spoon
    • sharpening stone
    • tweezers
    • small amount of silicone lube (squeaky things annoy me)
    • tape
    • zip ties
    • Leatherman wave +
    • Leatherman bit kit
    • 3 inch titanium cressent wrench
    • compact titanium combination socket and bit wrench
    • paper and 2 in one sharpie
    • lighter
    • backup dog poop bags
    • doc bronners soap
    • small sewing kit
    • wet wipes
    • cord cut in convenient lengths
    • spare socks
    • seasonal accessories (sun hat, merino neck tube, knit glommits)
    • cotton bandana
    • check in case I forget to bring one when I pay rent
    • plastic reusable bag if I need to carry more stuff than my bag’s expanding pouch can hold
    • single wall stainless steel water bottle
    • fig bar
    • chocolate covered almonds
    • pepper gel
    • emergency debit card in case I forgot my wallet
    • small folding opinel knife for food
    • spray bottle full of alcohol
    • 3x magnification monocular for bird watching
    • little pouch to keep dry leftovers in
    • a couple kn95s with different strap styles since some of my friends like the ones that go on your ears

    All of that fits in a 9 liter Poler Hip N Bindle







  • According to MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) governments sell debt in the form of bonds in order to create a stable store of value for investors. They feel safer making risky investments if they know that some if their money is safe. Governments, particularly governments with fiat [1] currencies, are extremely safe borrowers. You can more or less guarantee that their bonds will be paid back. Because if a government wants to pay that bond back they are incapable of running out of money. So governments could buy their bonds back and forgive them but it would defeat their actual purpose. I read about MMT in The Deficit Myth. It’s an interesting book and worth the read if you want a different perspective on monetary theory.

    1. Fiat in this case means the currency is not based on any asset. Common currency basing assets are gold, silver, petroleum, and cryptography.



  • Country is a little vague so I’ll supliment state in it’s place. I’d argue there are communist societies but no communist states. “communist states” may be an oxymoron.

    A useful way to think about self described communist states is that they are attempting to build communism. Whether or not their strategies are effective is up for rigorous debate of course.

    Communist societies on the other hand have existed since the dawn of humanity. I read an interesting book titled The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. They cover a variety of indigenous groups’ economies and social structures. Some could be described as communism, others were as exploitative or worse than our current society. The San tribes are a modern example of an egalitarian society or maybe more accurately a group of egalitarian societies. I’m also interested in the Zapatistas and what the folks in Northern Syria are doing but I doubt they constitue communism.

    Anyway I’m no authority on these things but I hope you found the perspective interesting. The audiobook for the Dawn of Everything is fastinating and a local library might have a copy if you want to check it out.