Tuesday, December 8, 2020

The Sanctity of Contracts

The image shown above is a screen-grab from a video of a young, college drop-out explaining Modern Monetary Theory.

The guts of her argument are that the substrate and the ink to print a $50 bill are no greater than to print a $5 bill.

What she chooses to not understand is that each bill is an implicit contract that promises a  "store of value".

Suppose Warren Buffet printed out a Last Will and Tenement whereby the holder of the document inherited his entire estate. Essentially, he created a single bearer-bond that was worth a lot of money. Then, suppose he held a lottery with the bearer-bond as the prize and donated the proceeds to charity.

Let us suppose Paige (the genius shown above) won the lottery and the bearer-bond was mailed to her.

Enter Eaton Rapids Joe: "Paige, I am such a nice guy I am going to trade you, straight up, five hundred crisp, snowy-white sheets of printing paper and a BRAND NEW ink cartridge for those five, grubby pages with Warren Buffet's signature at the bottom."

Paige wouldn't trade her chance to be a Billionaire for five-hundred sheets of paper because it would not be to her advantage.

Paige supports MMT because it is to her advantages.

Sanctity of Contracts be damned. Her arguments are not cogent because she leaves out the part that ties it together. Paige is for whatever gives her advantage even when it is at the expense of others.

People who promote MMT have a facade of empathy but they are closet sociopaths and would-be destroyers of civilization. Civilization was built on promises and contracts: Made and Kept.

12 comments:

  1. The question going forward is whether the kept part will continue... sigh

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  2. Up until the rest of the world decides the US should not be the world reserve currency. And our national debt becomes un-serviceable.

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  3. Between this article and the one about melting weights I am unfortunately compelled to this. With the usual caveats,including a couple new ones like I'm not the person anyone is likely to come to as "the gun guy" and not owning a Glock, I remember reading that because of the hex pattern of the barrel of a Glock that there would be a problem with them firing bullets of the cast persuasion. If you consider the platforms popularity with your ability to keep one fed you can foresee a time when there just might be a problem with starving Glocks. I don't know if there is anyplace one could buy replacement barrels with "normal" rifling. I don't know what problems attempting to mate the platform with the prosthetic barrel would cause with function and reliability.I don't know how much Viagra you would have to mix with your castings to achieve the end goal. I do know that's a can of worms for which I don't have the opener. I do suspect that finding an answer sooner that later might just be important.

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  4. Ruralcounsel is correct. The truth is that all currency- dollar bills, Pound notes, Yen, Yuan, Francs, etc. are ALL just IOUs. An IOU is only as good as the word of the person or entity that gave it to you. If the issuer pleads poverty or insolvency and refuses to make it good, the IOU is worthless. ALL contracts, equities, stocks, bonds, bank notes, certificates of deposit, mortgages, promissory notes, GLD or SLVR shares, bearer bonds, bank deposits, and ANY other financial instruments that are denominated in any fiat currencies are simply IOUs. The only real money is gold and silver. An IOU is just a piece of paper just like Monopoly money. If the issuer is honest AND solvent, it MAY be worth something. If not, it is toilet paper.

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  5. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-73h63DHrOd8/UmUrrud352I/AAAAAAAABAc/ZrtdBTHogCA/s400/Reserve+Currency+Status.png

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  6. Canadian currency. Which shows we have plenty of dumb people here as well.

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  7. People will get the government they deserve . . .

    dangit.

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    1. "People will get the government they deserve . . ."
      That is assuming that they GET the government that they vote for, not a government imposed upon them by cheating, traitorous liars who corrupted the voting process to install a totalitarian system to enslave them for all time.

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    2. I think John's point stands. Government they deserve vs government they vote for are not equal statements. If the people allow the cheating to pass and the election to be usurped, then they get the government they deserve, but not the one for which they voted.

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    3. I agree. We shall soon see what kind of government that we deserve, the obtaining of which may not be pretty.

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  8. Yes..... she's an idiot. An there are MILLIONS more JUST LIKE HER. What's truly scary is all of those idiots are allowed to drive, to breed and to vote

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