Broke lives matter
Imagine you're an ancient king and you wanna invade your neighbor. Your army will need stuff. One thing you could do is enslave blacksmiths and farmers and so on. Slavery is a tough sell though. Slaves tend to resent being slaves, so you get running away behavior. Not to worry, there's a better way. You make coins and you give these coins to your soldiers. Then you tax everyone in your country in those coins, on pain of being eviscerated by your new soldiers. How does everyone get coins? Why, by selling boots and wheat to soldiers. Boom. Your soldiers are supplied. Not only that, but do you notice, you've created a system that people literally buy into. They WANT to supply your soldiers because that's how you get these coins that everybody wants.
You know, we could just do that for everybody. We could give everybody money, not just soldiers. Then, boom, you've got the whole country providing for itself. You don't even need to give everybody THAT much. Imagine giving Bob, Alice, and Claire $1 each. Bob spends his dollar buying a sandwich from Alice, who buys bread from Claire, who buys a knife from Bob. You only gave them $1 each but everybody received $2 due to the magic of money circulating in an economy. The issue isn't how much money you have right now. The issue is how many dollars circulated through you. It's a circulatory system. I feel like this insight gets dropped a lot. You don't necessarily need to give everybody $30,000 a year to survive. You just need to give everybody enough that there's enough fluid available to circulate through the system.
One key question is, where do you inject the fluid? You can pump all the blood you want into the neck of a diabetic with terrible circulation, they'll still lose a foot. This is why the 2008 bailouts were so frustrating. All that TARP money went to people and entities with lots of money already, under the assumption that they would rope everybody else into the circulatory system, which of course they didn't. Rich people have self identified as the sorts of people who suck money out of circulation and hoard it. That's the definition of being rich.
You gotta pump money in at the bottom and tax it out at the top. But that's the problem isn't it. Taxes. That's a hard sell. Taxes frame the conversation in terms of, "My government takes money from ME and gives it to somebody else."
I wonder if there's a better way.
Back in the day you had to make coins out of gold because that's all anybody trusted. But these days, we trust American dollars. And those dollars are imaginary. I'm not kidding. We can, and do, conjure them out of thin air. But what if you conjure too much, then you get inflation, right? Well it's more complicated than that. Did you know that we tripled the number of American dollars in existence after the 2008 crash? There are three times as many dollars now. Did you see any inflation? Nope.
It's because what really matters is how the money is circulating, not how much money exists. Remember most of the money that exists is just languishing in the bank accounts of people with dragon sickness. The money hardly matters. It's the circulation that's important.
Taxes imply you can only put in what you took out. Taxes imply a balanced ledger. But as I've just explained, that's all wrong. It's not the balance that matters, it's the circulation. You can, and we do, spend way more than we tax, and this is just fine. But wait, when you spend more than you tax, don't you have to borrow, and doesn't that create debt? Don't we have some kind of crazy national debt situation and this is really bad, or something?
What is America's debt. I'll tell you exactly what it is. It's people buying government bonds. You personally can buy US government bonds that promise to pay back a larger amount in the future. It's a way to hoard your money. It's a way to keep your money out of circulation. In fact, guess who has the most bonds? Americans. America's debt isn't money owed to the Chinese mafia or some nonsense. America's debt is mainly Americans not circulating their money through the economy. It's book keeping.
These words "debt" and "taxes," they bring up deep, unhelpful emotions about old constraints that really don't apply any more. We've got way more stuff now, more food than we could possibly eat. We got really good at taking whatever natural process and hooking it up to whatever needs doing. I don't break my back shoving a plow through lumpy earth any more. I do magical nonsense like turning ancient sunlight into rock and roll. And we've got way more trust now. You can triple the number of dollars and nobody cares. Your nation can go into debt and nothing happens.
Just like taxes were a way better system than slavery, I believe we're ready to move on to a system that's way better than taxes. A system that makes sense, that's simpler, that's easier to control, that people like more, that's more predictable and stable, and that does a more effective job of circulating money through people, a.k.a., eliminates poverty.
Pick a night of the year, April 14th, say. It will be a national day of mourning. That's the day Baal, a cruel wicked greedy ugly god, travels the land looking to devour you. The more money you ate, the more he eats of you. If you earned less than $20,000 that year, He can't be bothered with you. Otherwise he eats MIN(.5 * x, 5 * x / 11 - 100,000 / 11) of your money. So for example, if you earned $20,001 he wants 45 cents, if you earned $100,000 he wants $36,3636.36, and if you earned $200,000 or more he wants 50%. His belly full at midnight, he sits on his throne of skulls, mocking us.
But then April 15th is a day of triumph and celebration! In a totally epic battle, The Archangel Michael drives Baal to the lip of a volcano, where he casts the evil god down through the magma to the center of the earth where he burns in agony with his ill gotten gains for 364 days. Then the Archangel Michael travels the land, making us whole again, to the tune of $3,000 each, or whatever.
The Archangel Michael also funds government projects.
In a way, this idea is not very new. This is basically just a reframing of taxes and the minimum basic income. As far as I know, I invented the first mythological reframing. But lots of folks have suggested other, much more mundane frames. Taxes are the dues you pay to keep your country club nice, that kind of thing.
Mark my words, some day we'll just give everyone the same amount of money, carefully chosen to keep the economy lubricated but not flooded, and it'll be fine. It's so simple and obvious when you wrap your head around it. But in the meantime, it's impossible to sell. You start with, "Well we'll give everyone money regardless of anything," and folks wipe the laughter-tears from their eyes and pat your dear deluded dirty hippy head. So to my mind, THE challenge of eliminating poverty comes down to selling the idea of the minimum basic income to middle America. The one way I know won't work is the favorite progressive strategy slash fallacy. "Just explain the facts to people and they'll change their minds."
My eye is on the metaphor. I think we can solve poverty with the right metaphor.
(Note on the title: I totally think black lives matter, including Hassan's, who I stole this title from. So I'm still a terrible person, just more along the lines of a white novelty rapper)
You know, we could just do that for everybody. We could give everybody money, not just soldiers. Then, boom, you've got the whole country providing for itself. You don't even need to give everybody THAT much. Imagine giving Bob, Alice, and Claire $1 each. Bob spends his dollar buying a sandwich from Alice, who buys bread from Claire, who buys a knife from Bob. You only gave them $1 each but everybody received $2 due to the magic of money circulating in an economy. The issue isn't how much money you have right now. The issue is how many dollars circulated through you. It's a circulatory system. I feel like this insight gets dropped a lot. You don't necessarily need to give everybody $30,000 a year to survive. You just need to give everybody enough that there's enough fluid available to circulate through the system.
One key question is, where do you inject the fluid? You can pump all the blood you want into the neck of a diabetic with terrible circulation, they'll still lose a foot. This is why the 2008 bailouts were so frustrating. All that TARP money went to people and entities with lots of money already, under the assumption that they would rope everybody else into the circulatory system, which of course they didn't. Rich people have self identified as the sorts of people who suck money out of circulation and hoard it. That's the definition of being rich.
You gotta pump money in at the bottom and tax it out at the top. But that's the problem isn't it. Taxes. That's a hard sell. Taxes frame the conversation in terms of, "My government takes money from ME and gives it to somebody else."
I wonder if there's a better way.
Back in the day you had to make coins out of gold because that's all anybody trusted. But these days, we trust American dollars. And those dollars are imaginary. I'm not kidding. We can, and do, conjure them out of thin air. But what if you conjure too much, then you get inflation, right? Well it's more complicated than that. Did you know that we tripled the number of American dollars in existence after the 2008 crash? There are three times as many dollars now. Did you see any inflation? Nope.
It's because what really matters is how the money is circulating, not how much money exists. Remember most of the money that exists is just languishing in the bank accounts of people with dragon sickness. The money hardly matters. It's the circulation that's important.
Taxes imply you can only put in what you took out. Taxes imply a balanced ledger. But as I've just explained, that's all wrong. It's not the balance that matters, it's the circulation. You can, and we do, spend way more than we tax, and this is just fine. But wait, when you spend more than you tax, don't you have to borrow, and doesn't that create debt? Don't we have some kind of crazy national debt situation and this is really bad, or something?
What is America's debt. I'll tell you exactly what it is. It's people buying government bonds. You personally can buy US government bonds that promise to pay back a larger amount in the future. It's a way to hoard your money. It's a way to keep your money out of circulation. In fact, guess who has the most bonds? Americans. America's debt isn't money owed to the Chinese mafia or some nonsense. America's debt is mainly Americans not circulating their money through the economy. It's book keeping.
These words "debt" and "taxes," they bring up deep, unhelpful emotions about old constraints that really don't apply any more. We've got way more stuff now, more food than we could possibly eat. We got really good at taking whatever natural process and hooking it up to whatever needs doing. I don't break my back shoving a plow through lumpy earth any more. I do magical nonsense like turning ancient sunlight into rock and roll. And we've got way more trust now. You can triple the number of dollars and nobody cares. Your nation can go into debt and nothing happens.
Just like taxes were a way better system than slavery, I believe we're ready to move on to a system that's way better than taxes. A system that makes sense, that's simpler, that's easier to control, that people like more, that's more predictable and stable, and that does a more effective job of circulating money through people, a.k.a., eliminates poverty.
Pick a night of the year, April 14th, say. It will be a national day of mourning. That's the day Baal, a cruel wicked greedy ugly god, travels the land looking to devour you. The more money you ate, the more he eats of you. If you earned less than $20,000 that year, He can't be bothered with you. Otherwise he eats MIN(.5 * x, 5 * x / 11 - 100,000 / 11) of your money. So for example, if you earned $20,001 he wants 45 cents, if you earned $100,000 he wants $36,3636.36, and if you earned $200,000 or more he wants 50%. His belly full at midnight, he sits on his throne of skulls, mocking us.
But then April 15th is a day of triumph and celebration! In a totally epic battle, The Archangel Michael drives Baal to the lip of a volcano, where he casts the evil god down through the magma to the center of the earth where he burns in agony with his ill gotten gains for 364 days. Then the Archangel Michael travels the land, making us whole again, to the tune of $3,000 each, or whatever.
The Archangel Michael also funds government projects.
In a way, this idea is not very new. This is basically just a reframing of taxes and the minimum basic income. As far as I know, I invented the first mythological reframing. But lots of folks have suggested other, much more mundane frames. Taxes are the dues you pay to keep your country club nice, that kind of thing.
Mark my words, some day we'll just give everyone the same amount of money, carefully chosen to keep the economy lubricated but not flooded, and it'll be fine. It's so simple and obvious when you wrap your head around it. But in the meantime, it's impossible to sell. You start with, "Well we'll give everyone money regardless of anything," and folks wipe the laughter-tears from their eyes and pat your dear deluded dirty hippy head. So to my mind, THE challenge of eliminating poverty comes down to selling the idea of the minimum basic income to middle America. The one way I know won't work is the favorite progressive strategy slash fallacy. "Just explain the facts to people and they'll change their minds."
My eye is on the metaphor. I think we can solve poverty with the right metaphor.
(Note on the title: I totally think black lives matter, including Hassan's, who I stole this title from. So I'm still a terrible person, just more along the lines of a white novelty rapper)
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