Saturday, February 6, 2016

Steve Keen — Our Dysfunctional Monetary System


Steve Keen sums it all up on one sentence:
The great tragedy of the global eco­nomic malaise is that it is caused by a short­age of some­thing that is essen­tially cost­less to pro­duce: money.
It's beyond inane, especially post Keynes and post Lerner. Not that this was unknown or overlooked before. But Keynes and Lerner elaborated economic policy based on a theory that disproves the conventional approach.

Steve Keen's Debtwatch
Our Dysfunctional Monetary System
Steve Keen | Professor and Head Of School Of Economics, History & Politics, Kingston University, London

5 comments:

NeilW said...

Quite a lot of 'inefficient government' in that piece.

Now either Steve is playing to his audience, or he hasn't worked in a large corporate recently.

There is nothing that says private firms are efficient.

Unknown said...

Right, as if the fear of firm bankruptcy somehow guarantees that hundreds, thousands, or sometimes millions of employees care about long term health and life of the company in any coherent or meaningful way. Especially considering the short-term labor relationships we trended towards on average. Gone are the days where people worked at the same place en masse for decades. Now that pensions are no longer a significant thing, and health insurance continues to be detached from employers, this trend will most likely continue.

IMHO this should be priority #1 for society, eliminate all employee dependence on the firm and collectively provide education, retirement, and health care. Such things are necessary to help counteract the natural asymmetry between labor and capital owing to the need to eat not applying to corporations.

Not to mention that freeing workers from this corporate leverage combined with a true full employment policy would help foster the public's willingness to embrace actual market competition and letting firms go bankrupt. Currently, there is so much trouble stirred up due to corporate bankruptcies, strategic or otherwise, and how they effect retirement promises to current and former employees. What a stupid ass thing to worry about. Save a bad company so that the workers dont get screwed? How the fuck is that a "free" market? Once you remove those pressure points, what does it matter if the company goes under?

Some other entity gets a great deal on old inventory, or some new blood gets to take over the brand, you know all the good things about bankruptcy. And you eliminate the negative externalities associated with labor. No more pensions being robbed since they dont exist.

Why do we want to subject workers to promises that corporations might not be able to deliver when we can instead rely on promises from our Govt that we know they can always deliver?

NeilW said...

I've never understood it either. However what you find again is the left doing the right's bidding. The left don't like job losses at all or any change for that matter. The right don't like competition. So the calls for bailouts of firms come from both sides.

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Catholicism without hellfire. It doesn't work as a concept.

Matt Franko said...

"we can instead rely on promises from our Govt that we know they can always deliver? "

Keyword here being "we"... (and there are only a thousand or two of us....)

Ignacio said...

Auburn is the same reason the MIC is allowed to exist by modern societies, because they provide a lot of jobs (and some high paying ones!) and feed a lot of mouths, the masters.

We have a tragicomic system of veiled exploitation and "slavery by other means".