Quote of the day—Per Bylund

Government’s track record in creating public goods that are of actual value to people and that do not waste resources is nothing short of dismal. Then add the public choice aspect to the whole thing, that politicians have their own interests and therefore may not pursue the public good even if they know it. The assumption that government will fix the economy and increase our standard of living beyond what entrepreneurs can do is unbearably naïve.

I do not think these problems matter much to proponents of MMT, however. Because it is not a theory of how the economy works and so does not concern itself with worldly things like production, innovation, entrepreneurship, scarcity (other than as potentially causing inflation), or time. It is a pseudoreligious conviction that anything is possible and that the one and only solution is always Glorious Government.

Per Bylund
September 14, 2021
The Political Alchemy Called Modern Monetary Theory
[This article is the best explanation I have read on why MMT cannot work.

Some of big takeaways not outlined in the quote above:

  • Government creation of currency is not the same as creating money.
  • Government spending diverts resources from meeting the demands of the public markets.
  • Reducing the production of goods and services in the market result in inflation.
  • Idle/unused resources are sometime idle/unused for a good reason and are best left that way for now.

Previous critiques have left me somewhat unconvinced. I was certain MMT was fatally flawed, but I couldn’t find the clear flaws and conclusively prove to myself it was a terrible disaster in the making I was certain it had to be. This article was a huge help to me.—Joe]

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5 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Per Bylund

  1. It is all about the attitude that “if you can dream it, it is real”. Our problem is reality and having the necessities of life. For the time being it seems to be working, but as John Adams said “There is a lot of ruin in a nation”.

  2. These people don’t even know recent history, do they? How many countries have we watched hyper-inflate and starve just in the last 100 years? Or hyper-inflate and are starving right now?
    Then have some moron repackage the cow pie as a way for us all to have ever we desire!
    I would submit this as evidence at his trial. But what’s truly sad is that I’m beginning to understand Vlad the Impaler now.

    • From what I’ve read, Vlad was not unpopular with his own people. At least not regarding his foreign policy.

  3. I’m a follower of Ludwig von Mises. As I see it, if the government creates it, it can’t be “money”, it can only ever be fake stuff. The people might mistake it for money for a while, potentially a long while, but if the government continues to debase it as they always do, eventually the jig will be up.
    MMT is an amusing concoction in that it makes the inherent fraud of fiat money explicit; usually the left tries to hide what it’s doing to us.
    As far as the observation that government is bad at creating “public goods” — of course it is; doing so it not the goal. Running ever-growing programs that pretend to create public goods, without ever delivering and thereby expiring, is the goal.

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