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This moral outrage seems very convenient given the impending market crash. I wonder how many politicians will come forward announcing the liquidation of their portfolios in good faith to the public, conveniently ahead of the major dip.

Curious how many of the respondents have read MMT literature. Seems to be a theme of believing MMT ignores inflation, which is not at all the case and is addressed directly in Stephanie Kelton's The Deficit Myth.

Credit is created at the point of contract. This was revealed in a 2014 Bank of England report. The current economic arrangements bake in certain percentages of unemployment. MMT suggests reimagining the model to focus on full employment through civic programs that compensate for slow downs in innovation and lending.

Puzzling to see such a staunch offense against alternatives when the present arrangements clearly favor a small few at the expense of the many.

Taxation exists to create a demand for money. It removes liquidity from the system.

Laws can never be neutral. They always direct behaviors and relationships towards specific directions.

Dynastic wealth transfer is extremely inequitable. While everyone defines their own meaning, to frame the human condition as the process of generating excess capital is a diminishment of life and experience.

Just hopping in to agree about UO, one of the primary gaming experiences of my life. A fascinating culture, community, and experience. Chesapeake baby.

Article also misses the additional aspect is that being a billionaire isn't just about the digits representing your fiat energy. It gives very small groups of individuals large swaths of control in entire verticals of society. A small group of unelected kings directing the energy, housing, food supplies, distribution, town square (etc.), needs of the rest.

It's a poor way of organizing a functioning and well integrated society. One that is only maintained by the continued purchasing of political power. It's an anti-democratic system where the primary distribution of power is determined by birth lottery.

We're in an era of our species and collective intelligence where we can imagine much better ways than this, but for many with that power their primary objective is keeping it.

Why do you think not every is able to be a KE worker?

Do you mean in the immediate present, or are you saying that even in a scenario of reimagined social organization there would still be people unable to do this type of work?

The former I understand and agree with, the latter I would strongly disagree with. IMHO every human being is a blank slate of infinite potential at birth, at the circumstances they are born into in combination with the time of their arrival are the two most determining factors. Ungers argument is to radically redirect ourselves in order to make the second option possible.

- Expanding a vital suite of protections to remove survival from employment.

- Reclassification of the laws of property and contract - break from a single market structure to allow multiple markets to operate in tandem. Socialized housing, healthcare, transport alongside privatized video games, widget manufacturing, etc.

- Decoupling of education from municipality taxes, make it federally funded and programmed. Education also becomes lifelong process, the best firms become the best schools.

- Expand access to credit both in the form of capital and technology. Tie finance to the real economy, speculation is good but not in its current form. Most of the money in the stock market stays there, which is antithetical to its purpose of funding the productive agenda of society.

- Open access of technology, revising IP laws to allow a much higher degree of proliferation among emerging verticals.

I don't agree that it's a misreading.

Your point that there are hierarchies within the skill set of various tasks is true, however the argument isn't that everyone needs to be a KE worker - it's that everyone needs the opportunity to be one. Presently that is not the case, many are completely shutout simply because of birth lottery.

A core part of Unger's argument is the expansion of a vital suite of protections for all people. E.g. if everyone has access to universal healthcare, greatly expanding public housing verticals, ample opportunities to retrain and direct their lives it fundamentally changes the nature of our relationship to work.

The grocery store job is only dead-end now because our well being is entirely dependent on our ability to generate capital. In this reimagined future it might be the perfect job for a new mom (or dad) who wants to focus on spending as much time as possible with their child while still having some human interaction outside the house.

If everyone is capable of being a KE worker, it doesn't mean they will be. When and if they want to they can.