@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai

opinionated lurker of the intarwebs.

Used to write code, still do. c/c++, java, php, js, c#, gdscript, gnawed on sql, sparql, unix/windows etc etc billions of years ago.

tech, graphics, anything STEM
anything anthropology, history, linguistics
anything blender, gimp (although i scream using it), audacity
prefers not to be run over by cars

I drink Philz.

I do a (non-monetized) video or so a week on yt.

Tyranny and poverty are everywhere a mainstream economics phenomenon.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

@ineteconomics

catching up a bit on INET stuff. They aren’t currently active here, but their YT channel is an absolute delight.

https://youtu.be/FQ5dLjq9SHY

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#economics

Let’s try to lure @ineteconomics back into active posting! They do great work!

https://youtu.be/-E--1xRydV0

dlakelan , to economics-that-works group
@dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @economics-that-works

Here's a post I made this morning at Gelman's blog explaining why much of what's published by Economists in the media is gaslighting because it fundamentally fails to address the question of interest by failing to form an appropriate dimensionless ratio to answer the question: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/05/17/how-to-think-about-the-effect-of-the-economy-on-political-attitudes-and-behavior/#comment-2372708

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

:ablobcatbongocry:

"I can’t stress this enough, if a mathematical proof shows that logically your measure is unable to provide useful information about a process and you continue to quote it in the newspaper and use it as fundamental to your “science” then your “science” is not a science."

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

An inflationary spiral based on expectations. It is a very different one from a deflationary one.

In the case of supply chain disruption (think floods and drought) it's a supply shock and at best businesses have to scramble to adapt (invest etc) to get around the problem. But hammering COL demand is perverse.

In all cases, messing around with interest rates is largely an exercise in futility.

https://youtu.be/eX4Sh1sq6HU?si=8NUW_83dz4sfUDtE

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

I have to wonder if jacking interest rates "fixes" inflation in the sense that improved bank balance sheets allow them to more casually extend business operating credit. In short, it's only through business investment that supply constraints are alleviated.

Interest rates cause inflation from those who can raise prices and austerity from those who cannot.

Banks definitely raise prices.

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

And given the interplay of credit and debt to income and wealth inequality, interest rates play a central role in its growth.

Prices WRT to manufacturing don't work the ways the mainstream thinks.

https://masto.ai/@GhostOnTheHalfShell/112281799226924794

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@gooba42 @economics-that-works

Technically incorrect. Per MMT, banks don't lend from anything.

Lending creates an asset (bank wealth, but not "money") and deposit at the same time. Credit money (the deposit) is created ex-nihil.

A bank may need the Fed to give it reserves to cover the deposit if its value is to be transferred to another bank.

The lending capacity of a bank is governed by its deposit-market-share, its flows and the ability of borrowers to pay

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@gooba42 @economics-that-works

Paying back the loan destroys the money created, but the bank pockets that interest charge.

Ultimately, that credit money comes straight from the Fed and government deficit.

The federal government's deficit is where banks get their money from. Out. Of. Thin. Air.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

Pillage economics, lovingly crafted by the most ardent anti-market anti prosperity advocates. This is the insanity of a school of economics that successfully conned people into suspending their rational faculties. They don’t need facts, they need an intervention.

15 min

https://youtu.be/ca36ChrdV6M

breadandcircuses , (edited ) to random
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

For an historical overview of the "Origins of Optimism," I recommend this erudite piece that takes down Steven Pinker, Bill Gates, Ezra Klein, and Gottfried Leibniz, among others...

Consider the techno-optimistic take of New York Times columnist Ezra Klein on the climate crisis. His op-ed headlined ”Your Kids Are Not Doomed” notes that due to climate change the world’s poor will face “vast expanses of suffering” and we rich-worlders “will have looted the future of billions of people to power a present we preferred.”

But for this nice-guy neoliberal progressive, those mountainous miseries can’t outweigh “political realism.” The unassailable logic of “political realism” mandates that only an awesome “vision of more” is viable for NYT-reading elites. In Klein’s green future of abundance, electric cars thrillingly accelerate faster, induction stoves nix indoor pollution, and life just keeps getting better — first and foremost for his elite audience, and only many generations later for the global poor, assuming they survive the tsunami of suffering headed their way.

Klein’s maneuver helps his readers feel good as they materially (and thrillingly) accelerate away from the quagmire the poor are doomed to be caught in. This kind of optimism has the darkest of underbellies, it is but a thin veil over morally-poisonous pessimism.

Klein, like most of our political class, assumes that we citizens won’t ever do what’s right without incentives or personal gains. Even in a global crisis where billions will suffer, viable policies must be “win win” and profitable, or fun and easy for the powerful. Klein asserts that “A climate movement that embraces sacrifice as its answer or even as its temperament might do more harm than good.” The key question is, more harm for whom?

In this neoliberal market-optimist worldview, looting to provide the elite with their treats is just how the world works, extending the centuries-long trend of genocidal violence and plunder under liberal imperialism. This sort of optimism, twinned with justice-twisting “political realism,” sabotages material and moral progress that should prioritize gains for the less-blessed, least powerful, and most vulnerable.

Life in a biosphere-wide crisis can’t be a feel-good festival, a jolly moral picnic for the privileged. The climate and biosphere emergencies warrant a world-war-footing and fitting courage to face the needed hard work and sacrifice.

Yet Klein and company seem to lack the courage and integrity to even accurately inform audiences that multiple international climate authorities have declared rapid cuts in elite consumption to be essential. Climate analyst Chris Shaw has argued that liberalism lacks the conceptual resources to face such challenges: liberals act as if “free market choice is more important than the maintenance of a viable biosphere.”

FULL ESSAY -- https://sublationmedia.com/the-dark-origins-of-optimism-and-its-current-cheerful-evils/

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@breadandcircuses

The shortest form is they are a reaper culture. One that exists to cull, not build.

We’ve seen images of a bright future since Expos became a thing, always built upon a mountain of death.

ChrisMayLA6 , to random
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

So while you & I might think its necessary to speed up the Green Transition & enhance/accelerate measures to reduce emissions, Shell's shareholders disagree.

The firm has just sought & obtained agreement from investors to slow down its measures to mitigate its environmental impact & reduce progress towards its own (already weak) climate targets.

More reason(s) the fossil fuels sector cannot really be central to climate response(s).

We don't have the time to slow down!

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 @ChrisMayLA6

There is a different level of action to be had. Best of all local, but also necessary to drive large scale changes. Even as the KSA tries to push Africa’s economies into the hydrocarbon and car-centric pathway

https://youtu.be/8vle9VryEd0

what we do to effect car-free and address housing crisis nationally effect large scale changes

https://youtu.be/DShceqqNlQo

At core is financing.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 @ChrisMayLA6

The US housing crisis is the end stage of a mortgage industry engineered to subsidize suburbia. Banks were fashioned into home loan factories via mortgage structure and secondary lending market, which allowed them to flip loans. That financed another engineered change: top down urban planning of suburbia, where those, work and shopping were separated and compartmentalized to foster industrial construction. It allowed the US economy to transition from a war economy.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 @ChrisMayLA6

It powered the golden era of the US, but it never was sustainable. Moreover that industrial sized finance is now wholly unfit for purpose, of today’s need.

Now “micro” finance is needed to fund urban greening, integrating cities and ecology and ecological restoration, as well as solving housing crisis. We need a wholly new engineered financial system to do so because the existing is not financially viable with that loan structure.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@Npars01 @ChrisMayLA6

Absolutely, despite the fact that Women + POC powered war time manufacturing.

The idea that that experience fostered women's and civil rights a generation on is not lost on me.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works
@economics

May 21

7 min

https://youtu.be/eknE5NjNMQg

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works @economics

Deprogramming cults

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/972970805/experts-in-cult-deprogramming-step-in-to-help-believers-in-conspiracy-theories

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#SteveKeen
#economics

If economists had all fallen into a hole and a couple physicists or engineers replaced them, the discipline would be different game.

https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/the-role-of-energy-in-production

GottaLaff , to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

Many of us have been sounding the alarm on this for years.

Welp.

Via Kyle Griffin:

In an interview with KDKA-TV, says he's "looking at" policies that would restrict access to

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@GottaLaff

The GOP are way ahead on this. They may catch the other car pressing for it.

molly0xfff , to random
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

back in my day we called this spyware

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@molly0xfff

So my next computer (been using Mac anyway) will be a Linux box. Fuck enclosed platforms.

breadandcircuses , to random
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

George Monbiot says: "Trashing the planet and hiding the money isn’t a perversion of capitalism – it is capitalism."

Capitalism is not, as its defenders insist, a system designed to distribute wealth, but one designed to capture and concentrate it.

The story capitalism tells about itself – that you become rich through hard work and enterprise – is the greatest propaganda coup in human history.

LEARN MORE -- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/06/offshoring-wealth-capitalism-pandora-papers

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@breadandcircuses

Roger Hallam is right to call it a murder project.

There’s a reason the organization is called Extinction Rebellion.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

I call bullshit on Friedman for every having written this. This shit should never have been allowed to survive. Get this atrocity out of here.

"Truly important and significant hypotheses will be found to have "assumptions" that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality, and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions (in this sense) (p. 14)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in_Positive_Economics#The_Methodology_of_Positive_Economics

parismarx , to random
@parismarx@mastodon.online avatar

“I have seen the extremely restrictive off-boarding agreement that contains nondisclosure and non-disparagement provisions former OpenAI employees are subject to. It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing their former employer.”

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/5/17/24158478/openai-departures-sam-altman-employees-chatgpt-release

#openai #tech #ai

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@parismarx

this is called fascism. such legal restrictions are an affront to the 1st. Companies that dictate these terms should be seized and dismantled.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#economics

Let's play economics RPG. Who's the main streamer and who's heterodox?

2 min

https://youtu.be/ebjNf4I88nk

gerrymcgovern , to random
@gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green avatar

"Degrowth calls for an organized slowing down of society, to minimize harm to humans and other species. Degrowth and post-growth proponents conceive economic growth as a major driver of environmental degradation. Beyond a certain scale, the economy is seen to enter into conflict with ecological life-support systems, the costs of growth accelerate, and environmental conflicts multiply."

https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(24)00146-5?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2590332224001465%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@breadandcircuses @Captain_Jack_Sparrow @gerrymcgovern

The economic pathway we’re on needs to go for more than one reason. The common pattern is everywhere. In the US, we face a housing crisis after so many decades of the suburban experiment, but this is coupled urgency of adaptation to the warmer atmosphere. In poorer regions of the world they face existential crises of subsistence (food, water, housing) because of development, and climate adaptation is need is dire

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@breadandcircuses @Captain_Jack_Sparrow @gerrymcgovern

In the US, cities have begun to change zoning laws, legalizing the flexibility the US had before the 50s, but there’s one more needed ingredient: finance. The mortgage business was engineered to subsidize suburban housing. It’s not capable of financing the unmet demands for housing rework and until finance is available, the rework will never evolve, the business can’t without $$.

The problems for the global poor are similar.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@breadandcircuses @Captain_Jack_Sparrow @gerrymcgovern

but for local finance, they are stuck.

But in rich or poor world, credit is desperately needed to restore ecology regionally and green towns/cities, but also local self sufficiency is necessary for supply chain disruption resilience. Permaculture elements address this.

Finance is obsessed with energy transition, big expensive, industrial scale development; that’s its design. It is unfit for purpose. We need ground level transformation.

auschwitzmuseum , to random
@auschwitzmuseum@mastodon.world avatar

19 May 1931 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Selma Spanjer, was born in Amsterdam.

In February 1943 she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after selection.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@auschwitzmuseum

I though I view each of these that I see, some images enrage me more than others.

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

Bair Fix has a YouTube account!

https://mastodon.online/@blair_fix/112462407478539455

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#SteveKeen #economics

Hot off the presses. The next serialized chapter of his book.

https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/why-are-economists-trying-to-hide

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

One aspect of the current state of affairs in a modern economy are the number of corporations that are financial institutions now. GE, GM, Ivy league, the airlines, etc.

And loyalty points offered by banks and these entities are mini monetary systems.

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

“ d/dt Deposits = The equation describing this process is simply the translation of the Bank’s English into the formal language of mathematics. … This equation then is the mathematical form of the Bank of England’s declaration that “bank lending creates deposits”: d/dt Deposits = Lending

I still nit here over terminology. The bank ledger records a loan. Lending is an process, more like, a function, which creates both loan and deposit.

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

It’s more appropriate to use different terminology, as a physicist would:

EG elementary “particles” are quantum phenomena. You can’t pull them apart.

A loan and the deposit are the same thing in that sense. Debt and credit are two sides of a social contract.

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

Regarding mainstream preference to make money / credit irrelevant, with fractional reserve banking.
—

“ If there’s too much money—and therefore inflation—it’s the government’s fault; if there’s too little money—and therefore deflation—it’s the government’s fault. The private banking sector gets off scot-free.

Well, the Fed could use reserve requirements to fiddle bank’s balance sheets, instead of messing with interest rates (?)

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

That also depends which elevation it’s looked at I think. It’d didn’t lose money, it lost what I would call wealth. I reserve money to mean legal tender and begrudgingly “liquid” entries, those entires that can be used to discharge debt (like legal tender).

But yes, prolly in the giant ledger in the sky that makes sense. The question is, is that how it actually works out?

🧵

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

If the loan was insured, or peddled off as part of a security how does all that percolate?

In the end of a successful loan payback, the bank has a profit, “more”. Because the loan, and deposit are accounted in entries but not the interest service, sale of the asset means the bank has walked off with a gain and the effect shows elsewhere.

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

You know, maybe that’s more subtle? Because the bank doesn’t “pay” anything for the write off. The asset simply disappears. If the credit (the liquid thing) is still percolating around in its ledgers as the One Bank. The total asset (principal and interest) and the borrower liability are stricken, but the deposit doesn’t seem to.

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

The payout seems the victim here, but banks can lend to businesses freely. It’s just balance sheet management. They can’t be in the red at the end of a business day and even so, there’s always the discount window.

So yeh, that seems solid. Banks come away with interest (less expenses) from the transaction, always.

dlakelan , to economics-that-works group
@dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

@economics-that-works #economics #mmt #money

Steve Keen discusses the money creation mechanisms here https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/why-are-economists-trying-to-hide

A thing I think he doesn't give enough attention to is the role the Fed DOES play. The Fed indirectly controls bank lending rate through a couple mechanisms. The first is whatever rules it has for declaring a bank solvent. They've eliminated reserve requirements but now it's something like a stress test or whatever. A bank can't keep lending

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

The more likely deposits remain endogenous, the bank suffers no constrains or fiscal risk from them.

Only when people transfer to another bank or extract cash do the run into problems.

As far as reserves go, they settle between banks who minimize transfers by canceling mutual obligations and if they really need some reserves, they borrow it from the discount window (from the fed).

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

One should also remember there's that secondary loan market, Fannie Mae etc where home loans are packaged and sold off to insurance, pensions and hedge funds. They can take the non-monetary load asset and make it liquid.

Banks have so many ways to engineer their balance sheets.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

Reserves could be zero, one of the terms is d * ((1/F - 1)) which blows to infinity.

At the limit, a reserve of $1 or 0 doesn't matter.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

market share, a bank's internal reserve preference, and probability 'money' leaves (as cash or bank transfer), the latter two define K

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

Exactly. In today's financial environment, the whales are well buffered against any liquidity issues.

What I don't feel I understand is how much the reality differs from the way standard policy determines it.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

Also, they can borrow money to buy the bonds.. from the Fed, IRRC.

We all need to incorporate as banks. License to print money. Really!

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@dlakelan @economics-that-works

I keep harping on him to spend less time in debunk and bomb the area with all the math.

He’s stripping his models down to the basics because, well, the mainstream and those under its influence are durably resistant to it. I’d rather get Principia and not 95 thesis.

He’s handicapping what he could (should) be saying.

DemocracyMattersALot , to random
@DemocracyMattersALot@mstdn.social avatar

Rudy Giuliani is a putz. LOL.
Happy 80th birthday, Rudy!

#FakeElectors #Arizona #RudyGiuliani #RudyForPrison #GOP

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@DemocracyMattersALot

Shudder.

blair_fix , to random
@blair_fix@mastodon.online avatar

Counterintuitively, efficiency is not a tool for conservation. It's a catalyst for technological sprawl.

Here's my deep dive into the Jevons paradox.

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/05/18/a-tour-of-the-jevons-paradox-how-energy-efficiency-backfires/

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@blair_fix

I think it could be said that efficiency is applied to the wrong thing. It was an implied thesis that efficiency in manufacturing would paper over a model intrinsically driven to volume sales.

But the imperatives of mass product already are driven to cost reduction and it’s the fixed costs that drive volume. Market share also gates maximum profits.

also on an epochal scale, eukaryotic o2 biological pathways is example of the paradox.🧵

@economics @economics-that-works

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@blair_fix @economics @economics-that-works

The o2 metabolic pathway generates ~10x anoxic metabolism. This created new chemical toolkits and opened entirely new biological pathways for eukaryotes; an entirely new level of signaling. Useful for coordinating the symbionts comprising eukaryotes and eventually multicellular life.

GhostOnTheHalfShell ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@blair_fix @economics @economics-that-works

Also, "efficiency" :ablobgrin:

https://youtu.be/gsfIHiBB6xE

GhostOnTheHalfShell , to economics-that-works group
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

#SteveKeen #SteveKeenAndFriends

Live stream Sat @ 9 am, PST.

Great guest queued for this weekend!

https://www.youtube.com/live/jrquIAehcn0

GhostOnTheHalfShell OP ,
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

@economics-that-works

One aspect of the current state of affairs in a modern economy are the number of corporations that are financial institutions now. GE, GM, Ivy league, the airlines, etc.

And loyalty points offered by banks and these entities are mini monetary systems.

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