konki

Increasing the government "debt" isn't bad in itself though.

How is that? In my view, MMT follows logically from the simple accounting idintity that debits and credits must balance, and the oberservation that the government is the monopoly issuer of its own currency. I'd be glad to hear your perspective though.

Totally agree. The intial tax liability declared in a currency has the purpose of creating demand for the currency so that people, either directly or indirectly, want to work for the government to get the money they are issuing. This effect is probably most import when the currency is first created, but at the same time also the most important function of tax: It is what goves the money its value.

Totally agree. I am definately an MMTer myself. The mailman example is very good, by the way.

True, but somene has to, and they will create a demand for the currency. If I hear that Joe the baker needs money to pay taxes, and I want to buy bread from him, I know he will accept the government currency as payment for his bread. This in turn makes me demand money to be able to buy the bread.

That is true, but Bitcoin, like all other crypto"currencies", is a Ponzi scheme. Its value is driven purely by speculation, and the hope that it can be passed on to a "greater fool" for profit. This is true for a lot of financial assets, by the way.

The government "debt" is not a problem whatsoever. It cannot be a problem. The so called debt is simply the difference between the amount of money created and the amount taxed. If there was no "debt" there couldn't be any saving in an economy. If the government wanted to, it could simply "print" the money to pay off all its debt tomorrow. It souldn't necessarily be a smart thing to do, but there wouldn't be any financial constraints stopping them from doing it.

I agree, but that leads to an infinite regress of your parents observering their parents, etc. My argument is really about the start of this chain.

• that people always act in their own best interest (they fucking don't)

Totally agree

• that people can actually choose not to buy the product

This is actually pretty well deacrived by what's called the price elasticity of demand in standard neoclassical models. For things like housing one might say that the demand is very inellastic: A change in price does not affect the quatity demanded.

The reason that you and everyone else believe in it is primarily because you need it to pay taxes, so the belief is not arbitrary.