Collectivism

 Modern monetary theory disabuses several myths about economics, but it does not go far enough. It corrects the misunderstanding about whether debt or currency came first, and it discourages the anthropomorphization of government as a household. To be fair, the story that royalty was a household might explain conservative fear of government as a royal household. RBF's story of establishments (collectives) created by, and persisting after the demise of, secretive big pirate merchants that usurped housholdish governments is more plausible. Anyway, it is obvious that today (and plausibly historically) collectives, such as ExxonKnew, are in control. The myths that MMT does not contradict include that demand is real, that gdp is different from inflation, and that technology replaced slavery. Without technology, Romans could as well have used their own muscles. After all they had Olympics, so they could have done the work too. I believe collectivism, as distinct from democracy, social or otherwise, is positively correlated with exploitation. Slavery as well as labor are ways to collectivize. Unfortunately, socialists have succumbed to collectivist language, limiting their actions to boost their collective in the process of shaming their collective's figure heads. More realist language would associate boosting the individual by tearing down collectives, such as ExxonKnew, with action such as voting. First climate scientists made the mistake of being dispassionate, then they made the mistake of imitating past movements, such as civil rights and unions. Hopefully, they will finally realize that destroying irresponsible collectives, such as ExxonKnew, is the only way to halt climate change. Half measures, such as regulation and consumer manipulation, that secretly hope for the unthinkable demise of ExxonKnew over time, will take too long and probably will not work, because collectives have innovated over time to protect their survival. One innovation is the concept of a bottom line, the lie that collectives only care about money, or the worse lie that they only care about investors. Investors are high turnover; collectives don't care about them. Another harmful idea that collectives have used to survive is the notion that executives control the collective; in fact, it is the collective will, usually in opposition to the employee will, of the collective that controls the collective. I'm not saying all collectives are bad, but they are certainly getting worse and worse. The only way to make them better is to disband the most irresponsible of them. That will motivate enough employees in other collectives to make the collective more responsible. I'm not saying employee will has no effect on the collective; it's just that the will has to be to change the collective, not to change the employees. Another benefit of eliminating an irresponsible collective is that it frees up resources for potentially responsible startup collectives. A final benefit of eliminating an irresponsible collective is that, unlike will, pollution is collective; the fewer irresponsible collectives there are, the less pollution there will be.