Found this through Adam Tooze: @clemfon.bsky.social on Bluesky.
He’s asking for feedback on a categorization of Sci Fi presentations of money.
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I an not on BlueSky, and don’t plan to be, so can’t reply to him directly. One thing that is definitely missing is modern monetary theory. It is mentioned explicitly in Doctorow’s The Lost Cause, and even where it’s not mentioned it is implicit in “Large public works” scenarios, like in the Aquis in Bruce Sterling’s The Caryatids and in Great Brazil in Paul McAuley’s Quiet War.
I have a hunch that MMT lurks behind advanced planet colonization work. Take KSR’s Mars Trilogy: in the early years, anything the colonists produce use mostly inputs brought over from Earth in one single ship – that means someone back at Mission Control drew something like a Leontief matrix for the early Martian economy. As more people join or are born, and the economy becomes too complex for central planning alone, you get this thing called “eco-economics”, which I imagine like a Leontief matrix with some give in it. The give is provided by markets, but the markets are created by the Martian city-states, which will sell you essential goods services (like oxygen!) in return for whatever they deem to be important to produce. This is essentially the same as “spend money into existence, tax money out of existence”. I think this eco-economics is the ancestor of the carbon currency in The Ministry for the Future. If I were Adam, I would not classify that currency as “crypto fantasy”, but as MMT applied to decarbonization instead of, say, building dams.
Another way that the MMT playbook is relevant to space colonization is that you really need to watch out for inflation. Early stage colony economies must have very thin markets, which are easy to overheat.
@alberto, hi there. I’m not on nor will be on BS myself, but I do subscribe to Tooze. I agree MMT is really interesting . . . have a model in my mind to demonstrate when it’s inflationary and when it’s deflationary. One also needs the political adaptability to strategically tax when needed to pull in the kite string.
The Leontief model is interesting, looking forward to a write-up of your Istanbul talk. It would need to be a very dynamic matrix to allow for evolving production methods and portfolios.
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