Document:I’m off to a two day MMT workshop in Sheffield
| In defining modern monetary theory we are missing a very important part from the balance sheet. The deep resources of Gaia. We are looting Gaia’s capital faster than she can replace it. In economic and political terms, Degrowth is taboo. |
Article by Gordon Liddle dated 19 September 2025Subjects: MMT, Climate Change, Gaia, Degrowth
Source: Facebook (Link)
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I’m off to a two day MMT workshop in Sheffield
The Your Party car crash was so predictable I’m not even angry, but I do need a distraction from petty Party politics and childish minds, and so this weekend I’m off to a two day MMT workshop in Sheffield to hone up my understanding of government spending, tax, and money supply in general, and maybe to meet some like minded individuals who are also exploring the basics of economics and for some (hopefully) the links to consequences outside of MMT, but very much bound to the outcomes of Climate Change and Ecological Collapse. How say you? What does MMT or economics in general have to do with these subjects? Quite a lot.
Let's go back to a little untidy boy with bad hair sitting at his school desk during a maths lesson and chewing his pencil as the teacher scribbled fractions and equations on the blackboard. The pencil smells like something you always knew, stimulating a pleasant recognition, something almost part of you. And so it should, because that pencil came from a once living friend to whom you share part of your DNA. The pencil releases resins of cedar wood, the pencil I chewed was from Western Red Cedar, a spectacular tree with huge environmental benefits and lineage, now known as lumber, timber, a crop to be harvested, but rarely described as a living being, capable of communication and senses, part of a familly, vital to an ecosystem, creator of weather, food for hundreds of other species, home to many more.
"A fool does not see the same tree as a wise man" (William Blake)
During his time of early learning, the boy, lucky enough to have at least a partial education, and to whom the luxury of access to books was available, via public libraries and schools, avoiding being sent down a mine at fourteen as had his grandfather, thanks to those who fought for these rights, instead of bickering over identity politics, whilst parading their own egos, that same boy would read the ancient Mesopotamian story of Gilgamesh, and the story of the cedar forest, the great forest protector Humbaba, to whom the Gods tasked with protecting the forest from the ingress and devastation that humans would inevitably cause to it. Gilgamesh would defy the Gods, and with the encouragement of his great friend Enkidu, himself previously a ‘wild’ forest entity, fought and killed Humbaba and in doing so destroyed the forest guard. The Gods were furious and cursed Enkidu to die as a punishment to Gilgamesh for the crime he committed. Acts have consequences, and they still do.
Later in his education, the boy would do economics at A level, and taught rigid systems and mainstream economics that would later underline and excuse the rise of neoliberal Austrian/Chicago School acceptance and governmental practise via the rise of Thatcherism here and the instilling of the teaching of Hayek’s bastards across Western States and educational institutions, propelling the ‘Taxpayers Money’ propaganda, and stymying successive governments from spending on their citizens, feeding the banks and corporations trillions instead. The brief post war period of governments spending to enrich and improve the lives of their citizens and providing health care and social security safety nets was nearing its end.
Now we have successive governments from the Uni-Party political establishment locked inside their own fiscal cages that deliberately channel more and more to the banks and the wealthy whist immiserating the lives of the rest, distracting the theft with divisive politics, wedge issues, price gouging caused inflation driving poverty, low wage growth and racial hate. They would do this unposed as the ‘left’ was fragmented, distracted and infiltrated. They allowed the right to own and orchestrate the media and unposed propaganda, whilst wedded to ideological positions alien to the populace, manoeuvring for Party power and positions whilst suppressing the views of their memberships, who they were always afraid would be much more radical than them, that they might get out of hand.
Democracy is dangerous, real democracy more so. In their desperation for power and financial gain, they traded belief for trinkets, allowing the march of an unrestrained Capitalist full frontal attack on Gaia, the like of which we have never seen before. Since the early inception of agriculture, we have seen nature as something to be tamed and conquered, but since the Industrial Revolution we have seen that war go nuclear. Climate Change and Ecolological Evolution is not new, the climate has always changed, slowly relative to time, via volcanic eruptions, tectonic plate movements or asteroid strikes, and the slow cooling of our sun over billions of years. Change is so slow on a planetary scale, like watching the clock hands go round, imperceptible but relentless, but we are now having an effect in short time, in real time, and with fast looming consequences.
Now just to slip back to MMT for a moment. My understanding of money and debt goes far further back than Modern monetary theory.[1] Anyone who has read David Graeber’s book on debt will understand this better. Money is a human construct. It does not exist in nature. It is a constructed myth, a chimera. It can be shells, seeds or gold pennies, the whisper of a promise, a paper oath; it makes little difference providing the foundation is agreed and accepted by the protagonists, us, humans. It is a mechanism and a curse. It isn’t real in any natural sense.
Thus economics is far removed from science. The ‘economy’ is very real to us, but our understanding of it is child like. We do not connect it to the natural world, and we have allowed the very worst humans to define it. Karl Marx wrote about the ecological destruction that was possible in the Grundrisse. In defining modern monetary theory we are missing a very important part from the balance sheet. The deep resources of Gaia. There is a saying via many practising MMT that "anything the government can do, it can afford!" Money is not the barrier to government spending, the government is restricted mainly by resources. But those resources have a cost much greater than mere money.
We are looting Gaia’s capital faster than she can replace it. We’ve been hiding the costs off the balance sheet but the invoice is still due, and we can’t pay it. We have lit the fuse on exponential growth in a finite system, and the only end result can be Collapse. But in a manner which is inexplicable to reason, the people screaming "stop! There’s a fire and we need to put it out!," are treated as weirdos or terrorists. The larger the crowd, the bigger the consensus that everything is fine and dandy. Until it isn’t. This is what exponential does, everything is fine and then it suddenly isn’t. It never was.
A billion years building up a bank vault full of treasure and beauty, and we burnt it in a mad frenzy of consumerism and bling. The sad thing is we are now fully conscious of the danger but carry on regardless, building the pyre higher and higher. Those in control of the ‘money’ or wealth gained from those resources, are actively engaged with distracting from the reality of the situation we are constructing, the possibility of civilisational collapse, with harrowing consequences for humanity and all the other species we share this beautiful planet with.
Our civilisation is build on energy and the exploitations of Gaia’s bountiful resources. Our use of energy is exponential, and about to be more so with the injection of A.I. and its ravenous desire for even more energy and water cooling. We are aware of this but carry on regardless.
So let’s go back to "anything the government can do, it can afford!" We need to understand that money is not a problem or a restricted source. Resource usage and living on a finite planet is. And this is where the debate needs to be centred. Not on what government spends or what ridiculous human induced myth we spread to explain it, real world resources are the wealth we need to protect, water, air, ecosystems and biological niches, species sustainability and protection, re-wilding and re-growth. In economic and political terms, Degrowth is taboo. ‘GDP and Growth’ are the shibboleths to topple. I doubt this will make much of an impact during the workshops this weekend but let’s give it a go. Maybe I'll chew my pencil again to remind me of Humbaba. At least it’s a break from the Peoples Front of Judea.
