And the SOLUTION to our current sociopolitical woes would be MORE CAPITALISM, AND GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY. We need free-market competition in government spending, and every dollar proposed/spent should be openly documented for public consumption.
As it stands the obfuscated spending of OUR tax dollars allows the government to circumvent the protective nature of capitalistic free markets. Instead, those in control of the government, spend the money on whatever entities they are they are in financial bed with.
We need all bids to be open and competitive. Without that, the Pfizers and Lockheed Martins of the world will continue to be propped up, in perpetuity, by the corrupt socialistic government-control of these so-called "private" industry.
No market is 'free'. All markets are based on power relationships. I don't think you can point to any historical example anywhere of a 'free' market. To believe in free market Capitalism (or to somehow get there from our urrent system) is literally MORE utopian than to believe in Communism. We know for an absolute fact that human beings survived for thousands (if not millions) of years in what can only be called primitive communism. There was no money, individual land ownership, or intellectual property in primitive societies. Yet they survived and even prospered for thousands of years, and innovated all kinds of huge technology we take for granted without having a profit motive. Our brain is so addled today that we cannot conceive of openly sharing food and resources with people other than our nuclear family, yet that is how we survived for a long time. Communal hunting, share the meat. Communal work at harvest or gathering, store the food together. That is the crime of Capitalism - it divides us into striving individuals predating on each other, not as a collaborative group working towards common survival. The philosophy you are espousing also sounds a lot like Neoliberalism, and we all know how that turns out.
Please regale us with the "kinds of huge technology we take for granted without having a profit motive" you are referring to coming from these utopian "primitive communist" societies.
Also metallurgy, animal domestication, wine/beermaking, cheese, even writing systems were developed pre-capitalism. Massive building projects were also done pre-capitalism (pyramids, Native American mound systems, Nazca lines, irrigation projects, Stonehenge).
It always amuses me to imagine a primitive person who invents say, a new better bow and arrow, trying to patent it or force other primitive people in his tribe to pay him tribute in meat or hides for the invention. "Hey guys I invented this bow and arrow, I get 10% of all game we kill with this for ME and my family for a few generations." Or "hey guys, I invented the idea of how to milk these awesome cows we have domesticated. I get 30% of all milk anybody milks from cows, or an equal trade of something else."
It always amazed me that someone would think some primitive person would invent a better arrow and then someone else would want it and neither barter for it or simply take it by force.
Specialization of labor is what spurred the great technological movements of humanity, not the random tinkerings of serfs (or more laughably, utopian-era communists) who then willing gave of themselves their abilities to all who simply asked.
There has always been human nature. The plea that a type of government can curtail that is laughable.
"Human nature" is generally used as an apology for violence and greed, assuming they are inescapable features of human beings.
It is a lazy term that does not bear inspection. If violence is inherent in our 'nature', why is it that soldiers, when exposed to violent trauma, come back broken husks of human beings, committing suicide at higher rates? This is not just a feature of modern warfare, the human casualties of war have long piled up when the troops come home - Civil war, 1st World War, 2nd World War, Korean war, Vietnam, GWOT - vets have always had high post-war psychological casualties. It has even been written about since ancient times. But why, if violence is 'in our nature', are our soldiers so ill equipped to deal with the consequences of violence? If violence and killing is human nature, wouldn't we be genetically equipped to deal with violent traumatic events?
The truth is that human nature is varied. Most people are empaths, who are strongly disposed against killing. Any kind of communally/tribally evolved animal obviously has a strong evolutionary incentive to have most of the members of the tribe be empaths. But, since prehistory, it is obvious that a large amount of killing had to be done, mostly the hunting and killing of animals. So any tribe would benefit by having a fraction of its members well disposed towards killing without suffering from emotional distress. Unfortunately these killers also turn on targets of opportunity in neighboring human tribes. I submit to you that this is the evolutionary utility of the small percent of psychopaths and sociopaths.
This is one of the main problems of society. We no longer really need killers - yet the people who lack empathy are often those that climb their way up into leadership positions and make decisions about launching wars. In addition to managing the distribution of resources for the benefit of the greatest good, society also needs to manage its sociopaths and make sure their traits are employed towards productive ends, rather than the practice of killing.
I could write about greed being 'human nature' too, but I think we all know enough people in our lives that are quite happy with just getting by. I personally know several people who are quite talented, but instead of going for a job that provides the maximum paycheck, have elected to do something that gives them fulfillment.
How were any of these produced without a profit motive, maybe except fire? In fact the acquisition of these things and the use of these things all became object of wars, hardly a utopian ideal.
There has always been human nature. The plea that a type of government can curtail that is laughable.
The acquisition of anything can be used for violence. If I make a corncob doll for my child, another child can pick it up and hit another child with it.
I didn't make it with a profit motive, nor for the purpose of creating a weapon.
One oversight in this is that the huge technology discoveries required thousands of years for each step, slow crawling progress is what you are advocating. All the isms lead to stagnation. Liberty results in rapid progress but has inherently greater risk.
Recently published was evidence to show that the inegalitarian culture traces its origins to the onset of the agrarian age; other research shows that many prior cultures were not competitive, others were atheistic.
The profit motive is a focus on the advantage of the individual. An individual human, in the wild, without the massive infrastructural support afforded by our society, will die 99% of the time. That is the reality of the Hobbsian view of humanity: without society, human life is indeed "solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short". He believed, pessimistically, that humans need a sovereign or governor. We know much better, now as then, that it is our capacity for empathy that makes us human; those without it - sociopaths and psychopaths - are universally despised for the lack they show. Empathy drives cooperation.
Don't conflate capitalism with trade. Similarly, corporate capitalism with trade. Nor "ma-and-pa corner shop" with capitalism. That would also be "sole traders". Capitalism is investing capital (ie, liquid assets) into companies, which returns profit in the form of dividends or capital gains in stock and share values. Starting your own business is not capitalism; investing in someone else's company is.
I would say Capitalism is more than just investing in a company. Ownership is implied in Capitalism. To be a real capitalist, you have to own something (land, a business that produces something). Profits that you extract via rent or sale of the commodity you produce are then used to accumulate more profit-creating property (expand the business, buy more rent-taking land). That is capitalism - accumulation of more power to get control of more income producing stuff via re-investing profits you have extracted from unequal exchanges.
Just investing in stocks and getting dividends isn't capitalism. That is potentially letting somebody else use your excess money to let THEM expand in a Capitalist way. That you may be getting a small cut of their expansion doesn't make you a capitalist (unless you are a BIG investor who actually has enough shares to have an ownership stake and control of a company's decision making and ability to loot the company's profits). Stock investing may in some cases be you just getting fleeced by participating in a ponzi scheme. Unless you are using the profits you have extracted from the stock market to accumulate more income producing property (rather than just using it to live as retirement money), you aren't really a capitalist by just having a 401k (in my opinion).
A) I get really annoyed when someone repeats the academic myth that "human nature" encompasses all of the worst characteristics only, and conveniently ignores the better aspects of "human nature" like altruism, empathy, and compassion. Interestingly, for years biologists couldn't find any examples of these behaviors in nature, mostly because they didn't believe they existed. If you're not looking for something, you won't find it. Starting in the 1980s, scientists started studying altruism in nature, and - guess what! - they found it.
B) Read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen for an analysis of exactly how those primitive societies could have worked, and how the change to a more brutal, competitive model developed.
It seems to me that you have steeped in the competitive model for so long that it seems to be the only way life can be. Too bad!
Human nature absolutely does not only encompass all of the worst characteristics. But equally as annoying are the people that think there is a group or sect of humans whose nature only encompasses the good. When you are dealing with a group and it grows past, I dunno 30+ people?, you are gonna into some impure actors, that's simply a statistical reality. I'm not saying these people are evil, but that they are simply subject to the ups and downs of their human nature.
Given that, a particular government framework (which is an enforceable restraint, by definition), you will have to deal with human nature, dissent, conflict, and the seven deadly sins.
The question that one is left with is, what is the most efficient way to manage all that? In practice, Communism has failed, perhaps Capitalism, now too, has failed. Primitive or other utopia has clearly failed.
Veblen is easily skewered as I showed you in another reference you made to him.
You're putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. I don't believe that there is a group of people who are only good.
Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning, said that the line between good and bad didn't exist between one group of people and another, but down the middle of each person's heart, and that I DO believe.
THAT'S what I was trying to say: that "human nature" is not just the worst, but also the better.
If I read Hayek and then I read Keynes, what am I to believe? Who can I quote with authority? Garbage in, garbage out is what a computer does. You can find a book that will argue for just about any economic, social, political stance imaginable, doesn't make them or you valid. 'Appeal to authority' and all that, right? That being said, reading is a great thing, but like all things it is simply a tool. You still have to be equipped to use the tool. For instance, I think your understanding of Veblen is off in that you do not see his attempt at balancing of the individual and the collective, nor his waffling between theology and post-modernism, but that is my opinion.
I do not agree that all men have half good and half evil (surely that is a gross understatement of his thesis), I believe that there are plenty of people that are effectively evil, socio/psychopaths for instance, and that there are plenty of people that desire and practice as much discipline and sacrifice for their selves, their families, and their communities as they can.
Good and evil do exist and the fact that someone is a sociopath and has a different definition of that does not make it as or more valid than someone's that is working to enhance themselves, their family, and their community.
The important point is that people are compassionate and they will be, they do not need to be told to. Socialism is a system that does not trust people to be compassionate. However, if you remove the profit incentive from society, you will remove a substantial amount of the incentive to innovate and advance the world. It is no coincidence that the period of massive charitable giving in the US was during the period of rampant capitalism.
Communism can last a long time and there may be examples eventually that show that it is sustainable but what is certain is that it will underperform capitalism in nearly every respect.
"There is no evidence that primitive societies were even egalitarian in groups, to say nothing of completely sharing resources. "
There's actually quite a bit of evidence. When Europeans came into conflict with native peoples across the globe, there are examples all over the place of living cultures, and evidence in the archeological/anthropological record. I'd recommend a couple of David Graeber's books on it: "Debt: the First 5,000 Years" and "The Dawn of Everything". Absolutely fascinating. There are more scholarly books out there too I'm sure.
""Human beings" have not been a species for even half a million years,"
Granted 'anatomically modern' humans have been around for maybe 400,000 years.
But something approximating humans has been around for at least a million years. Recent evidence shows camp fire use a million years ago, and we've been using stone tools for over 2 million years.
TAXES DON'T FUND SPENDING AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL. Stop spouting the lie that it is "our tax dollars."
The US has had a fiat currency since Richard Nixon took us off the last of the gold standard in 1971.
That means that Congress creates the currency every time they pass an appropriations bill. They don't need your taxes. (There are several reasons for taxes, but needing them to pay for government spending isn't one of them.) This also means that you can't stop them from spending money any way they like by withholding your taxes.
Will you please learn - really learn - Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to protect yourself from the lies that our politicians tell you, using your lack of knowledge against you? And don't think that because you heard something that "someone said" about MMT means that you understand MMT.
You can watch The Rogue Scholar, Macro'n'Cheese, or MMT Mondays on YouTube to learn about it. Thanks!
No one spends it. When your taxes go back to the Treasury Department, they are deleted (erased or subtracted) from the system. This is one of the reasons for taxes: it offsets the "printing" of more and more money.
Stephanie Kelton has several excellent videos on YouTube about this. Look them up. She has graphics showing how this works.
The solution you are looking for has nothing to do with economic models and everything to do with liberty. Eliminate government and most problems go with it.
I disagree. All of the theorists about society: Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and John Locke (read his Two Treatises on Government) said that governments are formed (in fact, societies are formed) because individuals can get their needs met better from a group than they can each by himself. Governments exist to have the power, that is, they are agreed to by the people, to curb the might of the powerful and protect the rights of the weak.
Of course, in your lifetime, you have only seen governments which have usurped their power and are oppressing their people, so you believe that that's the only form they can take.
Please read the entire Declaration of Independence. See what Jefferson had to say about governments that usurp their power.
Please drop the condescending attitude, I have read more of the founding documents than most. Are you suggesting that Chinese history where the government was nothing but a 1000 year long power struggle between war lords was an anomaly ? How about Rome where every transition was a coup, patricide or outright military regime change was the exception ? Perhaps it was the peaceful indigenous peoples of the Americas you had in mind that had non stop raging tribal warfare continent wide for generations.
Since you fantasize that government is benevolent please provide specific examples of such governments because I have found none.
Have you read Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Montaigne, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Machiavelli?
I didn't say that governments were benevolent. I said that the PURPOSE people have for creating a government is that it ought to be benevolent.
If you have read the "founding documents," you must have read the Declaration of Independence. I'm guessing that it must have been some time ago. I asked you to RE-READ it.
And the SOLUTION to our current sociopolitical woes would be MORE CAPITALISM, AND GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY. We need free-market competition in government spending, and every dollar proposed/spent should be openly documented for public consumption.
As it stands the obfuscated spending of OUR tax dollars allows the government to circumvent the protective nature of capitalistic free markets. Instead, those in control of the government, spend the money on whatever entities they are they are in financial bed with.
We need all bids to be open and competitive. Without that, the Pfizers and Lockheed Martins of the world will continue to be propped up, in perpetuity, by the corrupt socialistic government-control of these so-called "private" industry.
No market is 'free'. All markets are based on power relationships. I don't think you can point to any historical example anywhere of a 'free' market. To believe in free market Capitalism (or to somehow get there from our urrent system) is literally MORE utopian than to believe in Communism. We know for an absolute fact that human beings survived for thousands (if not millions) of years in what can only be called primitive communism. There was no money, individual land ownership, or intellectual property in primitive societies. Yet they survived and even prospered for thousands of years, and innovated all kinds of huge technology we take for granted without having a profit motive. Our brain is so addled today that we cannot conceive of openly sharing food and resources with people other than our nuclear family, yet that is how we survived for a long time. Communal hunting, share the meat. Communal work at harvest or gathering, store the food together. That is the crime of Capitalism - it divides us into striving individuals predating on each other, not as a collaborative group working towards common survival. The philosophy you are espousing also sounds a lot like Neoliberalism, and we all know how that turns out.
The "free market" was the brainchild of Adam Smith, and arose merely in his imagination, to describe a perfect model of his economic system.
This is foolish drivel, free markets have existed as long as humanity.
Please regale us with the "kinds of huge technology we take for granted without having a profit motive" you are referring to coming from these utopian "primitive communist" societies.
Fire. The wheel. fishing. boats. Agriculture. painting. tanning. Tool use. Need I go on?
Also metallurgy, animal domestication, wine/beermaking, cheese, even writing systems were developed pre-capitalism. Massive building projects were also done pre-capitalism (pyramids, Native American mound systems, Nazca lines, irrigation projects, Stonehenge).
It always amuses me to imagine a primitive person who invents say, a new better bow and arrow, trying to patent it or force other primitive people in his tribe to pay him tribute in meat or hides for the invention. "Hey guys I invented this bow and arrow, I get 10% of all game we kill with this for ME and my family for a few generations." Or "hey guys, I invented the idea of how to milk these awesome cows we have domesticated. I get 30% of all milk anybody milks from cows, or an equal trade of something else."
It always amazed me that someone would think some primitive person would invent a better arrow and then someone else would want it and neither barter for it or simply take it by force.
Specialization of labor is what spurred the great technological movements of humanity, not the random tinkerings of serfs (or more laughably, utopian-era communists) who then willing gave of themselves their abilities to all who simply asked.
There has always been human nature. The plea that a type of government can curtail that is laughable.
"Human nature" is generally used as an apology for violence and greed, assuming they are inescapable features of human beings.
It is a lazy term that does not bear inspection. If violence is inherent in our 'nature', why is it that soldiers, when exposed to violent trauma, come back broken husks of human beings, committing suicide at higher rates? This is not just a feature of modern warfare, the human casualties of war have long piled up when the troops come home - Civil war, 1st World War, 2nd World War, Korean war, Vietnam, GWOT - vets have always had high post-war psychological casualties. It has even been written about since ancient times. But why, if violence is 'in our nature', are our soldiers so ill equipped to deal with the consequences of violence? If violence and killing is human nature, wouldn't we be genetically equipped to deal with violent traumatic events?
The truth is that human nature is varied. Most people are empaths, who are strongly disposed against killing. Any kind of communally/tribally evolved animal obviously has a strong evolutionary incentive to have most of the members of the tribe be empaths. But, since prehistory, it is obvious that a large amount of killing had to be done, mostly the hunting and killing of animals. So any tribe would benefit by having a fraction of its members well disposed towards killing without suffering from emotional distress. Unfortunately these killers also turn on targets of opportunity in neighboring human tribes. I submit to you that this is the evolutionary utility of the small percent of psychopaths and sociopaths.
This is one of the main problems of society. We no longer really need killers - yet the people who lack empathy are often those that climb their way up into leadership positions and make decisions about launching wars. In addition to managing the distribution of resources for the benefit of the greatest good, society also needs to manage its sociopaths and make sure their traits are employed towards productive ends, rather than the practice of killing.
I could write about greed being 'human nature' too, but I think we all know enough people in our lives that are quite happy with just getting by. I personally know several people who are quite talented, but instead of going for a job that provides the maximum paycheck, have elected to do something that gives them fulfillment.
Brilliant
How were any of these produced without a profit motive, maybe except fire? In fact the acquisition of these things and the use of these things all became object of wars, hardly a utopian ideal.
There has always been human nature. The plea that a type of government can curtail that is laughable.
The acquisition of anything can be used for violence. If I make a corncob doll for my child, another child can pick it up and hit another child with it.
I didn't make it with a profit motive, nor for the purpose of creating a weapon.
A corncob doll is not huge technology we (may) take for granted.
But your take on human nature in a utopian society is correct
GREAT examples!
Stonehenge
The Library of Alexandria
One oversight in this is that the huge technology discoveries required thousands of years for each step, slow crawling progress is what you are advocating. All the isms lead to stagnation. Liberty results in rapid progress but has inherently greater risk.
Recently published was evidence to show that the inegalitarian culture traces its origins to the onset of the agrarian age; other research shows that many prior cultures were not competitive, others were atheistic.
The profit motive is a focus on the advantage of the individual. An individual human, in the wild, without the massive infrastructural support afforded by our society, will die 99% of the time. That is the reality of the Hobbsian view of humanity: without society, human life is indeed "solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short". He believed, pessimistically, that humans need a sovereign or governor. We know much better, now as then, that it is our capacity for empathy that makes us human; those without it - sociopaths and psychopaths - are universally despised for the lack they show. Empathy drives cooperation.
Don't conflate capitalism with trade. Similarly, corporate capitalism with trade. Nor "ma-and-pa corner shop" with capitalism. That would also be "sole traders". Capitalism is investing capital (ie, liquid assets) into companies, which returns profit in the form of dividends or capital gains in stock and share values. Starting your own business is not capitalism; investing in someone else's company is.
If you haven't already, you might like to read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen.
I would say Capitalism is more than just investing in a company. Ownership is implied in Capitalism. To be a real capitalist, you have to own something (land, a business that produces something). Profits that you extract via rent or sale of the commodity you produce are then used to accumulate more profit-creating property (expand the business, buy more rent-taking land). That is capitalism - accumulation of more power to get control of more income producing stuff via re-investing profits you have extracted from unequal exchanges.
Just investing in stocks and getting dividends isn't capitalism. That is potentially letting somebody else use your excess money to let THEM expand in a Capitalist way. That you may be getting a small cut of their expansion doesn't make you a capitalist (unless you are a BIG investor who actually has enough shares to have an ownership stake and control of a company's decision making and ability to loot the company's profits). Stock investing may in some cases be you just getting fleeced by participating in a ponzi scheme. Unless you are using the profits you have extracted from the stock market to accumulate more income producing property (rather than just using it to live as retirement money), you aren't really a capitalist by just having a 401k (in my opinion).
A) I get really annoyed when someone repeats the academic myth that "human nature" encompasses all of the worst characteristics only, and conveniently ignores the better aspects of "human nature" like altruism, empathy, and compassion. Interestingly, for years biologists couldn't find any examples of these behaviors in nature, mostly because they didn't believe they existed. If you're not looking for something, you won't find it. Starting in the 1980s, scientists started studying altruism in nature, and - guess what! - they found it.
B) Read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen for an analysis of exactly how those primitive societies could have worked, and how the change to a more brutal, competitive model developed.
It seems to me that you have steeped in the competitive model for so long that it seems to be the only way life can be. Too bad!
Human nature absolutely does not only encompass all of the worst characteristics. But equally as annoying are the people that think there is a group or sect of humans whose nature only encompasses the good. When you are dealing with a group and it grows past, I dunno 30+ people?, you are gonna into some impure actors, that's simply a statistical reality. I'm not saying these people are evil, but that they are simply subject to the ups and downs of their human nature.
Given that, a particular government framework (which is an enforceable restraint, by definition), you will have to deal with human nature, dissent, conflict, and the seven deadly sins.
The question that one is left with is, what is the most efficient way to manage all that? In practice, Communism has failed, perhaps Capitalism, now too, has failed. Primitive or other utopia has clearly failed.
Veblen is easily skewered as I showed you in another reference you made to him.
You're putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. I don't believe that there is a group of people who are only good.
Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning, said that the line between good and bad didn't exist between one group of people and another, but down the middle of each person's heart, and that I DO believe.
THAT'S what I was trying to say: that "human nature" is not just the worst, but also the better.
Maybe you should read as many books as I have.
If I read Hayek and then I read Keynes, what am I to believe? Who can I quote with authority? Garbage in, garbage out is what a computer does. You can find a book that will argue for just about any economic, social, political stance imaginable, doesn't make them or you valid. 'Appeal to authority' and all that, right? That being said, reading is a great thing, but like all things it is simply a tool. You still have to be equipped to use the tool. For instance, I think your understanding of Veblen is off in that you do not see his attempt at balancing of the individual and the collective, nor his waffling between theology and post-modernism, but that is my opinion.
I do not agree that all men have half good and half evil (surely that is a gross understatement of his thesis), I believe that there are plenty of people that are effectively evil, socio/psychopaths for instance, and that there are plenty of people that desire and practice as much discipline and sacrifice for their selves, their families, and their communities as they can.
Good and evil do exist and the fact that someone is a sociopath and has a different definition of that does not make it as or more valid than someone's that is working to enhance themselves, their family, and their community.
The important point is that people are compassionate and they will be, they do not need to be told to. Socialism is a system that does not trust people to be compassionate. However, if you remove the profit incentive from society, you will remove a substantial amount of the incentive to innovate and advance the world. It is no coincidence that the period of massive charitable giving in the US was during the period of rampant capitalism.
Communism can last a long time and there may be examples eventually that show that it is sustainable but what is certain is that it will underperform capitalism in nearly every respect.
"There is no evidence that primitive societies were even egalitarian in groups, to say nothing of completely sharing resources. "
There's actually quite a bit of evidence. When Europeans came into conflict with native peoples across the globe, there are examples all over the place of living cultures, and evidence in the archeological/anthropological record. I'd recommend a couple of David Graeber's books on it: "Debt: the First 5,000 Years" and "The Dawn of Everything". Absolutely fascinating. There are more scholarly books out there too I'm sure.
""Human beings" have not been a species for even half a million years,"
Granted 'anatomically modern' humans have been around for maybe 400,000 years.
But something approximating humans has been around for at least a million years. Recent evidence shows camp fire use a million years ago, and we've been using stone tools for over 2 million years.
TAXES DON'T FUND SPENDING AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL. Stop spouting the lie that it is "our tax dollars."
The US has had a fiat currency since Richard Nixon took us off the last of the gold standard in 1971.
That means that Congress creates the currency every time they pass an appropriations bill. They don't need your taxes. (There are several reasons for taxes, but needing them to pay for government spending isn't one of them.) This also means that you can't stop them from spending money any way they like by withholding your taxes.
Will you please learn - really learn - Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to protect yourself from the lies that our politicians tell you, using your lack of knowledge against you? And don't think that because you heard something that "someone said" about MMT means that you understand MMT.
You can watch The Rogue Scholar, Macro'n'Cheese, or MMT Mondays on YouTube to learn about it. Thanks!
So where does the money I send to the IRS go? Who spends it?
No one spends it. When your taxes go back to the Treasury Department, they are deleted (erased or subtracted) from the system. This is one of the reasons for taxes: it offsets the "printing" of more and more money.
Stephanie Kelton has several excellent videos on YouTube about this. Look them up. She has graphics showing how this works.
So if I don't send my money, they have to print more? That means that the money i send does get spent.
The solution you are looking for has nothing to do with economic models and everything to do with liberty. Eliminate government and most problems go with it.
I disagree. All of the theorists about society: Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and John Locke (read his Two Treatises on Government) said that governments are formed (in fact, societies are formed) because individuals can get their needs met better from a group than they can each by himself. Governments exist to have the power, that is, they are agreed to by the people, to curb the might of the powerful and protect the rights of the weak.
Of course, in your lifetime, you have only seen governments which have usurped their power and are oppressing their people, so you believe that that's the only form they can take.
Please read the entire Declaration of Independence. See what Jefferson had to say about governments that usurp their power.
Please drop the condescending attitude, I have read more of the founding documents than most. Are you suggesting that Chinese history where the government was nothing but a 1000 year long power struggle between war lords was an anomaly ? How about Rome where every transition was a coup, patricide or outright military regime change was the exception ? Perhaps it was the peaceful indigenous peoples of the Americas you had in mind that had non stop raging tribal warfare continent wide for generations.
Since you fantasize that government is benevolent please provide specific examples of such governments because I have found none.
You read "the founding documents," fine.
Have you read Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Montaigne, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Machiavelli?
I didn't say that governments were benevolent. I said that the PURPOSE people have for creating a government is that it ought to be benevolent.
If you have read the "founding documents," you must have read the Declaration of Independence. I'm guessing that it must have been some time ago. I asked you to RE-READ it.