MMTer Mike Norman distorts "the gold standard", calls the fiat funny-money Euro "the gold standard", describes the 19th century of general peace and prosperity as a period of war over gold.

This has to be seen to be believed.  If this is all the MMTers have, I'm fine with it.  More to come on this amazing fraud and distortion.

UPDATE:  Major Freedom writes:

If the “gold standard”, which supposedly is a country using a money produced by some entity outside the country, then by MMT logic, every monetary system that is controlled by a group of people “on behalf of” everyone else, are ALSO “gold standards”.

Example. I can’t print my own money and pay taxes with it. I must accept US dollars and pay taxes. 

Therefore, I am on a pseudo-gold standard, because I cannot pay my debts in my own issued currency. The MMT optimal solution then, is for me to be able to pay my debts to the IRS in currency I myself print, so that I can escape from the restricting, choking, suffocating, under-supply of money that constantly puts limits on what I can consume.

The supreme irony of MMT theory is that when their attacks against non-fiat money are taken to their logical conclusion, the result is a world where everyone can print money, which of course means nobody will accept paper money, and a precious metals standard will arise.

That is too funny.

UPDATE 2 –Also from Major Freedom:

It was the opponents who educated MMTers on what they were sloppily trying to say regarding these concepts but couldn’t without butchering the English language.

MMTers analyze "Human Action" without reference to "humans" or "action"

Quite an amazing feat.  These guys are so good at doubletalk and  misdirection that they should work for large corporate law firms.   See Reflections on David Gordon's The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economic.  

And there are some very interesting comments.

Andy Duncan: Although broke, the euro state buys the intellectualoids a giant telescope

Andy Duncan writes on his blog THE GOD THAT FAILED that although the Euro State is broke, it has funded a billion euro telescope to keep the intellectuals happy:

Now you would have thought, that given all of the above - no matter what your political persuasion, and no matter whether you ‘believe’ in the EU or not – that we have reached what the Chinese call an ‘interesting’ point of time. You would have thought, that given all of the above, that everyone concerned with keeping the horror show of the EU going, and its appalling ersatz money, would be straining every sinew and holding back every reserve to keep the train on the rails, and to stop it plunging over the viaduct of its own vast incompetence.

Well, I’m afraid you’re wrong. Because despite the EU (hopefully) being close to the edge of extinction, and dancing so tightly with the concept of out-of-chaos-comes-order, there’s still room for a billion euros to be spent on keeping the intellectuals happy (and in this case, the physics-aligned intellectuals), with a new telescopic toy for them to play with, in the deserts of Chile.
Now, don’t get me wrong.

I like seeing pretty pictures of exploding galaxies along with the best of us, and I’ll be impressed if one of the luckily-chosen overpaid physics intellectuals selected to man this toy manages to take a high-definition snap of an exo-planet, especially if it looks like it’s got some good wind-surfing opportunities.

But really? Now? To spend over a billion euros on a vanity project for physicists, just after the Greek government’s funding crisis, just in the middle of the Spanish government’s funding crisis, and just before the Italian government’s funding crisis?

Is this really a great moment for such things?

Where’s that cash coming from then? Is Spain supplying it? Or Italy? Or France? Or are the Germans being tapped for it again, as they are tapped for so much? No doubt David Cameron, and his Bilderberg control, George Osborne, have contributed some of my forcibly-extracted taxes into the pot, despite the British government being in the hole for trillions of pounds of debt.
But what’s a billion euros between friends, especially when it’s other people’s money?
However, the above castigation belies the importance of the topic. Because it is vital for the state to keep the intellectuals onside, particularly in moments of financial stress. This news about this telescope is actually quite old news. However, it’s being re-hashed now by state organs such as the BBC, to send a message to the intellectuals that no matter how bad things get, the EU is always going to keep trying to send the cheques, so they can keep themselves up in Chianti, and keep paying their Guardian subscriptions.

This is because non-intellectual people, being so busy with the processes of actually being productive and living most of their lives in a voluntary society, take their political ideas from the intellectuals, even really low-level intellectuals, such as the drones that find ungainful employment within government child indoctrination day-prisons.

All the intellectuals must be kept onside, all of the time. This is the lesson of history.

Because if the state loses the intellectuals – and their ideological bodyguard protection – then the state will lose everything. The Soviet Union collapsed when its intellectuals gave up on it. The British empire collapsed when its intellectuals gave up on it. And the Athenian empire collapsed when its intellectuals gave up on it (and switched to the philosophies of Sparta, instead). All empires cease to exist when the cheques to the intellectuals start bouncing, and their previously committed support therefore evaporates.

Yes, they really are that shallow.

Without the intellectuals constantly whispering to the proles that ‘the state is good’, that ‘the state is necessary’, and that ‘the state is ethical’, the truth of the state being nothing more than a 0rotten super-sized mafia parasitising the rest of us becomes too clear and too obvious for even the state’s endless propaganda machine to hide. If the proles withdraw their consent from the state – because the bought-and-paid-for intellectuals withdraw their consent from the state – then the game will be up.

Hence why the EU state is prepared, even in the moment of its greatest fiscal crisis, to keep buying the support of the intellectuals with another huge tranche of paper money printed out of thin air, to purchase them a new toy.

Alex Pareene and Paul Krugman should love Ben Stein

I was watching CBS's Sunday Morning program yesterday, and who do they have on to promote the latest hip economic advice but the loathsome Ben Stein, son of Herb Stein, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. That says it all. THEY ARE KEYNESIANS. In fact, an entire family of Keynesians.

My "Keynes-Dar" is on high alert. Ben informs us that because "our Federal Reserve has UNLIMITED money creation powers", we need to PRINT UP A FEW TENS OF TRILLIONS AND GIVE IT TO EUROPE!

We all know that Ben is a CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN, so unlimited money printing (via Keystrokes for all you MMTers) to save Europe is clearly the "reasonable", hip and "serious" solution to Europe's impending economic collapse resulting from its idiotic and unsustainable welfare state.How money printing is going to magically create $100 trillion worth of adult diaper changing services is never examined.

Then I was reading the loathsome Alex Pareene at Salon.com. He claims that it's really too bad that our daily newspapers are dying because they are no longer around to put the damper of realism on REPUBLICAN EXTREMISM. What “progressives” like Pareene mean by that refers to half-hearted Republican attempts to slow the growth of the increases in government control and expenditure and half-hearted to non-existent concern about the wisdom of unpayable debt and money printing.

Hey, Pareene! You moron! Ben Stein believes in money printing, so ALL REPUBLICANS CAN’T BE EXTREMISTS, CAN THEY?  And it was on CBS where everyone who is hip and cool can learn what attitudes are hip and cool.  So, what's the problem?

The Imperious "Lord Keynes" demonstrates the truth of Rothbardian Natural Rights

Just as “Lord Keynes” is clueless about Austrian Economics, he is totally clueless about Rothbard, libertarianism and the non-aggression principle and he declares his ignorance to the universe in his madcap piece entitled “The Horror of Rothbardian Natural Rights”.

 

Since the problems facing mankind have always been assaultive crimes such as murder, theft, rape, slavery, pillage and genocide (and not a lack of aggregate demand or “structural unemployment” caused by too much freedom from SWAT teams and bureaucrats),  Rothbard’s POLITICAL SYSTEM is based upon providing the bare minimum of rights against those types of crimes.  As Rothbard explains:

The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral or aesthetic theory; it is only a POLITICAL theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals [ONLY] with the proper role of violence in social life.

Political theory deals with what is proper or improper for government to do, and government is distinguished from every other group in society as being the institution of organized violence. Libertarianism holds that the ONLY proper role of VIOLENCE is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free to do as he sees fit, except invade the person or property of another. What a person DOES with his or her life is vital and important, BUT IS SIMPLY IRRELEVANT TO LIBERTARIANISM.

I would like to call this the “anti-Ayn Rand” position.  How to live one’s life is a separate issue from libertarianism.

Moral questions such as how to live a proper moral life would be determined by voluntary associations and voluntary rules of conduct.  By contractual agreement, violators could be punished and/or banished as the case may be.  I agree that abandonment of infants and the sick is reprehensible and its prohibition would clearly be the subject of most voluntary societies.  

LK's dishonest and incompetent hack-jobs suggest that there really is no effective critique of the Rothbardian system.

Further, LK begins his little rant with a quote from the REAL Lord Keynes:

[Hayek] is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam.

But how in the world would Keynes know what was wrong with Hayek?  Keynes meticulously avoided addressing basic Austrian concepts (which he clearly never understood) in "The General Theory" just as LK and all of the other Keynesians now meticulously avoid discussing or comprehending them.

Keynes explains how to trick unsuspecting workers into accepting lower real wages without them catching on to the scam

From “The General Theory” Pages 268-269  Chapter 19:

"(i) Except in a socialised community where wage-policy is settled by decree, there is no means of securing uniform wage reductions for every class of labour. The result can only be brought about by a series of gradual, irregular changes, justifiable on no criterion of social justice or economic expedience, and probably completed only after wasteful and disastrous struggles, where those in the weakest bargaining position will suffer relatively to the rest. A change in the quantity of money, on the other hand, is already within the power of most governments by open-market policy or analogous measures. Having regard to human nature and our institutions, it can only be a foolish person who would prefer a flexible wage policy to a flexible money policy, unless he can point to advantages from the former which are not obtainable from the latter. Moreover, other things being equal, a method which it is comparatively easy to apply should be deemed preferable to a method which is probably so difficult as to be impracticable…….

(ii)…..If important classes are to have their remuneration fixed in terms of money in any case, social justice and social expediency are best served if the remunerations of all factors are somewhat inflexible in terms of money. Having regard to the large groups of incomes which are comparatively inflexible in terms of money, it can only be an unjust person who would prefer a flexible wage policy to a flexible money policy, unless he can point to advantages from the former which are not obtainable from the latter.

(iii) The method of increasing the quantity of money in terms of wage-units by decreasing the wage-unit increases proportionately the burden of debt; whereas the method of producing the same result by increasing the quantity of money whilst leaving the wage-unit unchanged has the opposite effect. Having regard to the excessive burden of many types of debt, it can only be an inexperienced person who would prefer the former.

"Lord Keynes" again demonstrates the invulnerabilty of the Austrian School

The Imperious and Mysterious "Lord Keynes" has spent months and years trying to debunk the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.  He's found a few of the weaknesses in it that have bothered me for years.  However, the essence of the Austrian School and the entirety of economics itself is the concept of human action, human exchange and economic calculation.  Like all anti-Austrians, "Lord Keynes" just doesn't get it.  Personally, I think it is a psychological aversion to the truth.  One can no longer hold the religious beliefs of the Keynesian Hoax if one understands human action, human exchange and economic calculation.  There's a reason why Keynes avoided this essential topic in its entirety in "The General Theory", a total aversion that continues to this day.

So, while understanding nothing, LK announces his syllabus of Debunking Austrian Economics 101.  I'm thinking that this is a wonderful event because a newbie Keynesian who reads this stuff won't understand economic calculation anymore than LK does (not at all) and will not understand or even be aware that it is at the center of Austrian Thought.  LK's pedagogical malpractice is the civilized world's gain.

So, go forth you Keynesians and spout LK's pitiful and uninformed critique of the Austrian School.  We will see you coming from blocks away.

Also, you don't want to miss the MMTers rather spastic response to me pointing out that LK still does not understand economic calculation.

MMTers at their insightful best

MMTers continue to surprise and fascinate.  I think I've induced the best MMTer response of all time today from special genius Septeus7:

You slavertarians are the problem. You are the police state. You are violence and the war of all against all. You are the hellfire club and every form of Bentham's cycle of debauchery. You are all that the because of your love of argurion is the root of all evil.

As I said, these guys are truly fascinating.