Email to Paul Krugman #2

I just finished my 31st (& possibly last) review/summary of an economics book, in this case David Graeber's "Debt - the First 5000 Years". Wow, was that a slog, took me almost a year, and review/ summary/ precis/ Cliff Notes is 35.8k words (a novella - oops).

https://portraitofthedumbass.blogspot.com/2023/11/debt-first-5000-years.html

The thing I wanted to mention to you was, Graeber felt that, now that we are back in a Credit era, since leaving the gold standard in 1971, that capitalism will be unable to resist creating speculative bubble after bubble after bubble ... And, with capitalism having eaten so much of the world, maybe the next bubble bursting will finally bring the whole world economy down ...

I emailed you before about Stability Economics: the Foundational Economy, UBI, JG/ELR, and your idea for perpetual stimulus programs. I think Graeber's concerns about speculation & bubbles being the downfall of capitalism would lead him to agree that we should do whatever we can to create stability in the economy. But, odd, he seemed to be attributing the recessions of the late 70s & the 2008 meltdown to supply-side shortages, plebes wanting too much & not enough to go around??? Not very Zero-Marginal-Cost aware ...

Regardless, Debt's main problem with capitalism, particularly in a credit era, is speculation & bubbles creating a totally unstable, potentially apocalyptic, system. So, again, I really think that pursuing Stability Economics, as above, is maybe the only way to mitigate the inevitable speculative bubbles bursting. OMG, could it get any worse, crypto wasting megajoules of energy, now transitioning to AI aka Artificial Idiocy aka Statistically-based Bullshit Generators, wasting gigajoules of energy. And of course, these bubbles will burst ...

Best regards,
Chris Heinz