MMT still has plenty to say about the private sector, as well as non-monetarily sovereign monetary systems, etc. It’s the common fiscal policy recommendations informed by MMT that mostly have to do with Government debt. It’s important to separate the theory from the policy - MMT is way more than just overt-money financing.
But yeah, the parent comment is confused, corporate debt (and private debt in general) is the real looming threat to worry about in a currency-issuing country that only issues bonds denominated in their own currency (such as the US) - not the Government deficit or debt.
Heck, when government entities take on too much debt, the bond vigilantes get involved, interest rates spike upwards and bad economic things happen! Inflating your debt away will just save you from outright sovereign default - it won't save you from the bond vigilantes and from spiking nominal rates.
Yes, clearly, just like they did in Japan. Oh, wait, no, Japan only proved that the Government is fully in control of the bond market.
The private sector wants Government bonds. If they won’t buy all of them at the interest rate the Government wants to sell them for, there’s no practical reason they can’t just sell excess bonds to the central bank (except for silly policy in some countries).
Obviously, Sherlock. The govt with the Fed are (or should be, if things don't spiral out of control) the economic governors. You can't talk about either one in isolation because they are symbiotic, not mythologically-utopian, hermetically-closed model boxes that can exist without the other.
The Fed will be pressured to reduce interest rates because corporations are playing Russian roulette too-big-to-fail brinksmanship and will expect a bailout as per usual.. an action the majority undertake will always be excused in a democracy because of political pressure.
You're mistaken. Prohibition has always failed. 18th/21st amendments and Portugal decriminalization. It's not to say hard drugs are great, but criminalizing them creates more violence and crime in order to access them.
Legalization solves several bigger problems:
- MIC/PIC over-criminalization for profit
- barriers to treatment
- higher prices plus criminal enterprises lead to violent crime, i.e., Mexico right now, and greater property crime of users to support habits
Solving economic, social issues is beyond the scope of drug policy but giving people hope, purpose, mission and security reduces usage. Having a functional community, society are preconditions to deterring substance abuse... whereas failed states and under/unemployment promote it.
No amount of self-righteous crusaders will change human behavior, but they can certainly make it worse with naïve policies.
>but criminalizing them creates more violence and crime in order to access them.
And fills prisons, which cost tax-payers a LOT of money, with people that often did nothing to actually harm anyone (I'm specifically speaking of psychadelics, marijuana and steroid convictions).
Yes, it did work for Portugal. Portugal does not have the pharmaceutical industry that the US does.
Due to criminalization of certain drugs and the extreme enforcement thereof demand for legally available drugs has never been higher in the US. The pharmaceutical industry is more than happy to fill that gap and meet the economic demand. By ignoring the data and eliminating access to controlled substances demand has not diminished but instead shifted to alternate products.
Criminalization/legalization ignores all the data and research on this problem.
The argument is that people are going for legal more potent, more dangerous drugs in US because much harmless marijuana is illegal (Just as when alcohol was prohibited
people switched from wine and beer to moonshine). This is true everywhere including US. Not just Portugal. So when relatively harmless recreational drugs are decriminalized, people won't go for fentanyl or oxy.
Then of course we have the moral argument. The addicts are an extremely at risk, isolated, poor community. They can't seek help as their very existence is illegal (they consume illegal drugs). If drugs were legal, they could seek help without fear or stigma, others could help them without fearing breaking law, NGOs could legally operate in this domain helping them (with disposable needles, safe usage etc.. not just in rehabilitation). All this is true for US. Not just Portugal.
> The argument is that people are going for legal more potent, more dangerous drugs in US because much harmless marijuana is illegal
I'd argue that there is demand for mind-altering substances in the US because of societal reasons. I count marijuana in there because I don't think any other country in the world has made a bigger deal of it than the US. It is a part of pop culture in a way that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world to my knowledge.
No judgment implied on people who use marijuana, of course.
Criminalization/legalization alone does not curb demand for health damaging drugs. The only important goal in talking about drugs is reducing intake to increase personal health. Everything else is either a beneficial byproduct of that goal (crime, dependency, disease) or an antithetical motive.
Marijuana availability would not increase personal health and there is no indication persons consuming legally prescribed opioids would prefer legal and unprescribed marijuana alternatively merely because it is less unhealthy. You can legalize or criminalize all of it, but either way demand for consumption will continue to increase in the US according to the data available.
McKinsey/MBB, Zerodium, Palantir, KPMG/Big4, offshore magic circle, etc. are enablers of inverted totalitarian plutocrats to attack their enemies and defend their power. Does this really come as a shock or a surprise?
If you're designing something that needs to be high-quality, safe, well-documented and is difficult to change later on, say an elevator, waterfall is a good model to consider. For a webapp startup, hell no.
refactoring isn't a bad idea but is quite difficult.
Laws aren't written and can't be written as exactly specified specs.
Laws are written to be interpreted loosely by human judges and applied to a bunch of difficult real world messiness. Not clearly defined interfaces and types.
- Developers: Hazmat engineers
- CS: Civil engineers