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by silverquiet 817 days ago
Amaze isn't the word I'd use, but Keynes did say something rather profound - "anything we can actually do we can afford". I think of the economy a bit like the power grid; it's really a just-in-time system that can only deliver productive capacity in real-time (though this analogy is changing with grid-scale power storage). In some sense, money is just an abstraction on top of that. Or I have no idea what I'm talking about, but also I don't think economists really have that good of a handle on things either.
2 comments

I think the best analogy for money is blood.

From the perspective of a household (a cell), or a company (an organ), money (blood) are a limited resource, which constraints what you can do. If you don't have that resource, you will die.

But from the perspective of the state (the organism) or the government (CNS), money (blood) is just an accounting and distribution mechanism for real resources, which are things like energy, raw materials and labor (oxygen, minerals and sugar). From this perspective, amount of money/blood can be adapted to conditions (for example in emergency, money/blood can be redirected to vital industries/organs), and it is created or destroyed internally, in any amount required. So the amount of money (blood) is not a constraint, resources (oxygen, food) are.

> it's really a just-in-time system that can only deliver productive capacity in real-time

It's a sophisticated game of monopoly where select few players can coopt the productive capacity of the labor class.