Changing the Game

Winterspeak who is very smart and JKH who is also very smart are having an excellent discussion on Winterspeak's blog (how interesting that two anonymous people, one of whom doesn't appear to even have his own site, have managed to earn such trust about such complicated things). They are basically talking about the inevitable tension that arrises when a new explanation comes along to challenge an existing interpretation. The young turks think they have the right of it, and in the case of MMT, I agree with them, but in their understandable eagerness to win over the old guard they face the question of just how much to compromises the purity of their explanation. In MMT's case this is the clear problem with talking about how things could be vs. talking about how things actually are. The government neither has nor doesn't have money is basically correct and is a huge help for laymen and even some experts, but it's not perfectly correct. Therein lies the problem.

Most people in a position of intellectual authority are extremely wary of the latest new theory that seems to explain everything. These new theories can usually be ignored and they'll simply collapse because most new theories are wrong. If on of these new theories does manage to stick for awhile and they're forced to confront it, as a shortcut they will often find a single error and happily toss it aside. This is another good and most often optimal strategy.

So MMT has a challenge- in order to gain ground and acceptance, it's important to frame arguments in a way that the vast majority can understand. However with every abstraction and metaphor, it exposes a soft underbelly for people like Krugman to poke at and dismiss the rigor of MMT. I wish I know how to reconcile these competing demands.

I see the same things with paleo or ancestral eating. The biochemistry is extremely complicated but the basics are easy to explain and a few easy fudges can help you get through to the masses, but on the other hand all these shortcuts make it very easy for the establishment to write off the movement which is a real shame. For every error in the paleo diet world (the comical carbs>insulin>fat story may be the most painful example) there are a number of big and important truths that will help a lot of people. My hope is that getting the big things right will give both of these valuable movements the momentum they need to break through to the mainstream.