Ep 347 - Libertarianism vs. Reality with Brett Scott

Economic anthropologist Brett Scott, the author of Cloud Money, talks with Steve about libertarianism’s big lie. Or lies – plural.

From a class perspective, libertarianism is largely an ideological tool that protects elite power by promoting a false narrative of individualism and "free" markets. It serves as a smokescreen, concealing the mechanisms of power in a class society. What worse, it’s presented as neutral. As if all citizens are on an equal playing field. Market transactions replace the natural interdependence at the core of societies. 

Brett and Steve look at leftwing alternatives, including the potential of mutual credit systems and alternative economies as counter-narratives to mainstream economic structures.  

They also discuss libertarians' obsession with commodity money (like gold), which stems directly from their flawed view of society. They see money as a neutral tool for trade between independent agents. In reality, modern money is a credit system—a network of social promises and debts that reflects power dynamics. 

Brett Scott is an author, journalist, and activist, who explores the intersections between money systems, finance, and digital technology. He’s the author of The Heretics Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money. His latest book is Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets. Find more of his work at https://alteredstatesof.money/ or on Substack.

@Suitpossum on X

Episode Transcript

(00:43):
Alright, folks, this is Stevewith macaron cheese. It's been a
bit since we've talked to mynext guest, Brett Scott. Last time
we talked, we riffed. I lovethis riff term. We riffed of the
movie Civil War and trying tounderstand what happens when you
kind of break down a countryand now all of a sudden you're left

(01:04):
with no monetary system oryou're left with starting over again.
And it was just really, reallyinteresting to see what the world
might look like and how itmight rebound and how it might rebuild
an economy in a post civil warstate. And today we're going to talk,
interestingly enough aboutlibertarianism. And my guest, Brett

(01:25):
Scott, is a cash activist,author of Cloud Money. He is the
author or the host of thesubstack Altered States of Monetary
Consciousness, otherwise knownas Asamoko, and an economic anthropologist.
And he's also a friend. It'sbeen a while and I'm really happy
to have him back on. So withthat, Brett, welcome to the show,

(01:47):
sir.
Great to be back, Steve. It'sbeen a while, but it's always fun.
It has been a while. It's beentoo long. But I guess distance makes
the heart grow fonder becauseI was really looking forward to this.
And so I'm really happy tohave you on here with me this subject
that we're going to touch ontoday. I was a former libertarian.
I don't even know how to putthat. It was more of a Ron Paul bot.

(02:09):
I was definitely a Paul botback in the day. I wasn't bought
into all the Murray Rothbardstuff, but I found Ron Paul to be
enticing. He had the anti warapproach. He had the anti drug war
approach, which very muchappealed to me. And there were just
certain things that he stoodfor that in the absence of more knowledge

(02:31):
about systems and stuff likethat, he sounded like he had his
act together. I've grown upsince and I would like very much
to kind of suss out thelibertarian mind and understanding,
not just the libertarian mind,but also understanding the libertarian
view of money and kind ofunderstanding better where some of

(02:54):
the fetishes that go alongwith the libertarian mindset come
from and what they look likein real terms. I think a lot of people
see the current situation inthe world, especially in the United
States, where you've got likethis weird blend of Christo, fascist
and libertarian comingtogether with another astroturfed

(03:15):
version of Make America Greatagain. And it's left a lot of questions
because if you don'tunderstand what people are saying,
if you don't understand wherethey're coming from, it's pretty
hard to build a bridge, orit's even harder to understand the
rules of engagement. So I'mcurious if you can break down what
your understanding oflibertarianism is just off the cuff,

(03:39):
help us all understand.
Well, in a sense, I think youprobably have a better understanding
of American libertarianismwhere you have a stronger lived experience
of it. My encounters withlibertarianism probably have been
initially, actually, forexample, in the financial sector.
When I was working in thefinancial sector, you would get sort
of straightforward freemarketeer type people who were quite

(04:01):
conventional in terms of theirsort of lifestyle and things like
that, but who believed in abunch of free market ideas. Which
of course is always ironicwith bankers and stuff, because banks
are heavily backed by orsupported by state structures and
they're part of the statemoney system and so on. But there's
a lot of kind of that sort ofthe sort of general private sector
business realm, you find somekind of libertarian type of ideologies

(04:24):
going around. But then ofcourse, I got involved to some extent
in alternative money scenes,and there would be, especially in
the crypto space, a whole lotof like, hard libertarians, anarcho
capitalists who are much morekind of doctrinaire about it, and
also from a sort of monetaryperspective. I come from an economic
anthropology background andlots of the sort of libertarian ideas

(04:48):
of money are very dominant ineconomics. Right. So there's a sort
of generalized libertarianismeven among people who do not self
identify as being libertariansin the sort of way that people think
about money. Economicanthropology will often counter that
and has different narrativesabout how money works. Yeah. So the

(05:09):
other complexity is that theUS feels it has a very particular
history with libertarianism.It feels like the one country where
libertarianism kind of makessense in some way. When I think about,
for example, Europe, Europehas hundreds of years of feudal history.
When you're standing in aEuropean city, you really get this
feeling of like, this has beenaround for a long time.

(05:31):
Right.
And people are very, veryaware of these sort of ancient structures
and feudal hierarchies. And Ican't imagine a moment in history
where people could detach fromEurope as refugees or as immigrants
and arrive in the US and havea self perception of being free individuals
and have this imagination ofbeing these kind of like solo types

(05:54):
of atoms floating around andengaging in contract with each other
and stuff. I feel like the USis a particular sort of historical
situation that makeslibertarianism seem appealing to
people, even if libertarianideology is generally detached from
the reality of how humansociety actually works. And so, yeah,
there's quite a few differentstrains of libertarianism, I guess.

(06:17):
But yeah, I guess as a personwho promotes more credit based ways
of thinking about money, Ioften get attacked by people who
self identify as libertariansbecause lots of libertarians hate
the idea that money is somekind of credit structure. They want
money to be a commodity and soon. So I get a lot of just general
libertarian ambience directedtowards me in my day to day work.

(06:40):
It's been a kind of a long andinteresting encounter for me. But
I've also encountered manydifferent variants of sort of libertarianism.
It's a bit hard to havesingular views on it. I remember
when I was living in London, Igot invited to speak at this thing
called Liberty League FreedomForum. And you can hear by that name.
It just has all the sort ofcultural markers of libertarianism.

(07:01):
Liberty and freedom is allthis kind of invoking of this kind
of stuff. And I remember goingthere and finding it incredibly boring.
It was so stiff. And it wasvery interesting because I had come
from lots of left wing spaces,anarchist spaces and things like
that, which are not stiff atall, they're very like grungy and
people play music and it'squite party orientated and stuff

(07:24):
like that. So it actually hasmore of the sort of what you would
call quote unquote, freedom,right? Whereas the Liberty League
Freedom Forum was all theselike young people because it was
sort of youth conservatismmovement. And they were young and
they were all wearing suitsand they all had business cards and
they had these pamphlets wherethey're talking about like Murray
Rothbard and free markets. ButI just remember being like, this

(07:45):
is so weird because there'sall this language of freedom, but
everyone's very stiff andquite strangely like Puritan, I'd
say. You could see howconservative it was. They felt like
old men to me. And then therewas one stand, I remember they had
a bunch of these pamphlettingstands, but there was one of them
that was a bit detached fromthe rest, which was a kind of more
social libertarian guy who waspromoting marijuana and more Stuff

(08:07):
about social freedoms. And youcould see she was marginalized and
isolated from the guys whowere like, we don't want to pay taxes
because we're business owners.So I remember that was quite a stark
example of the different formsof libertarianism trying to coexist
alongside each other. Butyeah, it's a tricky one sometimes.
I remember when we talkedyears ago about things like mutual

(08:31):
credit and mutual creditsystems and considering ways of doing
things outside of thegovernment and within the local community
and allowing one another tosurvive and thrive in this kind of
a mutual aid arrangement, ifyou will, like a public library of
checking out a chainsaw,checking out a bicycle, and each

(08:53):
sharing what each other hadand just gifting to one another in
a sense, but it never beinggiven, just sort of allow for use,
like a library of stuff. Andit was really powerful. And I could
envision at some level thisbeing more of an anarchist approach
than a libertarian approach,but it did get me thinking, because

(09:13):
the idea here is they don'twant government in their way. They
don't want to be bothered withrules, regulations, anything. But
they definitely want theircontracts upheld. They want the strength
and law of all the power ofthe state when it comes to making
sure that they get theirs. Butthat's the beginning and the ending
of what they want the state todo. They want the state as an enforcement

(09:36):
vehicle.
Yeah, I mean, this is the wayeconomic anthropology can be quite
useful in this regard becauseone of the big differentiators between
economic anthropology andeconomics is that economics forms
in the context of Europeancities. So in the sort of 1800s and
stuff, you basically havepeople who are immersed in Western
capitalism who see theenvironment around them and they

(09:59):
just take it for granted. Andthey start writing about economies
like that. And one of thedefining experiential features of
living in a capitalist economyis that you feel like an individual.
You are like a floating atomthat bumps against other random strangers
in markets. So the livedexperience of being in a capitalist
city is like that. So a lot ofeconomists would start to just think

(10:22):
of the world like that becausethey were actually having an experience
of the world like that. Butanthropologists, by contrast, would
often end up in situationswhere they were in pre capitalist
societies. They would beoutside of the Western context and
they would be experiencingsocieties that really didn't actually
have that structure. So youstart to see the primal reality of

(10:42):
societies, which is the primalreality of all societies, regardless
of whether it's capitalist ortribal or whatever, is that the basic
feature is interdependenceokay? In a small scale hunter gatherer
society, the interdependenceis very visible. It's right in your
face. You can see who youdepend upon and how you survive.
But of course, in a superlarge scale capitalist economy, it's

(11:05):
much harder to see becauseit's much more diffuse and it's much
more fluid. Both of thosesocieties are interdependent and
that people are relying uponeach other. You're relying upon people
on the other side of the worldfor your breakfast cereal. That's
interdependence for you. Butyou're not experiencing it as cooperation.
You're experiencing it as inthis very cold, distant kind of way.
So there's a lot moreexperience in a capitalist society

(11:28):
of this detached form ofinteraction. And that can lead you
to imagine that you are anindividual. This becomes especially
powerful. Or this reallystarts to get catalyzed by large
scale nation states which willstart to underpin interactions between
strangers. Or large scalenation states will in a sense catalyze
large scale markets, which inturn will catalyze the perception

(11:53):
of yourself as being a soloindividual. In a weird way, what
we call libertarianism is atype of mentality that emerges after
a capitalist market emerges.Whereas what we sometimes call left
wing anarchism or libertariansocialism is sometimes the word used
for it, which is associatedwith what the mutual credit systems

(12:15):
and community currencies andthings like that is actually something
that tries to get a bit moretowards a pre capitalist state of
being. Where what they'resaying is we want to build small,
closely enmeshed groups ofpeople and that's how we're going
to bypass the state. Whereaslibertarians tend to be, we want
to have solo individuals andthat's the natural order of things.

(12:39):
And that's how it's supposedto be. But that type of mentality
that emerges in thelibertarian culture really didn't
exist long time ago. Thereisn't perceptions of individualism
that exists in hunter gatherersocieties, for example, there's no
exit from the society. Youcan't be like, screw you guys, I'm
a solo individual. It's justthis doesn't exist in old societies.
It's funny you say thatbecause I'm looking at some of the

(12:59):
binge watchable movies andseries that are on these streaming
apps and one of them was 1883and it was like the the Origin Story
of Yellowstone. And as you'rewatching them go through the Oregon
Trail or you watch them goingfrom Texas to wherever it is, they
end up Going the Montana andso forth, Wyoming and Oregon, you

(13:24):
could see how a person. Andmind you, it's 1883. We're not talking
about a million years ago. Imean, in relative terms, it's recent.
And you think about the kindof lessons that were passed on for
these homesteaders that wereout there panning for gold and invading
Native American lands anddealing with being killed on the

(13:46):
prairie or dying of disease,or getting bit by rattlesnakes or
bandits coming through andburning your home down. It was kind
of a every man for himselfmindset. And that strained post civil
war and even pre civil war, atleast in the U.S. which, you know,
as you said, is kind of aweird libertarian model factory of

(14:08):
sorts, given that it doesn'thave the European history, it had
an indigenous history here inthe United States that was erased
through genocide. But so thenew immigrant colonizer version of
nation building that happenedhere was very much survival of the
fittest.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thisis why, again, libertarianism is

(14:31):
hard to talk about becausethere are these particular US Strains
that exist. But it's notactually only the US it's settler
culture more generally. Forexample, and I'm from South Africa,
that exact same form oflibertarianism exists in Afrikaans
culture in South Africa. Sothink about how the Afrikaans people
basically were Dutchimmigrants to South Africa in the
1600s, and around that time,and often they were very poor. And

(14:54):
so there was the Dutchcolonial authorities who were basically
sitting in Cape Town becausethey were trying to monopolize the
trade routes from Netherlandsto East Indies, like Malaysia and
Indonesia and stuff like that.So their stopping off point was Cape
Town. But then these poorDutch settlers started to settle
around the region, and thensome of them started to go feral.

(15:14):
And the Dutch colonialauthorities were a bit like, there's
this crew of people that wenow call the Afrikaners, who are
like these sort of feral Dutchpeople who've gone into the wilderness.
They're seeking their fortuneby just trying to farm out in the
middle of nowhere. Now, if youwere part of Afrikaans, because Afrikaans
is a language that deviatesfrom Dutch, it basically became a

(15:35):
dialect that emerged. Andbasically Afrikaners started to have
the self perception, which is,we're out alone in the wilderness
in Southern Africa and it's usagainst the world. We only have God
on our side and we're underattack by native people and we got
to crush down upon them,otherwise they're going to crush

(15:56):
down on us. And so they havethis whole kind of like drama in
their mentality. About beinglost people in the wilderness. That's
some way similar to whatyou'll find in Israeli settlers right
now. And they built this wholekind of national idea of almost like
victimhood in a sense, butalso of self resilience and internal

(16:17):
to Afrikaans culture. You'doften have this incredible hard communitarianism
at a small scale level, butthen hardcore libertarianism at anything
towards any kind of stranger.You know, this is one of the ambiguities
in this type of stuff, likeAfrikaans culture. If you go into
it, I'm actually a quarterAfrikaans. It's very communitarian.
It's very much abouthospitality and solidarity with your

(16:38):
neighbors and this kind ofstuff. But then it has a very sort
of libertarian ethos when itcomes to thinking about stuff outside
of your sphere. And that's alittle bit like rangeland rancher
libertarian kind of thing thatyou find in the US you get in lots
of places and often it goesalong with a bunch of racism as well,
because the people feel likethey're under attack and they're
having to just survive outthere. That's obviously very, very

(17:00):
different to some SiliconValley tech bro who's like spouting
in random. It's a verydifferent vibe, even though they
might have some similartalking points of some sort.
Right.
But of course, like a SiliconValley tech bro is not like an Afrikaans
rancher in the 1600s. They'rea person in a highly advanced capitalist
economy with a lot of stuffthat's incredibly dependent on other

(17:22):
people, but wants to denythat. Right. So the more like mainstream
libertarian type of stuff,you'll find among, let's say Tep
Bros is more kind of freemarket, city, urban capitalism kind
of thing, which is like we arepowerful people who want to deny
that we are interdependent sothat we can deny our responsibility

(17:45):
to other people even though weextract from those other people.
All right. There's a kind of adifferent feeling to it. Whereas
I can almost more intuitivelyunderstand the libertarianism that
comes out of, hey, I'm alonein the wilderness with my family
and like, I got to depend onmyself, that kind of thing. It makes
a bit more sense in a sense.

(18:05):
Sure, absolutely. When youlook at monetary systems as we tend
to do here, obviously I wantto talk to you about tax and stuff
like that. But this is one ofthe key elements of libertarian lifestyle.
As much as they talk aboutrugged individualism and kind of

(18:26):
me, myself and I approach tothe world volunteerism more generally,
it tends to circle back to themonetary System. What is it about
the monetary system thatfetishizes in their brains this kind
of libertarian ethos?
Yeah, I don't claim tounderstand every libertarian impulse

(18:47):
of every person, but.
Well, of course.
Okay, so it's worth noting.Maybe we should talk about the libertarian
ideology that's inherentwithin capitalism. Yes, let's do
it in mainstream capitalism. Idon't know if this even applies to
like your kind of ranchlandsettler libertarian type of person,

(19:07):
but let's talk about just likemainstream the, the 80s, like free
market thought. All right,sure, free market thought comes out
of the form of libertarianism,right? But one of the crucial things
that's going on with freemarket thought thought is at an elite
level, it's a smoke screen. Soat an elite level it functions as

(19:30):
a smokescreen. It takes aeconomic system that's laden with
power differentials andpresents it as if it's a flat system
that's just a bunch of equalsinteracting. Okay. That is a politically
loaded way of presenting acapitalist system. And you'll even
find that in mainstreameconomics this is like a generalized

(19:52):
vibe you have going throughlike the economics of discipline
more generally. And then at asort of everyday level among ordinary
people, the same kind of thingcan function almost like a coping
strategy. So almost like anemotional coping strategy which just
says, I'm stuck in a very,very large system that I have very
little power within, but I cantell myself that if I work really

(20:15):
hard and if I just hustleenough, I'm going to carve out a
small island of stability formyself. So there's a kind of almost
like a self helplibertarianism which can be seen
as a type of emotional copingstrategy if you're stuck in a very
large and alienating system.And that self help narrative can
be perpetuated by elitesprecisely because it's a useful story

(20:38):
for them as well. So ElonMusk, for example, tells you to pull
yourself up by yourbootstraps. You might find that inspiring.
It's like crap, right, interms of how capitalism actually
works. But it could be a sortof a self help way of seeing the
world and also benefitssomebody like Elon, because you can
just say, you know, I'm justlike another person in society and
everyone can be like me. Eventhough the structure of capitalism

(21:00):
would never allow that. Thestructure of capitalism is inherently
hierarchical. For somebodylike Elon to exist, there have to
be billions of others whodon't have that position. Much like
for a pyramid to get built,you need hundreds of thousands of
low level Workers who aregoing to bow down to a pharaoh. The
pharaoh is not going to makethe pyramid himself. Right, right.

(21:23):
So for somebody like Elon Muskto exist, you actually structurally
have to have a whole bunch ofpeople who are structurally subordinated.
So for him, a libertarianideology makes a lot of sense politically
because you can just say, oh,you know, everyone's in an equal
situation. And again, thatalso then functions as a kind of
self help narrative to peopleto make sense of their lives. So
this is a sort of generalized.The political use of libertarianism

(21:47):
is quite interesting andnefarious in many ways. But in a
strange sense, when you'rewatching libertarians, often they
are channeling what you'd calllike an ideal type imagination of
capitalism. So they imagine atype of capitalism that doesn't actually
exist. Right. But they claimthat it does exist or it should exist.

(22:07):
So for example, when it comesto the monetary system, you'll have
a whole bunch of libertariansbeing like, the fiat money system
is based on violence. Andit's, yeah, no shit, that's why it
works. That's how thestructure of the whole underpinning
of capitalism is based onviolence. Capitalism has always been.
It's a system that emerges outof feudalism. Right. Feudalism was
a highly unequal society.There has never been an ideal version

(22:31):
of capitalism that somehowexists on a level playing field.
It's always been underpinnedby state power, it's always been
underpinned by elites. It'salways been underpinned by small
groups of people accumulatinglarge numbers of assets and then
getting other people to workthose assets for them. The whole
structure of the system hasalways been hierarchical. There's
never been a free marketversion of capitalism that's ever

(22:52):
existed. So a lot of theseimaginations in libertarianism are
of a kind of fantasy versionof capitalism that does not exist.
But if you say that, they kindof imagine that you're sort of a
person who's endorsing theviolence. So for example, the, the
MMT movement. Person in theMMT movement will just describe how
the money system works.They're like, well, look here, the

(23:14):
state demands taxation andthis is what happens. But libertarians
have this moral panic or moralhorror at that, as if it's. That's
either not the case or theydon't want that to be the case. But
the fact is it is the case.There's a moralizing that goes on
in libertarianism, almost likethey're wanting capitalism to work
without the foundations ofcapitalism being present. And that's

(23:35):
part of that sort ofsmokescreen structure as well. You're
glossing over the actualviolence in our system. And that's
a very important function inlibertarianism. For example, the
Koch brothers and stuff in the80s, these guys who would fund all
these libertarian think tanks,these are big titans of industry.
These guys are hardcorecapitalists. They know that capitalism

(23:55):
is in the free market. Theyknow that capitalism is underpinned
by state power, then it'sinherently linked up with cronyism
all the time. The reason whythey fund the libertarian think tanks
is as a smokescreen to projecta sort of romanticized vision of
what it is. And so when itcomes to the monetary system, this
often involves the projectionof an imagined ideal form of money

(24:16):
that exists, which is supposedto be some kind of apolitical commodity.
And the reality of themonetary system is a highly political
structure, and it always hasbeen and it's underpinned by state
power. A lot of this horroramong the rank and file libertarians
at the sort of fiat moneysystem comes from this imagination
that capitalism is supposed tobe something that it isn't actually.
The money is supposed to be acommodity, but it is not. And that

(24:40):
therefore is a giant fraud andit's as evil deceit. Yeah. And so
they will also then fetishizean entire imagined history of gold
which they have no experience of.
Can I jump in momentarily?
Yeah.
From the MMT perspective, Ifind one of the most challenging
things in presenting theseconcepts to libertarians, and quite
frankly, even within the MMTspace is they don't talk nearly enough

(25:04):
about what that power ofcoercion really is, the tax, and
how they maintain the monopolypower of the currency and the monetary
system. And I think people onboth sides, the libertarian strain,
just randomly doesn't wantthat. Like you said, the moral outrage,
the ideological, it can't bereal, even though it is actually

(25:26):
real. But then on the flipside, though, a lot of MMTRs, I think,
Ms. The class element of thestate and the ruling elite that maintain
the cultural hegemony, if youwill, and the institutions of power
that make these things seemlike common sense.
Yeah.
And so as a result, I think alot of Pollyanna on the MMT side

(25:46):
tends to forget that thecoercion, the asymmetric relation,
the power of the tax and theenforcement of the tax, etc. Is not
we the people doing that. Thatis a ruling elite and a hierarchical
structure. And they havesomehow or another created a world
in their head anyway, that,that is. Oh, it's just us. It's we.

(26:08):
It's just us little peoplemaking these decisions. And it couldn't
be further from the truth. Youcan certainly understand why someone
would reject the kind ofPollyanna approach to explaining
the coercive nature of thefiat system run by the state, when
the state is, in fact, an armof oligarchy, an arm of the elites,

(26:29):
et cetera. Yeah, in a way.
And the key to breaking allthis stuff is to start with a realistic
description of capitalismwithout any kind of, like, hysteria
or sort of moralizing. Yeah,let's be like, okay, let's look at
what capitalism is. It's likefeudalism 2.0. It's not like society
restarts on a level playingfield or something. As the structures

(26:49):
of feudalism break down in thelate medieval period, you just have
a morphing of a structure thatslowly becomes more marketized. The
best way to think aboutcapitalism is that. I mean, this
is a bit of a crude way ofputting it, but your sort of aristocrats
morph in a feudal system.You've got the structured hierarchy
with aristocrats, and thenyou're kind of like peasants at the
bottom. But in the capitalistsystem, your aristocrats morph into

(27:12):
large owners of capital, andyour peasants morph into a sort of
drifting urban working class.That's what the original structure
of capitalism, the kind ofDickensian capitalism is. And from
that perspective, you look atthe state as what was the state in
this context? The state workedfor capitalists. The state was always
a capitalist institution. Andthen things like socialism and communism

(27:35):
were attempts to wrest controlof the state, to work on behalf of
the working class of asociety. So it was an attempt to
take a structure that wasessentially designed to protect elite
interests and to somehowdemocratize it in certain ways. And
that was the story ofcommunism that attempts various ways
to do that. I'm not sayingthat was actually how communism played

(27:57):
out, but that was the theorythat was going on behind that.
You are listening to Macro andCheese, a podcast by Real Progressives.
We are a 501c3 nonprofitorganization. All donations are tax
deductible. Please considerbecoming a monthly donor on Patreon
Substack or our website,realprogressives.org now back to

(28:19):
the podcast.
It's interesting. Whenlibertarians are thinking about capitalism,
they often imagine it as asort of antithesis to communism.
They're like capitalism versuscommunism. The reality of the way
you should be thinking aboutit is like feudalism and capitalism
were on the same Page as eachother, with the state as the enforcer

(28:42):
of elite interests. And thenthere's been various radical movements
that attempt to change thatsituation with greater or lesser
degrees of success. And so themodern state has been pacified to
some extent, but it's alwaysabout to act in the interest of elites.
For example, with an MMTmovement, you're saying, okay, let's

(29:02):
try to get the state to workmore or use its power of coercive
taxation more for theinterests of ordinary people. That's
a kind of a big element ofanti austerity type movements. But
yeah, again, economicanthropology is pretty good for this
stuff. People like CarlPolanyi, for example, which is Hungarian

(29:24):
scholar who wrote the GreatTransformation, this was all about
what he was talking about.He's like, economists have this weird
sort of fairy tale story theytell about how capitalism forms,
but capitalism's created bystates. It's underpinned by states.
The monetary systems are statecreations. Large scale markets are
state creations. They don'texist apart from this. Sometimes

(29:46):
when I'm thinking aboutlibertarianism, I think about a teenager
who's on their bed and theypissed off at their parents, right?
And they're like fuming away,like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave
home, screw my parents. Andtheir parents are like the state
in the market. I don't know ifthat metaphor entirely works, but
libertarianism is a kind ofmentality that emerges when capitalists
who have basically beenempowered by state infrastructures

(30:09):
that enable markets to form,when they start to fantasize about
detaching from the statefoundation of the market, they're
like, the real market exists,is like somewhere else out there
and I will exist apart fromstate systems. And the most extreme
version of this is anarchocapitalism, where they totally imagine
the absence of any kind oflike state institutions. But somehow

(30:32):
capitalism keeps going. Soyeah, that's in a way kind of libertarian
vibe. But as I mentioned, whenyou go to the left wing anarchist
spaces, it's a very differentfeeling because the left wing anarchist
movements, what they thinkthey're like, the real problem of
the state is that it dissolvesour ties of solidarity between ourselves.

(30:54):
The state is an eliteinstitution that acts on behalf of
capitalists historically. Andit dissolves our ties of trust and
solidarity between ourselvesand dissolves us into individuals.
So to counter that, to counterthe power of the state and the market,
because left wing anarchistswould see this as part of the same
structure, we got a band intosmall groups together. That's why

(31:17):
if you ever hang out with leftwing anarchists, all the imagery
that they use is all aboutsolidarity. They talk about solidarity,
all their imagery is likepeople holding hands and that kind
of stuff. Whereas you go tolibertarian spaces, all the imagery
is liberty and it's veryabstract. It's like freedom, liberty.
They almost like polar.They're quite antithetical to each
other, even though they bothare anti state.

(31:39):
Yeah, for me, just fulldisclosure, I have made a bit of
a sojourn through thesedifferent, I don't know, belief systems
as I've migrated from rightwing libertarianism. I mean, end
of my libertarian mind wasprobably around 2012 with Obama.
And I made a shift, a slightpivot into being a bit of a normie

(32:02):
Democrat here in the UnitedStates with a nondescript, non ideological
view of the world. Just goingalong with whatever was popular.
Didn't really have a deepunderstanding, honestly. And hats
off to the heterodox world andthe monetary anthropology people
who have taken the time toeducate me. And over the years I've

(32:23):
become much more left wing andI find myself now in a place where
I no longer make excuses forthe state. I no longer make excuses
for elite capture and stufflike that that I just assumed were
common sense. Of course, it'sjust the way it is. What do you mean?
Why, of course? We just need afew good progressives in there and

(32:45):
they'll make everything allgood. And it's only been really truly
understanding the nature ofthe state and understanding the nature
to some degree, of classrelationships and the fact that as
much as I always thought ofmyself as free, I realized I'm really
not free at all. There'scertain little. Maybe I can choose

(33:05):
Spearmint Gum over JuicyFruit, or maybe I can choose a Toyota
4Runner instead of getting aTesla. Or, you know, I can choose
to ride a bicycle versus walk.But at the end of the day, they've
got a system that keeps youvery disciplined. You've got to work,
you've got to earn, you've gotto pay bills. You don't do it, you

(33:26):
go to jail, you lose things,you know, your family loses things.
And so you're not free.There's not freedom here. There's
not a way of relief. It is adifferent form of slavery without
the cage, maybe. And for meit's. I don't know what to do with
this now. Like, everythingthat you think of as a possible solution

(33:46):
to this malady feels likeyou're a teenager sitting on your
bed pouting against yourParents. And at the same time, you
know, it seems unrealistic andimpossible. And yet reconciling the
relationship that I mentallyhad, emotionally had with the state
versus where I am today isradically different. And it's happened

(34:08):
way before the Trumpadministration. I want to be crystal
clear on that. But it hasimpacted me. You could see how the
United States has reallydevolved into an overt fascist state,
an overt kind of SiliconValley broligarch kind of oligarchy.
And this freedom loving folksthat have no interest in people actually

(34:32):
being free are large and incharge right now and stifling dissent
and stifling any kind ofthought outside of whatever it is
that they're advancing. Sowithout devolving into a child, without
becoming like that teen angstkind of adult, how does someone process

(34:52):
where we're at today as theirmind becomes open to seeing the state
for what it is?
I don't necessarily know.
It's just riffing here for me.I think the hard part is you start
out with hopes and dreams. Youthink of things through, hey, we'll
just vote for this andeverything will be better.
Yeah.
And you start realizing it'snot really there. You got study after

(35:14):
study showing that withincapitalism and within the United
States, which is where I live,so it's where my focus is. You can
probably extrapolate it outelsewhere, like South Africa, but
within that space, it's quiteclear that you get a popular movement
going and nothing changespolitically. In fact, we just move
further to the right, whichtells you something's going on.

(35:38):
This might sound a bit trite,but the kind of. The main impulse
for dealing with it isprobably to build community and solidarity.
Because the prime kind ofideological tool in a large scale
capitalist system is a kind ofmyth of independence or individuality.
As you say, you live with thisidea that you are free, but the reality

(36:01):
of the network structure ofcapitalism is that you're not. So
the prime difference in acapitalist system to, for example,
like a feudal system. A feudalsystem, you have a distinct hierarchy,
all right, but you're alsovery secure. You have this very hard
hierarchy, but you can knowwhat your place is, and you actually
weirdly guarantee that placein many ways, you know, in modern

(36:21):
society, using the termpeasant is imagined as some kind
of like, insult or somethinglike that. But for a peasant, and
you know, in Middle Ages, youcan actually have in some ways a
secure life, because you knowwhat your position is? A rental contract
relationship with a landlordwho's exploiting you. But it's A
sort of secure form ofexploitation. Okay? And under capitalism,

(36:43):
you basically have the samething, except it's much more fluid.
Okay? So, like, you have fluidsystems that are hierarchical, they're
intensely hierarchical, butbecause there are certain forms of
mobility, the hierarchy getsdisguised. So you can live under
the illusion that actually aslong as you hustle hard enough, you

(37:03):
can somehow make it up theladder. And maybe you can. Sometimes
you can do that, but onaverage you don't. And as you do
that, other people are oftengoing to have to get pushed out.
So in the capitalist system,you have the same structure of interdependence,
but it's much more fluid. Andthat creates a particular anxiety
in life. Constantly. You'reconstantly having to compete to stay

(37:25):
in the survival structure,which is different to a hunter gatherer
band, it's different to tribalsociety, and it's also different
to feudalism. Those societies,you have a guaranteed spot in many
ways, whereas in a capitalistsociety you don't. So you constantly
have this low level, hauntingfear that you're about to get pushed
out of the society. And theway that is spun by the elites in

(37:45):
a society like, oh, that'sgoing to inspire you. That's good,
you've got to be an innovativego getter and hit life and grab life
by the balls. And the ones whoget to the top are the ones who work
the hardest and all this kindof stuff. And so that kind of libertarian
ideology is a big part of thepower structure of luck or the ideological
power structure of acapitalist system. And if you look

(38:07):
at, for example, the Trumpadministration, they heavily play
into this idea of you can be awinner if you on the winning team.
And you can see how itoperates on different fractal levels
as well. Lots of the kind ofTrump vibe, at least as an outsider
watching from the outside,often has this, like, appeal to being
on a winning team, but againstlosers. Just very overtly states,

(38:29):
some people are losers andothers are winners. And so it's like
a really like blatant kind ofmarket ideology, but it operates
in these different scales,which is there's Team U, which is
like you in the marketfighting against other people. And
then there's like team yourfamily. It's like you as a family
man fighting for your family.And then there's like team country.

(38:51):
It's like our country betterthan the other countries. And then
eventually, like, it's someGod or something like that, the Christian
God versus the other gods.It's got this whole fractal competitive
structure to the whole styleof thinking, all right. And then
it's imagined as some kind ofgreat golden age emerges from this.
A lot of the stuff that Trumppromotes, like things like bitcoin
and crypto, has that exactsame ideological structure. Those

(39:13):
communities have always workedon this idea that you're going to
be a winner and if you're toostupid and slow to catch the market,
you deserve to be poor andstuff like that. The bitcoin community,
for a long time their mantrawas like, have fun staying poor.
They would say to anybody whodidn't buy into the ideology, it
had it very much, you're aloser. And this is why ideologically

(39:34):
aligns with that Trump thing,where they're pushing this idea of
like, fight each other. Butyou can see how that plays into elite
interest, because it's likeyou at the bottom fight each other
while we at the top are yourinspiring leaders. And you can maybe
become us at some point. Sothe way you fight that really is
you have to rebuild ties ofsolidarity between people on the

(39:54):
bottom. But that'shistorically that was done through
things like unions and stufflike that, which have all kind of
been dissolved and broken inmany ways. Ways, yeah. I guess the
big thing is around figuringout how you create that sort of bottom
up stuff. Can I riff onmonetary systems as well?
Absolutely. Please.
Beyond the Trump world,because Trump's a whole like current
virulent version of capitalismrespawning itself in some new way.

(40:17):
It's important with the moneystuff to see why libertarians are
triggered by credit stylethinking on money. And one of the
reasons is that ideologicallycommodity money aligns with the libertarian
presentation of how capitalismworks. And there's a bunch of political

(40:39):
uses of that. But the way thatthe libertarian thought structure
and money works is that youstart off. And when I say libertarian
here, I'm just talking about,I guess, a kind of free market kind
of person. I'm not claimingthat every person and every libertarian
strain has this exactstructure, but a basic thing is like,
you start off with theperception of people as individuals
and it has this like every manan island. So you start off with

(41:03):
this vision of selfsufficiency. Essentially each person
is a self sufficient island bythemselves. And then you imagine
what a society is, a wholecollection of these islands in proximity
to each other. But they're notfundamentally interdependent, they're
sort of independent, but theyrecognize that if they interact,

(41:24):
they can gain benefits. Soit's like you're spying the next
island and you're like, well,if I do a trade with that person,
my self interest could bebettered. All right? So they have
this vision that what trade isis human beings trying to better
themselves individually. So ifyou're picturing two islands, they
row out on their canoes andthey meet in the middle and they

(41:45):
like dangle goods in front ofeach other. And this is how they
imagine the market. Theyimagine these individuals who are
coming together to danglegoods and then to try to convince
each other to trade for theirmutual benefit. And they might try
to screw each other in thisprocess, but it's basically imagine
that once that trade'scompleted, you retreat back to your
island and you're back tosquare one. You're the solo individual
again, all right? And withthat thought structure in place,

(42:08):
they basically don't believe asociety exists. If you look at, for
example, like MargaretThatcher in the 1980s who was heavily
influenced by libertarianthought, she said, there is no such
thing as a society. There areonly individual men and women, right?
That was the image she waschanneling. She's like, what do you
call a society is just a wholebunch of individuals living in close
proximity. They're notactually a society, they're separate

(42:30):
people. So she was denyinginterdependence and saying everyone
is actually independent. Andso every interaction between those
people is voluntary. There'sno such thing as involuntary interaction
between people who depend uponeach other. Every action is voluntary.
And so with that in place, ifyou're trying to then imagine how
a monetary system works,you're going to have to often imagine

(42:52):
it as some type of specialcommodity because it's the only way
you get that thought structureto work. You say we have all these
people who are like living inclose proximity. They're all independent,
they're all self sufficient,but they realize they'll better themselves
if they trade, but they don'tknow how to facilitate that process
because it's hard for them todo barter with each other. This is

(43:12):
where the barter imaginationemerges, right? Because if you imagine
a whole bunch of selfsufficient people walking around
with their self sufficientlyproduced goods, you start to fantasize
about barter. It's like, oh,all these people are trying to trade,
but it's very hard for thembecause they don't have money. And
so then the next part of thethought structure is to imagine that
what happens is that everyonechooses some commodity to become

(43:34):
the money system to unblockall the trade between themselves
for their self betterment.Basically in, for example, Austrian
economics, the Way they will.Austrian economics is a very prominent
branch of libertarianeconomics. The way they imagine this
is they do something throughthe regression theorem where they're
like humans basically choosethe most useful and widely accepted
commodity and that thenbecomes the money. There's variants

(43:57):
where you'll say somethinglike, we can have some kind of like
social contract theory thingwhere you say everyone kind of gets
together and decides thatsomething's going to be the money.
But the basic point is thatthey imagine that money is some special
commodity that holds all theseindividuals together. And from that
they then fantasize about whatthe ideal form of this, this hypothetical
money should be. And then thisis what leads to imaginations of
gold. In the libertarianimagination. They're like, you need

(44:18):
this thing that's going to doX, Y and Z to facilitate trade between
all these solo individuals,and this thing is going to have to
be something that'suniversally recognized as valuable.
And this must be gold. Okay?And this is how that thought structure
which leads to an imaginationof gold is entirely based upon priori
assumption that human beingsare independent agents that don't
exist in a society. And thisis why it's so messed up, because

(44:41):
that is a totally flawedstarting position. Economic anthropology
would say that is a fantasy.No human being in society has ever
existed as an individual. Youcan't even get to like age one unless
you have people constantlylooking after you.
Yes.
Even as a fully grown adult,you're constantly dependent on people.
There's no such thing as beingan independent island. It doesn't

(45:03):
exist. In which case you don'tneed something like some commodity
to dangle in front of peopleto convince them to trade with you.
People have to trade with you.It's how they survive.
Yes.
It's not an optional path.It's not something you have to sort
of convince people to do. Sothis is why credit theories of money
is not to look much moreseriously at this. And this is starting

(45:23):
with anthropology, where it'slike looking at how actual structures
of informal reciprocity andcredit between people work, which
is like for a person tosurvive, they have to go into debt.
There's no such thing as adebt free person. You always are
going in and out of debt toother people. That's how you literally
survive. And there's nothingwrong with that. And interestingly
you'll note that inlibertarian imaginations, they have

(45:43):
a terrible moralistic way ofseeing debt. They believe it's an
aberration. And the reason forthat is that starting position that
they start with where theyimagine that what a real person is
somebody who's self sufficientand isn't dependent upon other people.
Therefore if they're in debt,they're somehow morally inferior
because they've negated thatstarting position. They've become
dependent upon somebody andthey've stayed dependent and they're

(46:06):
not an independent person. Andthey will imagine that the creditor
is morally superior becausethat person is more self sufficient
in a sense. So libertarianshate debt, which is what this. At
a moral level, they have thissort of slight moral horror at it.
Whereas of course, economicanthropology, chartalism, all these
types of thoughts see debt asnormal and as. And constituents and

(46:27):
a building block of how actualsocieties work. All right? And then
of course, at a very largescale, debt can become very toxic.
It could become a tool ofpower and extraction. But you don't
seek a society that's free ofdebt. You seek a society where you
manage the debt in a humaneand egalitarian way. That's my end
of my spiel about this.
No, I think it's fantasticbecause I'm straying more into the

(46:51):
socialist side of the world,as I think about it, and in their
world, and I gotta be honestwith you, I'm not sure I agree with
some of it, right. Is thatthey just fantasize about a world
in which money doesn't exist.And money can come in a lot of different
forms. It's not just the pieceof paper, even though that cash is

(47:11):
something you are king about,it's all sorts of different means
of tracking ledger balances tomake sure that like, even if you
and I were only allowed tohave 10 pieces of chocolate a month,
there would be somethingsomewhere that would be decrementing
that we've taken our 10 piecesof chocolate. You can call it whatever
you want, but there wassomething that was done to make that

(47:33):
transaction occur. And if youwere out of credits or certificates
or whatever, you wouldn't getchocolate. I'm curious, even though
libertarianism has been thesoup du jour, what are some of the
other ideas here where peopleenvision this kind of voluntary exchange
where there's no, there's nomonetary element to it and it's just

(47:55):
not even barter per se. It'smore of a. A quota system, if you
will, from each their ownability, to each their own need,
or however that saying goes.I'm butchered it again.
Yeah, there's been manyvariants of this stuff. And actually,
interestingly, in having justranted about a sort of generic libertarianism,
Again, there actually isn'treally. There's a lot of variance
in libertarian thought andactually some traditions of what

(48:17):
you might call utopiansocialism come out of quasi libertarian
type thinking. People like thesort of French anarchists like Pudon
and people like this all havethis forms of a lot of what we call
alternative economy movementslike mutual credit cooperatives and
things. Some of them haveforms of libertarian thought in them.
But it's more communitarianversion of libertarian thought where

(48:39):
the objective is like you wantto rebuild small scale community
in the face of large scalestates of corporations. But yeah,
the mutual credit systems arequite an interesting sort of field
to study in terms of peoplewho have an alternative vision of
money. I'm not sure if I'manswering your question here entirely,
but we're getting therebecause the basic intuition was mutual
credit systems because youknow, a modern fiat money system

(49:02):
is a large scale, multitiered, hierarchical credit structure
administered by massiveinstitutions. But you can imagine
a flattened version of thatwhere the credit processes are horizontal
rather than vertical, thesesort of banks and states and things.
So a lot of the imagination ofkind of communitarian mutual credit

(49:23):
is like, let's not fetishizemoney as some kind of commodity.
We'll accept that money isactually these systems of promises
and credit between humanbeings. It's not some sort of strange
abstract gold or something.It's these systems of Internet networked
credit. But we're going to tryto administer it between ourselves
at a horizontal, local level.So that a lot of those kind of communities

(49:45):
have that sort of feeling ofreally accepting human interdependence
and indebtedness betweenpeople. That's very different to
say, for example, like gifteconomy type movements or types of,
like you were describing,basically a communist impulse, which
is where you say, from whoeverhas the most, whoever has the least,
a communist impulse has adifferent moral structure to the

(50:08):
reciprocity impulses of mutualcredit. So a communist impulse is
a moral principle that existsin all societies where it basically
says if you're in a positionof power and somebody is in great
need and you have the abilityto help them without it really impacting
yourself too much, you shoulddo it. So a communist impulse, for
example, is like, there's aperson on the street, they're in

(50:28):
a rush, they're flustered,they ask you directions and you just
tell them with the directions.That's a communist impulse. You basically
saw a person in need, theyasked something of you, you were
in a position to give itwithout it like impacting your day
too much until you just did itand then you never see them again.
All right, that's the. From hewho has the most to the person who

(50:49):
needs the least. That's,that's that principle in play at
a small scale. So we have thatas a daily principle in all our lives.
And there's no attempt attrying to call something back from
the other person. There's noattempt at reciprocity, essentially.
So reciprocity is a sort ofseparate moral principle in economics
or on economic anthropology,where there'd be that sense of balancing
scales. If I do something,eventually somebody else should do

(51:12):
something as well. And there'sdifferent forms of reciprocity. And
so like a mutual credit systemis a reciprocity based system where
it's like we will have thesesort of horizontal networks of credit
between people. They're goingto be measuring people going in and
out of debt to each other,like these scales being balanced.
And it's imagined that that'sbetter than the hierarchical credit

(51:34):
systems that we have in ournormal system. But basically it's
like a lot of what we callalternative economy movements will
be trying to play with theseprinciples or rewire them in certain
ways and.
Yeah, all right, so as we winddown, I want to just thank you for
the time. I appreciate itimmensely. What can we do with the
final word, if you will?Overall, how would you summarize

(51:55):
this? I mean, just to have akey takeaway, what do you think is
most important to pull fromthis conversation?
From my perspective, I thinkit's important to recognize the political
use of libertarianism ratherthan its surface appearance. Libertarianism
speaks about capitalism as apeaceful system where people are

(52:16):
solo individuals and so on.Right. So, so there's some libertarians
can even be quite idealisticin a strange way. Like capitalism
is supposed to work in acertain way. But that story functions
as a means to disguise howcapitalism actually is, which is
not like that. And so there'sa strange, potentially willful naivety

(52:36):
within libertarianism whichcan actually serve to protect elites.
This actually applies toeconomics as well. Often mainstream
economics also has thiselement going on. So that's one big
thing I think people need toreflect upon. And a second thing
is a lot of those libertarianthought structures actually exist
in people who don't selfidentify as being libertarians. Right.

(52:57):
Lots of people in our society,for example, fantasize about money
being a commodity. The fantasyof money as a commodity comes out
of libertarian thought. Andsometimes it's generated by the situation
you were in a Large scalecapitalist society where you feel
like a solo individual. If youfind yourself fantasizing about commodity
money, it's probably likelythat you're being influenced by the

(53:18):
same kind of libertarianmindset. And that's worth deconstructing
that and understanding, like,how that works in your own mind,
I guess.
It's fantastic. All right.Well, Brett, this has been wonderful.
Tell everybody where we canfind your work.
I appreciate the way you share it.
I am avidly sharing Asimocoaround, but tell folks about that.
My substack, which isbasically where I do most of my stuff

(53:39):
right now, is asamoco, orAltered States of Monetary Consciousness.
You can get that onwww.asomo.co or else if you've typed
in Brett Scott into thesubstack search engine, you probably
will find it or something likethat. That's where I mostly do most
of my stuff right now. I'vealso actually started a little YouTube
channel, which I'm sort ofexperimenting with still. I don't

(54:01):
know. I Quite enjoy doingYouTube actually, but quite a lot
of work. It's more at anexperimental stage right now. But
you can find me in Brett Scotton YouTube as well, where I sort
of riff on things and dovisualizations of stuff.
So, yeah, I think it's great.Everything you do is gold to use
a commodity and moment.
That's good. I'll take it.Yeah. Thanks, Steve. Thanks for being

(54:21):
supportive of my work as well.It's always appreciated.
Well, you're always with us.
Keep up all your great stufftoo. Really appreciate it.
Thank you, man. I appreciateit as well. All right, let me take
us out here, folks. My name isSteve Grumbine. I am the host of
Macro and Cheese. Macro andCheese is a part of Real progressives,
which is a 501C3 not forprofit in the United States. We live

(54:43):
and die on your contributions,folks. Don't assume someone else
is doing it because let mejust aware make you aware, they're
not. We could definitely useyour support and if you find value
in the guests we have onsupport them as well. But we definitely
need your support. We're asmall nonprofit and without your
support, it'll be hard to keepthe lights on. So you can find us

(55:05):
on patreon.com forward/realprogressives. You can also find us
on Substack and you can becomea donor there as well. And you go
to our website,realprogressives.org Go to the Get
Involved and then donor andright there you can be part of our
support. System by going toour donor box. No amounts too small,

(55:27):
certainly no amounts toogreat. Folks, please consider becoming
a monthly donor. And withthat, on behalf of my guest, Brett
Scott, myself Steve Grumbine,the podcast Macro and Cheese, we
are outta here.

(55:47):
Production transcripts,graphics, sound engineering extras
and show notes for Macro nCheese are done by our volunteer
team at Real Progressives,serving in solidarity with the working
class since 2015. To become adonor, please go to patreon.com sl
realprogressives,realprogressives.substack.com or
realprogressives.org.