[FRIAM] Musk’s America Party – Some Thoughts from Afar

[steve smith]

>> In this system, money is really just a record — “Here’s what I 
>> contributed, and here’s what I can claim in return.” It’s flexible, 
>> decentralized, and surprisingly efficient.
>>
>> So far, no government in sight.

government is square in the middle of it by issuing and endorsing 
currency, even if it nominally has intrinsic value (like silver/gold 
coin)...   the government is endorsing the authenticity of the "coin" as 
being of "fair weight" and "proper composition" under penalty of 
punishment for forgery.  Many coins still have ridges around the 
perimeter to prevent "shaving" them (not nickels or pennies in the US, 
and pennies haven't been copper, and nickels haven't been nickle and 
dimes and quarters and halves and fulls haven't been silver for a half a 
century now, so what is to shave?).

The US confederacy (and lots of other "governments") have printed money 
which was only as valuable as the paper it was printed on (albeit now 
sullied with pictures of their heroes).   Even today I think there are 
hoards of such "currency" available for purchase still at a fraction of 
face-value... "collectors novelties" as it were?

Yes, a "distributed ledger" but only as good as the rules for how to 
generate new "tokens" (printing) and how to validate them (anti-forgery).


>>
>> But Wait — Here Comes the Government
>> Governments step in because, well, someone needs to organize a few 
>> things we all need: roads, hospitals, armies, cat memes (okay, maybe 
>> not those). Also, someone has to stop the money system from melting 
>> down.
>>
>> To do this, governments collect taxes and (spoiler alert) borrow money.

this is all (in the ideal/abstract) about managing "the commons"... many 
of us *want* their to be a way for there to exist a robust and viable 
commons we can all synergistically draw from, but in the spirit of "the 
tragedy of" we know that some people like to take "their half out of the 
middle" and believe in memes like 'finder's keepers' and 'possession is 
90% of the law', etc.


>>
>> Borrowing isn’t bad, in theory. But here’s the rub: both major U.S. 
>> parties seem to have developed a taste for borrowing like there’s no 
>> tomorrow. Debt keeps growing, interest payments balloon, and one day 
>> — surprise! — the interest alone starts eating the budget.

And now for MY "Just so" story.

I do believe that there is a long history of the dysfunctional 
relationship between ruling classes and merchant classes, with the 
peasant's feeling both sets of heels grinding the same (or similar) on 
their necks while being told by both that "it is in your best interest, 
trust us".

Yet, the peasantry (anyone not commanding undue resources by capital 
ownership or divine declaration or threat of violence) also find it 
convenient to have the "distributed ledger" for their exchange of goods 
with folks they don't know.

This is where my UOMe comes in...  among neighbors and friends and 
repeat customers, those bits of copper or silver (with high quality 
stamping presumably beyond anyone but those "in charge" and with ridges 
to prevent shaving) or well printed on special paper with holographic 
strips embedded, anti-forgery "promissory notes" are only 
conveniences.   It beats faulty asymmetric memories and reduces the 
needs for ledger books,  and avoids the awkwardness of the country 
doctor having to maintain a poultry farm to make useful  all the 
chickens his patients bring him in barter for his alms and tinctures.

When does an IOU become a UOMe?   When the trust breaks down. When the 
proferring of an IOU is no longer a friendly, mutualistic act of 
presumed symmetric, synergistic exchange which presumably delivers 
excess value to both parties .  When one wants something from someone 
else they aren't prepared or inclined to share... be it their eggs, 
their chickens, or the whole shebang (formerly known ans "lock, stock 
and barrel"?) including the coop, the house you live in and maybe your 
wife and daughters too.

Elon Musk (fondly aka Elno) holds (somewhere in bank records?) hundreds 
of billions of UOMe's which he regularly throws around at people (and 
corporations and governments and ...) to *demand* that the folks living 
in or near Boca Chica close their windows and replace their HEPA filters 
regularly as the exhaust from his rockets (and occasional fireworks 
displays) disperse toxic waste into the air and water (and soil, and 
bodies of themselves, their plants and pets, their children, etc) in 
return for a few UOMe's he might dribble onto them out of his coffers.   
Similar, the folks Near Memphis, and gawdelpus if we know all the other 
places his "filthy lucre" is sullying "the commons" and 
seducing/intimidating the peasants.

When Elno grabs a fistful of UOMe's and points them at the "ruling 
class" (aka elected officials, in particular those who are bought and 
paid for by folks like him already) and threatens to "primary" them, 
These are definitely UOMe's not IOUs.  And when with the *other* fist he 
offers these "chits" to folks who promise to help him expand his 
influence and take more from the commons than he already does.  He is 
winking and nodding to them so they understand those are UOMes which 
they in turn can use to seduce and intimidate (yet) others.

Meanwhile the good people of Memphis and Boca Chica and (and and) are 
(mostly) gently taking those UOMes and using them like IOUs with one 
another... asking one another, "may I please have some of those eggs for 
this fistful of IOUs I got from Elno's bursar?". And little does Alice 
know when she asks Bob this question that Bob made a similar request of 
Charlene who drove up in a truck full of eggs that morning, though Alice 
must wonder "where DO those eggs come from?"...   a few transactional 
chains later and we see Zekiel standing in a hot, humid, smelly, 
possibly unhealthy (read "miasmic") factory egg-farm either hating or 
loving that he gets to/has to pick each hen up and squeeze an egg out of 
it every day whether it wants to share or not.   And Zekeil and Yolanda 
(his boss) both hate the part of the job where one out of 100 hens needs 
to be "culled" because they either no longer give over an egg when 
squeezed daily, or have lost too many feather's to their neighbor's 
frustrated beak, or didn't eat enough anti-biotic-laced food, or maybe 
got the batch with ground up chickens in it that didn't have the 
salmonella sterilized out of it well enough... or...

But Yolanda and Zekeil will join Xavier and Wendy at the pub after their 
12 hour shift and maybe have a pickled egg with their beer made of 
"rocky mountain tumwater" 6 states away...  where another Wally and 
Xandia and Yarvis and Zadie  are drinking beer made from water drawn 
directly from (hopefully filtered) the industrial sludged river that 
until a few years ago used to catch on fire regularly.   Elno and Donald 
and Jeff and Zuck and Thiel and Palmer and Cathy (Wood) and Kristy Noem 
and Laura Ingraham will all tell us stories about how good our "free 
market economy" is for us and how "democracy delievered a mandate to the 
cheetoh colored Jesus" and so forth and so on.

"Don't let me get off on a Rant here!" (nod to Dennis Miller circa 1995)

Meanwhile, HOW DO we maintain (cultivate?) a "commons" in an 
"enlightened self-interest" way?   The famous "tragedy" is a tragedy at 
the hands of someone... and the wide distribution of UOMes seems to help 
accellerate said tragedizing...  can a commons be recognized, 
maintained, developed without lots of IOUs and do they have to (self) 
transform into UOMes to do that "good work"?

For the Christers (and Yawhey and Allah) folks here there was once a 
commons called "the Garden of Eden".   But with our IOUs and UOMes for 
leverage, we conflated our Paradises with Parking lots.

And in the spirit of "one more thing"  I wonder if there isn't a small 
town somewhere in the deep south or backwoods of Appalachy where there 
is still in circulation Confederate Currency.  but what makes it work is 
that when someone offers an IOU, they sign their name on the bill... 
which formalizes the gentlewoman's agreement that when that note is 
offered back it will be received with no question.   Maybe folks don't 
actually have to sign every note every time, they can just recognize and 
defer to other upstanding members of the community with good handwriting 
who have signed a particular note, trusting that if the proferror isn't 
around to take it back next week when the surpluses are reversed, the 
guy who signed it might have something they want or maybe yet another 
third-party will be eager to have a note signed by Andrew jackson 
hisself?  Or Uncle Carmen?

I wonder if there is a secondary market for Trump Watches, Sneakers, 
Vodka, Water, TU diplomas, fight-fight-fight Challenge Coins, etc?  
Maybe a red Tesler (sic) with "lots of computer" is worth more because 
DJT "signed" it olfactoraly by passing some McDonalds' induced gas when 
he sat in it? Or has sod from the White House Lawn stuck in it's tire 
treads?

Maybe this is what will pass for "currency" in the 
wealthy-peoples'-bunkers post-jackpot.

And to that end, I recommend Cory Doctorow's "Masque of the Red Death", 
a great snark on the Ellison's and Zuckerbergs and their elaborate 
bunker-island-states.

    https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/the-masque-of-the-red-death/

I think I officially entered what Marcus called "bad faith territory" a 
while ago.

But this is MY "Just So" story about money and i'm sticking to it!

>>
>> At that point, the government has a few not-so-great options:
>>
>> Print more money (hello, inflation),
>>
>> Raise taxes and cut spending (cue screaming),
>>
>> Or pretend everything’s fine (until it’s not).
>>
>> So What’s the Point?
>> I’m not saying governments should never borrow. Borrowing to invest 
>> in people, infrastructure, or science makes sense — if it’s done 
>> carefully. But running constant deficits just to keep the lights on? 
>> That’s a recipe for future pain.
>>
>> In a perfect world run by wise leaders, debt wouldn’t matter so much. 
>> But in our world, the least-bad option might just be the 
>> old-fashioned advice: Try not to spend a lot more than you earn.
>>
>> Not because it’s always true, but because it’s a pretty useful model 
>> — at least until someone builds a better one. I'm all ears and like 
>> to evaluate different constructive options, don't just criticize 
>> what's wrong with the current system.
>>
>> On Wed, 9 Jul 2025 at 20:19, glen <gepropella at gmail.com 
>> <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     And ... and and and, money isn't at all zero sum. The very 
>> concept of "don't spend more than you earn" is not even wrong. It's a 
>> fundamental misunderstanding of money. And Musk is a great example! 
>> When Tesla stock dives, Musk isn't losing what he's earned. Borrowing 
>> money to buy Twitter, collateralized against estimates of Tesla 
>> stock? Did Elno spend less than what he earned? No. Has he earned 
>> whatever "we" estimate his fortune to be? No. Toss in things like 
>> quantitative easing, the value of USD as the world loses confidence 
>> in it, etc. None of that over-simplified rhetoric makes any sense 
>> whatsoever.
>>
>>     I'd love it if Elno stopped spending money *he* doesn't have. And 
>> if he did that, you'd see something magical happen, his name wouldn't 
>> be in the headlines every day. Just like with buying Twitter using 
>> imaginary money, the political party he wants to create is a 
>> mechanism for keeping his name in everyone's feed. He wants you to 
>> say his name every day, multiple times per day. Trump does the same 
>> thing. They want you to keep saying their name. Again. And again ... 
>> and again ... and again... all day every day.
>>
>>     Why? Because we (at least in very developed countries) have an 
>> *attention* economy. The more you say their names, the more money 
>> they accumulate. That "huge personal hit" is at best empty rhetoric 
>> and at worst bullshit designed to distract you with one hand and pick 
>> your pocket with the other.
>>
>>     On 7/9/25 10:14 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>      > We do have the money.  We are a wealthy nation.   The problem 
>> is we are cheap.
>>      >
>>      > *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com 
>> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> on behalf of Pieter Steenekamp 
>> <pieters at randcontrols.co.za <mailto:pieters at randcontrols.co.za>>
>>      > *Date: *Wednesday, July 9, 2025 at 10:07 AM
>>      > *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>> <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>>      > *Subject: *[FRIAM] Musk’s America Party – Some Thoughts from Afar
>>      >
>>      > I’m not American—but I’m a big fan of the place.
>>      >
>>      > What really keeps me up at night is how both major political 
>> parties in the U.S. seem to have a shared hobby: spending money like 
>> it’s going out of fashion. Year after year, the national debt grows 
>> bigger, and the interest payments grow even scarier. It’s like 
>> watching someone keep swiping a credit card with no plan to ever pay 
>> it back.
>>      >
>>      > Now, let me put on my South African cap for a moment.
>>      >
>>      > When South Africa became a democracy and Mandela became 
>> president, things were looking financially grim. We weren’t flat-out 
>> broke yet, but we were close. Mandela then did something very clever: 
>> he made Trevor Manuel the finance minister. Manuel, being honest, 
>> told Mandela he knew nothing about finances. Mandela basically said, 
>> “Don’t worry about the details—we’ve got smart people for that. Just 
>> make sure we don’t spend more than we earn, and I'll politically 
>> support you.” And guess what? South Africa’s finances did great for a 
>> while.
>>      >
>>      > (Yes, it all fell apart later when Jacob Zuma came along, but 
>> let’s not ruin the story.)
>>      >
>>      > Back to America.
>>      >
>>      > No, I don’t think the U.S. is heading for an immediate 
>> meltdown—but the idea that it’s too big to fail? Not something I’d 
>> bet my pension on. Sooner or later, the debt monster will come knocking.
>>      >
>>      > Which brings me to Elon Musk’s political adventure. From where 
>> I sit, his main message is: “Hey folks, maybe we should stop spending 
>> money we don’t have?” Whether his new party takes off or not, I think 
>> it’s great that someone is at least ringing the alarm bell.
>>      >
>>      > Even if nobody listens, I’m 100% behind the effort. Musk is 
>> taking a huge personal hit—his companies, his wealth, all of it’s 
>> being affected. But if it helps America become more financially 
>> sensible, I say hats off to him.
>>      >
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