Are you familiar with the work of Michael Hudson? I just learned of "...and forgive them their debts" [0], and looking forward to reading it.
While I'm generally in favor of debt forgiveness for 2021 America, in his talks he's primarily described jubilees in the context of regime change: a new conquering emperor, or an aspiring revolutionary leader, cancels the debts to secure the loyalty of workers and soldiers, and the nobility has to acquiesce at the point of a sword.
What I can't figure out is how this could be done on a predictable timetable (as per the Biblical jubilee concept: every 7 or 50 years). In a conquest scenario, a lender might only withhold lending if the current power structure looked weak; but if debt forgiveness was institutionalized, why wouldn't they just cease all lending on Year 6 or Year 49? (Or, more likely: fold the probability of forgiveness into a usurious interest rate, so they collect the same income on average.)
As it stands, I think debt forgiveness can only be done as a one-time solution to gross inequality and/or social instability; and that institutional reform (to not need jubilees) has to be done upstream (such as public banking, Georgist land trusts, etc). But I'm very open to being convinced otherwise.
I am aware-ish of that and (edit, forgot the "and") Graeber's book but haven't read either.
The Geiger counter randomized debt jubilee is a bit of a play on the scheduling problem.
I do agree debt jubilees only make sense as a emergency post-hoc fix. If you think about it, UBI + good confiscatory taxes at the margins is basically a nice smoothed amortized debt jubilee. That's much better.
Ha, Graeber's debt book is a different one [0]. I can vouch for its excellence, but I don't recall him discussing jubilees much.
A cursory search isn't turning up much, do you have any reading material for the Geiger counter idea? Or is that something you're spit-balling just now? :)
Agreed on UBI, etc. One thing I've been thinking a lot about is the Ultimatum Game [1], and what it would look like to scale up that concept to a society. In a sense, that's the realpolitik of every state: if the peasants are sufficiently unhappy, they show up with torches and pitchforks, even at the cost of their short-term interests. The modern peaceful version is "vote the bums out", but that's always been of dubious efficacy; and it feels especially toothless today, given the scope of regulatory capture and "manufactured consent" in the two-party system. The next closest thing (without resorting to violence) probably looks like a General Strike, but that's one hell of a coordination problem.
Yes, I forgot the "and". "that Graeber" lol. Pity there is no more "that graeber" :(. To think Chomsky outlived him...crazy...
> Or is that something you're spit-balling just now? :)
Pure spitball. If predictibility causes bias, try randomness. PRNG is fine except one could exfiltrate the hidden state maybe? So try something even more black-box like a hunk of radioactive something.
> Agreed on UBI
:)
> One thing I've been thinking a lot about is the Ultimatum Game [1], and what it would look like to scale up that concept to a society. In a sense, that's the realpolitik of every state: if the peasants are sufficiently unhappy, they show up with torches and pitchforks, even at the cost of their short-term interests. The modern peaceful version is "vote the bums out", but that's always been of dubious efficacy; and it feels especially toothless today, given the scope of regulatory capture and "manufactured consent" in the two-party system. The next closest thing (without resorting to violence) probably looks like a General Strike, but that's one hell of a coordination problem.
There is the quote "I have found out what economics is; it is the science of confusing stocks with flows". I had some crude thoughts in my own head, but with some friend's advise on putting in that terminology, it seems both that the stocks are are more fictions and the source of the economic problems of society. I question the ultimate game example then because it seems very "stocks first", dividing up some amount one off. I would much rather see "capitalism without ownership" or "rents all the way down".
