It grows increasingly more difficult for me to even attempt to add to an internet "discussion." Regardless of the forum and its contributors, we are all, each of us, slave to our own worldview.
My worldview is both cynical and optimistic at the same time. On the one hand, I have no faith in human institutions, which have proven over the millenia to be mechanisms for command and control. On the other hand, I have great faith in humanity itself.
The trouble is that the architects of human institutions understand humanity better than most humans do, and so they are able to "evolve" human institutions faster than most humans are able to recognize and respond to those changes.
This trouble is exacerbated by the fact that most humans stop questioning our worldviews once we have become comfortable with them, and so we seek to confirm what we think we already know. This is what the architects understand better than most humans, and they understood it long before Kahneman et al. and the formation of "behavioral" economics.
Today, the folks over at The Automatic Earth had a post up analogizing economics to religion. But there is no analogy as the two are one and the same, at least in modern times. Economic schools of thought, just like the religions that sprang from Judaism (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), are nothing more and nothing less than a means by which to command and control the masses of humanity who just want to live, to make them serfs through which to wield power.
Also today, over at Naked Capitalism, we had a discussion about debt inequality that was a year later and nowhere near as empirical as my own analysis here and here. I was quite tempted to join the conversation but determined that doing so would be a waste of my time. The memes are too ingrained to overcome, even among those who think they are "fighting the system." The architects of the system framed the memes, and most who are convinced they are fighting the system have actually adopted choices that are the Plan B of the architects. MMT is an example of this phenomenon.
The system cannot be reformed. It can only be scrapped. The moment where we can scrap the current system is moving towards us rapidly, although it may still be a decade or two away. Unfortunately, some have been convinced that reform that is apparently more radical is the same as scrapping the current system. It categorically is not. No "One God to Rule Them All" religion is reformable. Neither is any "One Rationale to Rule Them All" economic theory reformable. Both exist to command, control and enslave the vast majority of humanity who just want to live and let live.
My personal interpretation of "blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the Earth" is that plain folk will be left behind by the elite, which is happening right now in the U.S. and has been for over 30 years now. "Here you go, meek, see what you can squeeze out of the heap of refuse that we left you called the Earth. We're outta here. Losers."
