Macro N Cheese

When Jakob Feinig speaks of moral economies, he’s talking about we, the people – the currency users – and how we relate to the institutions that issue money, as well as our monetary knowledge and its ability to inform direct action. Needless to say, Modern Monetary Theory is an essential component of this. This week he and Steve discuss both moral economies and “monetary silencing,” a concept that gives shape to the frustration MMTers experience on a daily basis. Feinig has said he derived the term “silencing” from Paolo Freire, the Brazilian educator and philosopher who wrote about the dehumanizing nature of political silencing, denying people the right to participate in their own history. “There are moral economies that enable people to connect their lives and their needs to monetary design. And there is another process, and that's what I call monetary silencing, that disconnects people, that makes it seem like, oh, those are forces that are beyond your reach. This is something you should not be thinking