The National newspaper in Scotland has returned to the subject of modern monetary theory, again. George Kerevan has commented on Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp's article for the same paper last week, and my response, here. Kerevan says:
ATTENTIVE readers will have noticed a war has broken out across print and social media, following a column in The National from Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp — founder of the Business for Scotland think tank — in which he attacked so-called Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT. For the uninitiated, MMT is basically the theory that governments which issue their own currency are able to fund any level of spending they desire, without having to worry about associated deficit.
If MMT is kosher then anybody — especially an indy Scotland — can eliminate austerity at the stroke of the finance secretary's pen. MMT is supported by former US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and English academic Richard Murphy, author of the Joy of Tax. Indeed, Murphy and MacIntyre-Kemp have gone head-to-head following Gordon's article in The National.
There are, again, errors in here: the deficit does have to be worried about, but how it is managed is entirely different using MMT.
Kerevan does get the key point though:
Why does this debate matter? First, because it gets to the heart of any post-indy economic policy. Secondly, because it puts Andrew Wilson's Growth Commission report in the firing line. The Growth Commission wants an independent Scotland to keep the pound sterling for an indefinite period.
But what is then interesting is he goes on to critique MMT from an interesting left of centre perspective that is well worth considering. I am head down in work right now - and am going to stick to my data rather than write more. But this is one worth reading.
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George appears to be ignorant of MMT.
1) MMT isn’t a paradigm we might move to, it’s how it is now. He totally missed the point that MMT is a lens thorough which to understand the base reality of our existing system and thus he misses the bigger picture of what our existing money system could achieve if used to its full capacity. For example…
2) Governments don’t have to issue debt much less allow investment bankers to earn interest on it so we aren’t actually beholden to these financiers for anything.
3) Private banks aren’t really private so if they’re repeatedly funding asset bubbles and accentuating the business cycle we can alter their incentive structures to change their activities to better suit the greater good.
4) Monetary policy is not “one way to control inflation”. Raising interest rates may very well increase inflation for all we know. The mainstream neoclassical economic paradigm is so flawed that much of what people like George take for granted is entirely the opposite of reality or just plain irrelevant/wrong.
5) Full employment doesn’t necessarily lead to inevitable inflation (and for the vast majority of people inflation is a lesser evil than unemployment). Inflation rates may increase if you take an old school Keynesian approach of centralised investment for the sake of spending money into existence to stoke a boom. If instead the government provides an inflationary anchor in the form of a Jobs Guarantee both full employment and price stability may possible to achieve at the same time. The key to this is the realisation that the government as sovereign issuer of the currency can set the value of its currency if it chooses to do so. While ever it just spends money into existence via the market then it will risk causing inflation in prices for any resources on which it spends. If instead it just agrees to purchase any unused resources (e.g. unemployed Labour) at a set price it will not enter into competition for that resource beyond that set price and so inflation will not increase as it would if the government were competing for scarce resources in the market at market prices.
I could go on and on and on but I’m preaching to the choir here.my question is why do the vast bulk of opinions in the media on MMT come from people who are obviously ignorant of the most basic aspects of MMT? Why don’t these people recognise they are ignorant and go look up some of the primary MMT research or contact a professional economist involved in MMT and ask them? Why don’t they look at any of the empirical data on the impact of different monetary and fiscal policies and recognise that their preconceived ideas of how the economy works are obviously wrong?
God knows. What I know is I’m passed caring enough to try and persuade people to even go and look at MMT literature. Everyone thinks they know it all already so why waste my time?
Thanks
I echo that
I liked his left of centre argument – but as I noted, he fell on the basics
Your point (1) is key – MMT is simply how it actually is
Thank you Adam. I believe the continuing mis-description of MMT is framed by those who do not want public discussion of economic affairs to stray too far away from household-economics which neo-lib economists have conveniently offered as a basis for describing the errors of their detractors.
I guess that the value of MMT principles is the range of appropriate actions made possible. Not that specific courses of action are recommended. Those actions would be seen by neo-libs as what they oppose.
They generally oppose nationalisation in favour of retaining control by specific cliques. As often said here public or private ownership is less important than robust and intelligent management. MMT is the description of what actually happens and that can be judged as useful, robust and intelligent – or not.
Adam,
Re. your point #5 and inflation. Inflation, should it occur in the case of full employment, would occur because:
1. Wages , employment and, as such, aggregate demand would increase (and not, necessarily, as a direct result of the Government spending “money into existence via the market” or affecting “the prices for any resources on which it spends”) With my point being that inflation could result from full-employment levels of consumer demand regardless of where the govt. directs its spending.
2. The benefit of increased consumer demand could be captured by monopolies and oligopolies in various industries (including retail) by way of higher prices. They presently have the market power to do that and would do it in the absence of price controls or a comprehensive competition policy that would stop them.
That problem doesn’t arise doesn’t currently because we don’t have full employment or anything realistically near it, as such demand levels are lower.
Sorry to be contrarian but if we are going to correct George Kerevan we may as well get it right.
Marco
You’re right but I was addressing the author’s quibbles and some of the basic things he missed out about MMT. I wasn’t trying to be comprehensive in my critique nor am I be capable of being so.
Besides I think he did at least mention that the state can tax away spending power in order to control inflation, or words to that effect, therefore I didn’t mention it again myself.
Most importantly you’re correct that the extreme market power of various powerful actors is an enormous issue and unless the state acts to prevent rent seeking behaviour then the state’s fiscal powers’ effectiveness will be blunted.
Worse than that the raw power that accrues to those in the position to take rents will ensure that neoliberalism reasserts itself in short order after any attempted departure from business as usual. This is the biggest problem and one that I don’t think MMT economists fully address (though as a layman only intermittently interested in the subject Icould easily have just missed it).
If MMT economists haven’t fully addressed this I guess it’s probably because they’ve got too much on their plates already due to be so few. I wonder also if It’s more of a political question of how you get legislation through that effectively regulates the market to ensure it remains free and fair? Warren Mosler and others have made some broad suggestions about how the “private” banking industry could be better regulated. Obviously Richard’s work on tax is a big part of this equation. What I’m sure too few are workings on is the political strategy required to actually get us from here to a better place in the future.
The underlying problem is that because the vast majority of the public aren’t even aware mainstream macroeconomics is faulty and that there’s an alternative view on how it actually works there is neither the political impetus to address the failings of mainstream macroeconomics and trasfer that knowledge into political change nor the numbers of capable people to do it.
Politicians and the media are massively culpable in this failure.
Cheers Adam,
The point about inflation and consumer demand was just for clarification really and I hope I didn’t come across as being too serious, I wasn’t meaning to be.
I’m glad that your on board with the other point about rent-seeking and oligopoly. It is, in its given context, the biggest problem. It is not one that MMT economists address and I don’t think that we could say that this is because ‘they’ve got too much on their plates’ as you kindly suggest.
As far as I can tell it is just something of a howler. A big glaring hole that no one of significance seems to be picking up on. I’ve mentioned it here before, on Mitchell’s blog and various other forums. No no one disagrees with the suggestion or challenges it but the point doesn’t seem to to make any impression either. I’m not sure what to do. I’ll persist and escalate but only because someone has to.
And its not as if this is an isolated idea. It has clear historical precedent. We talk about this in the context of the Green New Deal but with the original New Deal the Roosevelt administration made competition policy a priority through the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), Robinson-Patman Act (1936) and other measures. While there is some debate and confusion about Roosevelt’s measures that is not important for our purposes. The key point is that competition policy and fiscal expansion were complimentary and synonymous as they should be.
The point wasn’t lost on those leaders in the 1930’s. It seems to be now, which is a worry because the neo-liberal era has seen a rise in oligopoly power and the concentration of ownership. The inflationary potential of that trend has been suppressed by permanent unemployment (stagnant, sub-optimal demand) and imported deflation (offshoring, cheap imports). A return to full-employment levels of demand would almost certainly expose a dormant problem if the question of market power isn’t addressed.
Thanks
Looking at the final para, I find much that is simplistic.
“.. MMT ignores the all-important fact that in capitalist economies the means of production (factories, technology) are privately owned by a narrow elite, whose only rationale is profit”
Not true, given that pension funds, or government sovereign wealth funds own significant amounts of shares and bonds. The rational for this ownership extends far beyond simple “profit”. I have owned shares for more than 40 years – my rationale is company growth & there are many like me.
“Competition between these capitalists results in relentless bouts of over-production and economic crisis — witness Apple’s current glut of iPhones”
It also results in better products. Over-production in one sector (mobile phones) does not lead to economic crises. The I.T boom/bust (2000) was caused by over-hype of the shares, the 2007/2008 by banksters. Over-production? I don’t think so.
“… governments can try to mop up over-production by borrowing and spending, using MMT. But this is an economic bandage, it does not eliminate the basic instability”
Governments could also have an industrial strategy which would go some way to addressing instability caused by markets.
“We can only do the latter via direct public ownership of the means of production plus central planning”
Nope: industrial strategy whilst allowing companies within that strategy to slug it out. ” direct public ownership of the means of production”..that would be British Leyland?
The claim that wages drove 1970s inflation misses out the twin oil shocks (which I lived through) – I can remember petrol at 25 pence a gallon going rapidly up to £1. The idea that wages alone was responsible for that is nuts. Prices rises first (due to rises in oil) followed by wage demands.
MMT is an explanation of how an economy/government finance/tax relate to each other. Why would it consider “class conflict”? As for the fat-cat banksters – I don’t think they will rake in much interest on gov debt (as claimed by the writer) – given current rates.
By the way, in the case of production, I support collective ownership of manufacturing where people in a company have a direct share of the company (there is a print company in Scotland where this has worked very well). But public ownership of the means of production (with the implication that there would be no other types of ownership) – laughable.
Cooperation is a model in need of development
Thanks for the commetary
I hope George calls in here
Indeed, this is well worth reading for a number of reasons:
Firstly it get discussion of MMT precisely where it needs to be: on the pages of a widely-read (at least in Scotland) daily newspaper so that a wider public audience is at least aware that MMT exists and, in relatively simple explanations, roughly how it works.
Secondly it draws attention to the fact that there is a viable alternative to the neoliberal economic orthodoxy of recent decades and the resultant boom and bust cycles which cause unnecessary hardship through imposition of austerity measures.
Thirdly it exposes the “household budget” analogy as a deceit used by successive governments. Even if many readers don’t get it right away, it will provide food for thought about how they’ve been conned by this spurious argument for decades.
Fourthly, while it’s a bit over the top to describe the disagreement between Richard and Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp as a “war”, it’s important that the weaknesses in GMK’s article are explained to the same readership to give a more balanced critique of MMT. It’s also important for differing opinions to be aired and debated, and, from the perspective of the Scottish independence movement, to keep the protagonists “in the tent” so that continuing development of the discussion is kept in the public awareness. That way ordinary voters become better-informed. It might also help reduce any tensions between Richard and GMK.
From my viewpoint, I’m delighted that this is now “out there” in the Scottish press, although I can’t see it getting an airing in the other Scottish papers or the Beeb other than for dogma-based scathing criticism.
You wait for ages for an MMT article in the Scottish media and another rolls up right away:
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2019/01/07/modern-monetary-theory-and-an-independent-scotland/
Suddenly MMT is flavour of the month – that should read ‘flavours of the month’ as there are now so many interpretations out there. It underlines my point (in a post on 5 Jan in a previous thread here) about the need for ACCURATE articles to get into the public’s awareness. Misleading explanations are more likely to cause confusion and turn-off a public in which the majority have little knowledge of economics.
I think he has another one coming….
George Kerevan has offered a Marxist critique of MMT (that’s OK) based on the implied premise that monetary solutions and, for that matter fiscal solutions, can’t solve everything. With that much I tend to agree. His overt premise is that MMT doesn’t resolve the old chestnut of excess industrial capacity (or over-production” as he calls it) nor the tyranny of the financial market casino.
Well, that’s not entirely true. The worst aspect of excess capacity is unemployment (the excess capacity of labour) and that’s what the Job Guarantee is meant to address. It does so directly by employing people and implicitly by directing unused capacity into valuable public works and unmet social needs.
As for recurring crises of capital markets. I would simply assume that ‘MMT’ knows that monetary measures don’t resolve everything and that they need to be accompanied by strong financial regulation as well as tax policies that reduce inequality and restrict the power of capital.
My personal critique of MMT theory concerns its naively simple acceptance of the orthodox notion that excessive inflation should not occur until the economy has reached full capacity. That notion assumes a competitive market economy. But we don’t have a competitive economy. We have one that is dominated by oligopoly and monopoly industries with considerable market power. Those industries have the power to capture the benefits of rising income and employment by raising prices.
Good monetary and fiscal policies should also be accompanied by comprehensive and systematic competition policy – but I don’t know of anyone else who says that or makes it the priority that it needs to be.
Strong competition policy would also assist in addressing the “over-production” problem that Kerevan mentions. In a competitive economy competition acts as a leveler and demand meets supply more efficiently (yeah, I know that’s theory but there’s quite some truth to it). My point is that “over-production” is largely a function of oligopoly and weak aggregate demand – where the market power and income share of big business is excessive and the income share of the wage earning consumer is too low.
Over-production and excess capacity, in the short term at least, is the result of of an imbalance. At any rate I would suggest that a Job Guarantee, the flow-on effect that it would have on wages, financial regulation and strong competition policy combined would go a long way toward addressing that imbalance and Kerevan’ s concerns more generally.
BTW I’m not in Scotland so I don’t know this but I’m hoping that the MMT debate isn’t getting too heavily conflated with the debate over the need to ditch the pound.
There is a distinct and separate case for an independent currency – for independent exchange rates and interest rates and a Scottish central bank – that doesn’t necessarily involve MMT. I just think that for now, that alone, is more than enough for the public to absorb with the all the other independence issues swirling around in the mix.
The public have got to be able to grasp the basics first. As a pragmatic concern too much information all at once may not be a good thing and it can be exploited by the self-interested Sterling advocates who would be happy to create confusion (so that people will be inclined to stick with what they know) I would prefer to see the currency debate kept clear and simple. The sophisticated stuff can come later.
I think the two are related, unavoidably
This is becoming a lively debate in Scotland. Cameron Archibald has witten a piece in Bella Caledonia today; ‘Modern Monetary Theory and an Independent Scotland’, in answer to Macintyre-Kemp. It has generated some consequent comment.
I would suggest that anyone concerned to further MMT or challenge the neo-liberal faltering ‘conventional wisdom’ may wish to consider contributing to the Scottish debate while it is ‘live’.
I haven’t found much depth reading on MMT. I agree the descriptive phase on money creation and that spending starts before tax rolls in and spare capacity can be encouraged Richard’s point on what the role of taxation then becomes more important here. What the spending is on and generates (e.g. social capital, infrastructure, economic capacity and returns) is the next consideration. This rather takes us back to good investing principles, comparative costs between positive money financing and whatever banks and their shadows really do. Positive money clearly looks cheaper than bank involvement. It’s at this point I leave simple argument models behind and want detailed facts and figures. I suspect the private sector and private financing are not as good as claimed or held in public consciousness. At the same time one doesn’t want Mugabe doing ‘public sector’ investment. After this, we need a review of quite how we would record gains from positive money investment and what terms like ‘only spending what we can afford’ mean. I’d guess money will turn out to be a very inaccurate counter owing to exclusions in what we consider economics and accounting – the environment being a classic and people kept poor another. Further to this, would successful positive money mean for existing wealth and monies it’s held in and other consequences of being able to whistle-up investment cash without the current institutions?
Kerevan’s issue with MMT is completely absurd. Essentially if wages rise then there will be a bourgeoisie backlash.
The claim that MMT doesn’t recognise class conflict is completely wrong. Surely MMT is the recognition that monetarism and financialisation have been used as weapons to increase inequality and exploitation. The history of class struggle is the working class demanding control of and access to decent housing, education, employment and health care. In the 21st century monetarism has a huge impact on all our lives and MMT if implemented would create democratic accountability to a sphere of politics which at the moment has very little.
Yours is the obvious counter-argument to what he says
I have to say that I think the private sector can be much better regulated than has happened if there was a government of the willing
It is beginning to happen on tax
It could happen elsewhere…..
We are too often stuck in discussion of straw models from newspapers. MMT has review here – https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/105973/1/imk-wp_109_2013.pdf and is compared with other monetary policy here – http://jjay.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/contentgroups/economics/mainstreammacroeconomicsmodernmonetarytheory.pdf
These are friendly critiques. A common theme is MMT is traditional economics with unconventional policy recommendations. There is the Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics. There is plenty of support for Richard’s integrated monetary and taxation control – http://dems.unimib.it/repec/pdf/mibwpaper356.pdf – though I’m not aware of any with MMT focus.
Scotland, if we had any sense, would be a country above a line drawn below Bristol to just south of Norwich.
Do you want to write my literature reviews for me?
Only on the map of Scotland on literature review. I’m kinda with Marco on the Marxist critique. We really need something on the daily detail of people’s lives under our shining theories. I’m sure from my reading there is loads of support for what you are saying in greater clarity. Some others might need to know why their trolling is so boring and inept, I was born in Alloa and tend to a version of the map when the Jacobites reached Derby.
🙂
Hmmm……
I’m not so sure MMT has ignored the vested interest angle because it is ‘utopian’. Nor do I believe that Gordon has put his finger on all the salient issues.
Rather, a lot of effort and time has been put into refining the technical language of how it actually works by proponents and to get people to engage with those ‘factuals’. It has been rather like rediscovering something we have been taught to forget about.
The issues with MMT are as follows:
1) Those who support MMT have yet in my view to settle their technical differences – see for example the differences between Mitchell v Murphy on the issue of tax and MMT. MMT is still being refined in the MMT ‘community’.
2) Once we are clear about what MMT is (and tax, and everything else that interacts with it) who needs to be won over? There are 3 categories:
A) The Private Elite – Yes Gordon is right to point this group out. But they are only powerful because of access to (B) below. This group needs to see the benefits of full employment in terms of company turnover. But the key here with this group is to decouple investment law that puts investors first before employees and consumers. Once that cycle is broken (for example Steve Keen calls for a minimum 5 year lock in for investors to help give workers, R&D and management more stability in a real business cycle) they might come around?
We need not nationalise everything if we follow Keen. I’m not for that really.
B) Politicians – These are even more important than (A). They hold the key to getting MMT in use in macro policy and must be an area of focus for MMT proponents. Basically this lot have ran out of ideas. It might be just a matter of time which is why MMT proponents have to settle their differences quickly.
C) Voters. This is the toughest nut to crack as out here there are people who live without hope and expect nothing from politics to solve their day to day problems. And this includes the Left who tend to spend too much time telling them (the voter) that their lives are shit to win votes but don’t really do anything about it (except propose stuff like employees on company boards – duh!).
And there is also a (D) – more supra national bodies that need to start speaking up for MMT and think tanks competing with the dodgy orthodox ones that all to often get air time because of their dodgy funding.
No problems then….
Well, you tell me? As ever I have my thoughts but you are closer to this than me.
When Neo-liberalism came on the scene many moons ago (and previously to that it had been seen a some form of ‘quaint theory’ at the margins of economic thought) people seemed to accept it quite readily.
2008 was supposed to be when the sand was taken from our eyes for ever but here we still are.
Neo-liberalism, orthodox monetarism, austerity – all bad ideas but they aren’t half durable. Particularly when politicians support the elite who insist on them.
Might we have to wait for MMT until the political system changes?
At some stage, MMT as an idea needs to resolve any loose areas that may exist amongst its proponents.
Has the ‘MMT crowd’ got its act together? All I do is speak as a working person who knows that he and many others would benefit from the policy.
When a new idea comes along to challenge entrenched ideas like neo-liberal economics, the new kid on the block is often given such a high bar of truth to jump over any weakness or loose end is used to undermine it. That’s all I’m saying.
MMT has not got its act together
That is why I wrote this. https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/11/09/modern-monetary-theorists-need-to-take-a-long-and-hard-look-at-how-they-are-campaigning-if-their-case-is-to-be-won/
Randy Wray told me it was ‘not helpful’. I disagree. Making clear what MMT really is and separating out the consequences as choices has to be helpful, in my opinion.
Problems of this kind are never fixed. There is still argument about what Adam Smith believed. If you spend your time pursuing a “pure” MMT I suggest that you will eventually find that, somewhere along the process, that you had ‘lost the plot’ long ago; and nobody – nobody – will be listening.
I am not interested in pure MMT and have argued against it
I am interested in what MMT means
That matters
Public ownership of the means of production is thought by many to be laughable. Maybe so, but the current system isn’t making me laugh, but would if it wasn’t such an appallingly greedy regime run for the benefit of a small, though increasingly numerous, army of oligarchs who capture the surplus off the backs of insecure and underpaid workers, the unemployed, the sick and the State which socialises the costs (of education, infrastructure, health care and the rest) which enable these dynamos of capitalism to operate and prosper. (as Mazzucato showed the costs of virtually all the clever bits of the iPhone were borne by the State while the profits accrued to Apple which has a war-chest sitting somewhere offshore)
While co-operatives enable the workforce to share in the surplus more fairly, they do not socialise these benefits more generally. We need to find ways of ensuring that the State (us) is rewarded for the benefits it provides for services which no capitalist is going to provide free at the point of use but which the capitalist uses as a cost-free contribution to his/her business.
The mega-expenditures which will be necessary to mitigate global warming, is another example of the free-business-lunch as they will be borne largely, perhaps completely, by the State, yet it is certain sectors of business which are actively frustrating the imperative to take action and meanwhile continue to contribute to the problem, yet will no doubt reap any benefits of successful mitigation.
We need a new paradigm of State-private ownership, one which socialises the rewards as well as the risks, rather than the quasi-monopolistic oligopolies we have at present – Swiss Railways is the antithesis of British Leyland showing that public ownership can be highly efficient.
Your last point is absolutely right
It’s not the ownership that matters
It’s how the assets are managed for whose gain that does matter
And that will always be a vector
MMT never quite seems to know if it is a description of the way fiat currencies work, or something to be adopted as a policy. Richard often seems to insist on the former, but when he says things like “the deficit does have to be worried about, but how it is managed is entirely different using MMT”, it looks a lot like a policy – one where governments/central banks create money at will to soak up demand and then control inflation with tax.
One the one hand this seems quite promising, but I do also worry about this from a broadly left perspective. Because if the purpose of tax is to control excess demand (and hence inflation) then it seems to me some taxes may be rather better at doing this than others. Taxes on income and taxes on expenditure will certainly control excess demand because they will limit expenditure in a fairly direct way. But other taxes – land taxes and wealth taxes – will not.
I worry therefore that the logic of MMT, so far as it is policy proposal, is regressive. It’s logic favours taxes on income and expenditure, rather than on assets and wealth.
Or have I completely misunderstood?
If you do not get it all 8 do not blame you
First, mmt does not prioritise taxes on anyth8ng. It pe4mits choice. The bias you suggest does not exist.
What will always be required is a balance of taxes though. Under MMT there will be taxes on income and spending. But there is no requirement that they have greater emphasis: taxes withdrawn from the economy control inflation wherever they come from.
I wasn’t making the claim that mmt proponents favour income and expenditure taxes over others, but if tax is functional in the way described the logic is to use those that work best. That won’t be wealth taxes.
Of course an MMt government could introduce wealth taxes too for all sorts of good social reasons, but it seems to me they would be doing so without the theoretical backing and without any real economic rationale. It would be simply be a question of doing down the rich. I worry that that may not be sustainable.
Or do you disagree that some taxes will be more effective at managing demand than others ?
PS thinking aloud, I suppose part of the logic of land taxes should be precisely to reduce land values. This on the political basis that if values are too high “strivers” have nothing to realistically aim for.
MMT would not favour indirect trades, in my view, because they are regressive
The desire is to take demand out whilst not harming well being
Higher rates of income tax and wealth related taxes do that very well
Of course, tax is not the only solution. But I see no reason for your concerns
The precarity of many people’s lives is central to ‘going green’ and full-employment issues in MMT or whatever we call that is collected together under the banner. The real issues for me are political and political corruption – much like Plato if I share none of his solutions. Science is great because you cab sweep aside idiot opinion, wrestle with your own soaked-up cultural dross and get into demonstration with others doing the same. Bacon had the outline in about 1600. It’s all less to do with method to me as a scientist (or even ex-cop) than aspiration of what we are and can be as humans. Scotland has 60% of Europe’s potential green (obviously non-solar) energy. If we did develop this, one hopes it would not be in the spirit of over-pricing it to the English to get our own back for past crimes.
Scotland is the Saudi of 21st century Europe
One example well worth following is the Isle of Eigg in the Inner Hebrides. Since the buy-out of the island from private ownership by the islanders’ trust it has gone from reliance on environmentally damaging and expensive diesel generators (forced on the islanders by the owner(s) presumably for personal profit) to a local grid system drawing its power from solar, wind and mini-hydro sources. A battery farm stores the energy so as to even out supply and demand. In its wake, the islanders have set up small businesses (crafts, a brewery, inshore fishery etc) using the internet to market their wares.
Universities use the Eigg model as an example for environmental students because of its green credentials, its relative cheapness to run once set up, and because it’s entirely self-contained – no expensive inter-connectors to the mainland and not subject to the UK’s so-called free market in energy.
The reserved role of Westminster in the halting/slowing of funding for tidal energy R&D has hampered Scotland’s development in that area. There are encouraging results coming from initial installations in the Pentland Firth, but the fjords of the west coast offer multiple opportunities for tidal developments which have as yet not been explored. Sometimes the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, but as long as there’s a moon in the sky, the tides go on for ever. It’s an open goal which Scotland can go for if Westminster
devolves energy (unlikely), or if/when Scotland goes independent.
Agreed
I don’t like to be pedantic (well, I do sometimes) but all energy is “solar” in one form or other – fossil fuels, biomass, wave, wind etc – with the possible exceptions of nuclear, although that comes from another star, and geothermal. Solar pv is viable in Scotland, as we have a similar amount of solar energy as Germany, which leads in pv installations: http://www.siser.ac.uk/solar-in-scotland
I’m in Spain at the moment, where the sun seems to shine continuously and I’ve seen large pv installations – but this is where the EU could be innovative and revolutionary by setting a green agenda for renewables for Europe to be self-sufficient in energy.
You are ignoring tidal and wind when only discussing PV
Scotland has those in very large quantities
If MMT has not got its act together then that is a shame.
Should we start with a national symposium to hack it out once and for all? As ever you seem to be doing your bit by applying your usual intellectual rigour.
I agree however that there are some areas that we will have to deal with only when we see what happens otherwise MMT wanders into the sort of predictive practice closer to the clairvoyance of lesser theories.
MMT needs to have a certain amount of plan B and plan C scenarios.