Money is non-physical. That is the core argument. MMT merely posits national money printing states admitting this. It is another example of linear thinking in our very complex world. Our limits to growth are physical, including finite land, water, soil, rates of natural geochemical cycles, and rates of species regeneration. USA economy boomed post-ww2 with accelerated growth by energy from the physical resource of cheap to extract Oil, and powered machines to extract plentiful minerals and make stuff.

So money is applied, not in bulk, but specificly directed, as messages like hormone signalling systems in biology. It should be an indication of what resources are available, to instruct the investments in, or the decommissioning of resource processing machinery. In biology hormones control which protein enzymes are constructed or taken apart, in evolved systems of homeostasis.

Nations and states ought to be concerned with lives and biology support systems getting biological and social needs met, rather than all-resource consuming suicidal haste of industrial capitalism. So a better model for living is shown by states such as Cuba, which aim to meet biological needs, while faced with resource scarcity, which is our finite planets long-term condition, which fits in with nature’s circular economy. I don’t know if Cuba government even thinks with MMT concepts, only that they are more grounded in biological life requirements.

A UBI – universal basic income – applied for consumption of subsistence and renewable resources, and for the sustainment and exchange of biologically necessary resources, could be a very smart move. Only if our global militaristic states were not intent on cannibalism of every other state in resource competition, and regimenting their populations to suit.

Nation states of capitalism would hate this, as they require dependent, cheap Labor, forced specialisation of human skills, and a “market” that needs their products.

If the population already has independent biological subsistence, with or without UBI, then they can tell other state capitalism demands to go to Hell. Hence modern industrial states have destroyed biological independence and subsistence wherever it stood in the way of resource or markets acquisition.

The failure to be honest about MMT is a failure of human ruling social groups, wearing the mantle of the state, to be honest, that what they really want is power and wealth and to be able to control other peoples lives. States are into dominance hierarchies, both internal and external, which bring ruin to any hope of equitable and balanced co-existence with the biosphere and evolution. Powerful social organisms are a disaster for normal evolution species and resource balance.

The size and concentration of human populations, and city environments are causing severe and competitive social stresses. As if we are all suffering from PTSD of being brought up in national state systems. Everyone is a little insane. Now we play zero-sum games, and cause global heating, instead of cooperative ones where everyone gets to live on a stable biosphere with abundance for all.

Some people are still trying for a better system, but they are losing. A UBI might ease some of the social stresses, but only put off the inevitable. I suspect everything is too far gone, including global heating.

Resource constraints will only intensify social stresses, and worsen system misbehaviours, and for these predicaments, massive collapse and breakdowns is going to be the “Solution” for global-complex-systems enforcement.