Practically every student of Austrian economics is familiar, at least in passing, with the moment when Keynes said the proverbial quiet part out loud in the foreword to the German edition of his General Theory. One translation of that text reads,

[T]he theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under the conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.

That Keynes’s preferred policies are more easily implemented in a totalitarian state is often given as evidence that Keynes himself preferred such states. That is probably true, but it is perhaps more accurate to state that the nature of Keynes’s system works better in a totalitarian state because such a state has the ability to centrally control the various macro structures that must be controlled to respond to movements in the economy. In short, a system like Keynes’s demands certain powers for the state, otherwise the system can only be implemented partially, at best, and utopia becomes unreachable. ...

Elsewhere, I have written how the proponents of forcible civilian disarmament are not merely trying to make the people helpless wards of the state—they are in fact hacking away at several fundamental principles of English common law that protect individuals from state overreach. Security of private property, presumption of innocence, freedom from prior restraint, and requirement of an evidentiary basis for tort claims are all pillars of our civilization, so deeply ingrained in our thought processes that many take them for granted. These principles protect us from so many disastrous incentives that it is hard to gauge the scope of the damage from losing them. ...

What MMT demands is—in addition to being able to freely print and spend—the power to arbitrarily tax wherever, whenever, and however much it decides on a whim, with no political consequences, and no extended debate. In order for MMT policy to “work,” these few remaining restrictions on state control of the economy must be removed. ...

Thus, we see that the logical end point of any state wishing to implement MMT policy suggestions is totalitarian control of the economy and abolition of private property. As students of economics, we can point to a practically unlimited stream of very convincing reasons that any system that pushes in such a direction as hard as MMT does should be ignored as the self-destructive gibberish that it is.

Keynes—in suggesting that states with political power over the economy like that of Hitler’s Germany were better-suited to implement his policy suggestions—was a piker by comparison to the MMTers, who demand an immeasurably heavier yoke be placed upon our necks. It is up to us to ensure that they never do.