Scott Ferguson’s Declarations of Dependence relies on something called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a theoretical paradigm that, like Lesko, also makes wild promises about providing free government money.

His question marks are a trenchant symbol of how his particular variety of charlatanism functions: it does not provide bullshit answers to real questions, but marries bullshit questions to real answers.

It consists in treating the public sphere of language and knowledge as if it were some secret and proprietary reserve of arcane wisdom, accessible only to those in the know.

In fact, most of it is perfectly valid, though already widely available, public information. Despite this dubious image, little of what is contained in his books is inaccurate. His fuzzy eyebrows and awkwardly-tilted glasses imbue his outlandish puffery with the air of a huckster from a bygone era. Lesko looks like the bastard child of Groucho Marx and a lithe carnival barker. Lesko is the informercial pitchman best known for donning a green suit covered with question marks and proclaiming that he can provide viewers with free government money-provided that you purchase his book, of course. While Matthew Lesko may not be a household name, anyone who has watched broadcast television after 10pm in the last decade or so is undoubtedly familiar with his work. However, I am afraid that Professor Mises would scarcely enjoy what seems the only adequate way to repay the debt to complete the misfortune, a socialist teacher might invite his students in a class on dialectical materialism to go and look at the statue, in order to exemplify the Hegelian List der Vernunft which made even the staunchest of bourgeois economists unwittingly serve the proletarian cause.” For it was his powerful challenge that forced the socialists to recognise the importance of an adequate system of economic accounting to guide the allocation of resources in a socialist economy Both as an expression of recognition for the great service rendered by him and as a memento of the prime importance of sound economic accounting, a statue of Professor Mises ought to occupy an honourable place in the great hall of the Ministry of Socialisation or of the Central Planning Board of the socialist state. “Socialists have certainly good reason to be grateful to Professor Mises, the great advocatus diaboli of their cause.

Adam ferguson when money dies