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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsdo we really need a money system?
I'm gonna say this,and I know some will think I'm crazy, but all I ask of you, is to try to look beyond this money system and into another way of being..
I think the world doesn't even need a monetary system .
And I think it would be far better off without one. really.
No need for money no need for the evil that comes from it.
Every single human being on the planet has a job to do,what gives the person joy,what fascinates him,what makes him curious or what he likes to build invent design.. He does his job and is compensated with every comfort man has made or will make in moderation. Humans like to make and create, think learn explore and invent it is in our nature.Man is entitled to what humankind creates together simply by being alive part of the human tribe, we all are entitled to all that humans manufacture design and create together. Some may produce more than others,regardless there is enough for all.Look at all the things that go to waste because not enough profit can be made off it.
If there was no need for profit how much would go to waste?
I do what ever it is I do,in return I have a decent home car T.V. kids pets and time to enjoy all that is in my pursuit of moderate happiness. There is enough.
Without money no one gets rich and no one has power over and equality is realized.
I think the banksters are scared to death if we fell out of love with money,if we realized as long as we love money more than life we are stuck playing this insane rigged token game that allows exploiters of humankind to 'modify our behaviors' .We are taught to fear telling the truth when a corporation hurts people, we are taught that saying no to a bully boss is wrong ,treating others with kindness will make us vulnerable, or sharing means we have less for ourselves..etc.. Our lives are dominated ,used up playing a sick token game that needs not even exist for human beings to be able to exist together.I think the token money game hold us all hostage, our lives,dreams,morality, by the love of money.
Just a thought.
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defacto7
(13,485 posts)In a slightly more perfect world, that would be a reasonable way to be live out humanity. Money itself is a big nothing. I envision that in my mind once in a while and you do finally realize that money is just paper or electrons in the form of numeric digits or some kind of metal. Then sometimes I think it's not the money that is the problem, it's the way we save it, how we pile it, how we let others control it. That could be the real demon.
brooklynite
(94,748 posts)...just as realistic.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)It'll never fly.
brooklynite
(94,748 posts)
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)for one thing, those who want to lord it over you will find another way if there's no money.
For another, you speak of your home, TV, and presumably other small comforts as a coffee maker, car, home...
The problem with a non-monetary system is that you can't barter for those things. Somehow a value has to be set for everything you might want to trade and somehow the resources have to be allocated for chip plants, metal foundries, raw materials...
Fact is that the invention of money is what allowed economic expansion and invention. That it is being misused doesn't mean it's not a very useful thing.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)There has to be some way of establishing value of goods & services. As you stated, that it is being misused does not mean it's not a very useful thing.
undergroundpanther
(11,925 posts)Why hang a price tag on it,sell it so you can get more than you have? When is enough enough.?
Profit is theft.
When you die all that you have is no longer useful to you?
When we refuse to share and hang a price tag on everything there will always be inequality.
You still love money. sigh.
sharing can destroy capitalism.
Caring about the welfare of others, and the refusal to by stand,can put down bullies who would desire to lord over a community fast. fast.
It takes emotional intelligence,maturity and compassion and a developed ethical sense of right and wrong to live without lords and token based behavior modification games..
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)And one suspects that I am not telling you anything that you don't already know. It's a system of exchange or a tool that we use to get the items we need or want. The computer, tablet or phone upon which you are writing your posts was designed, developed, produced, transported and retailed by various people along the way. Just how are they to receive the things they need (groceries, shelter and alike) without some system of exchanging your acceptance of their finished product for the items which they want or need. Can you provide them housing or groceries through a barter arrangement?
And as to my alleged love of money? Well, you have not a bunny's idea of my thought process, so I urge you to not put words into my mouth.
Throd
(7,208 posts)I remember when I didn't have any and it really really sucked.
ChazII
(6,206 posts)and well thought out. It is refreshing to see common sense and courtesy in a response. Thank you.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)Your post is most refreshing and appreciated. I believe I understand the sentiment of the OP and I do understand that our financial system has been perverted to a great degree, but a system of exchange of the benefit of labor and resources must be in place as no man or woman is an island and we simply cannot produce everything we need to survive much less flourish in our lives. 
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)That you personally would bring to the table. Barter is fine if everybody produces stuff and has skills but what if you have no skills or goods.
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)How else do you give the most efficient incentives to imagination and hard work?
You seem to have some fantasy that a pat on the back and a "Good job there, sport!" will get people not only get out of a warm comfortable bed to go and do things they would rather not do, but which are necessary for our species to live a healthy, civilized life.
Or perhaps the fantasy is that those things are unnecessary? Either way most of us disagree. Even the most hard core socialists that I have read concede the need for money as a way to facilitate trade.
TampaAnimusVortex
(785 posts)If you take out of the ground what you put into it, you profit nothing... but you also starve. You had better hope you profit if you plan on eating.
What if I grow tomatoes on my farm and the guy next to me grows apples? Do we both profit if we trade? I think so.
As for value, there is a reason why diamonds and gold have more value than leaves. You can rail and scream again value all you want, but it still exist, it's a fact of reality - and money is simply a tool for measuring value. You might as well be arguing to get rid of rulers and yardsticks because it offends you that some people are taller than others.
Now, if you want to talk about distribution of value, that's a different discussion entirely... but you cant start from the premise of getting rid of value or even money. If you get rid of money, you will simply replace it will some similar concept that you may call it a different name, but you will still have to assign value at some point. You will have to tell me why leaves are of less value to a starving man than nutritious food - or why a gallon of fuel is more valuable to that person rushing their loved one to a hospital vs that pile of leaves.
brooklynite
(94,748 posts)...e.g. receiving more than you actually need in a transaction is wrong in some way. If you give me twice as many apples as I can eat because that's how you value my tomatoes, somehow it's unfair.
just as nutty a concept.
TampaAnimusVortex
(785 posts)Its the concept of profit itself... the OP very explicitly states it multiple times in about 15 different ways.
There's a segment of people that don't seem to understand that for companies to grow, they do so with profits (which allows them to employ more and more people mind you). Costco was at one time a small business and if they didn't profit, they couldn't employ the thousands of workers they now hire. So exactly what is too much profit for them and wheres the incentive for them to continue to work as hard as they do, employing the number of people they do if you want to cut or limit their profits?
Now, if you want to argue that too much profit is some certain fraction of market share, that's a discussion on monopoly or anti-trust law, which is related, but is a different discussion.
If you want to discuss personal wealth accumulation, that too is a different discussion... but companies and corporations that are employing people? I cant imagine anyone attacking them growing in a time where we have a soft job market and people are currently looking for good jobs as it is. This undercurrent of hating a good economy and prospering companies is counterproductive and insane.
pnwmom
(108,997 posts)Or how does this money-less world work, exactly?
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)And in return we get to their bead creations.
dkf
(37,305 posts)Who enjoys farming anyway? Does anyone? If we all did what we enjoy who collects the trash or kills and butchers the cows pigs and chickens?
Bay Boy
(1,689 posts)I cut down a tree. Saw it into boards. Plane it. Sand it. Assemble it into a bookcase. Stain it. Then I sell it to you. How is that theft?
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)If you are one of the people in the long supply chain who make coffee makers, you are not out there farming. You rely on the profits from what you sell to buy food. Somehow, even in a system without money, we'd need to figure out how much making a coffeemaker could contribute so we'd know we had enough to feed those people.
And if you are a doctor, you need to make enough money from treating people to buy food, shelter, keep the lights on, etc.
And the farmer needs to have enough extra from what he grows (on average) to be able to afford to buy medicine and pay the doctor.
Money isn't some abstract thing - money and the pricing system allows us to plan for what we need.
If we guaranteed every person the basics, we'd have a lot of people making stuff they loved, but no one wanting to do the scutwork.
Who fixes the sewers in your system? There are a lot of jobs that just aren't that thrilling, like a truck driver perhaps. Most people do those jobs purely for money.
I don't think your proposal makes any sense at all, and I think if it were ever attempted it would shortly become a system of slavery, which is essentially what communist planned economies turned into for many people. If you think it's bad to have to be a truck driver to earn a living, imagine what hell it would be to be a truck driver because some in authority forced you to be one. In the end, you'd have a much worse standard of living and NO WAY TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
A HERETIC I AM
(24,380 posts)You've never driven 80,000 pound, 75' long articulated vehicle down a 6 mile long, 7% grade in the snow.
Or for that matter, driven into a sunrise in the mountains.
Some truckers certainly do the job for the money and many others do it because it's the only decent job they could get with the education they have.
And others, like me, do it because we love it.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and suppose you just chose trucking as an example, but if you'll pardon me saying so, your ignorance of the industry and it's workers is apparent.
As for the OP and the rest of the thread, I have no comment.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)For most. You may be comfortable with your skill and the type who really enjoys that type of challenge.
I had no desire to denigrate truck drivers. I have met many who were highly skilled, some very educated, and two who were extremely intelligent and did the job because it paid well and gave them time to pursue other very intellectual pursuits.
The reality is that trucking pays well because it IS a highly demanding job with more than a few rough aspects which carries a tremendous amount of responsibility. If we couldn't pay people for what they really do, we would have far more accidents and a lot more shortages of goods.
The reason I picked trucking is that it's so essential - if we ever had a long-haul trucking strike, NY would be in deep trouble in a week and in a disaster in two.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)textbook has never existed in any human society, ever. As for the rest of your reply, yes.
That may seem to be a minor point until you consider that the whole of the financial scheme as it has and still exists is nothing more than ubiquitous theft. Currency is required to facilitate trade as it serves as a marker to track what is given and received by whom, but all the rest is a drag on the system of production, distribution, and consumption.
Ron Green
(9,823 posts)money will be more in balance with the rest of life.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)to keep large scale, let alone global economies going.
Unremarkable economists will invariably point out that barter is not workable, and that is true. What they will not say, and likely don't even know, is that one has never existed, ever.
Humanity has existed for the overwhelming majority of its existence in small communities operating in what can only be described as a socialistic system. Trade as we have come to understand it is a recent and fatally flawed system.
If you are really interested in this topic I highly recommend Debt: The First 5,000 years. The less formal education you have in economics the better because greatly reduces the volume of what you would have to unlearn.
Edit: DU seems to have a persistent bug with links. the title is; Debt: The First 5,000 years by David Graeber.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)undergroundpanther
(11,925 posts)Lion prides exist and do not pay other lions to eat.Birds don't pay the biggest fattest bird to have access to mulberries.
even monkeys know how unfairness in distribution of wealth is wrong.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57497280/video-monkey-angrily-rejects-unequal-pay/
What made us forget how important equality and fairness in wealth is to our very happiness
So why the fuck do we have to pay the greediest wealthiest humans to exist?
It's WRONG.
Token systems can be used as behavior modification tools.
http://www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Token-economy-system.html
money modifies people's minds for it is just a HUGE token system controlled by very rich assholes.
How long did it take for Enron employees to tell the truth about how enron executives were screwing people over??
Their behavior was Modified by the money/token system that is why.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)....where even the least of us are cared for.
Right Wingers like to believe in the whole "survival of the fittest" crap (as if they would naturally win that contest) but that is NOT human nature. Greed is not a virtue and has not been the driving force of civilization.
cali
(114,904 posts)archaelogical finds do not support that claim
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)Only after they have had their fill, or when they meet a superior force, will they "share" their kill.
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)so, when your baby needs medicine, and the doctors only need bread, and all you have is meat, I guess the baby dies.
MineralMan
(146,334 posts)Money is tokens. No difference.
pnwmom
(108,997 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)I have a friend who lives in Africa. She lives in a poor country where the government is small, ineffectual and broke and can't afford to provide much of anything so as a result there aren't many jobs, or much security or healthcare*.
So, I send her money occasionally to help her out.
But what is that actual "money". It's just a few electronic signals that's then converted into bits of paper.
But with that money she can then go and buy food, get medical treatment, fix her roof or whatever.
If you multiplied that and put more money in more people's pockets in that country - then suddenly you have people moving around, doing stuff, selling stuff, fixing stuff.
And once there's cash circulating in the economy people start to get ideas. Like John in the village wants to buy a radio so he collects up some coconuts or whatever and takes them to the town and sells them. Before you know it John's a small businessman. Maybe he's not rich, but people in the town have enough spare cash to buy his wares, so that keeps him busy and his customers satisfied. John can then buy a radio off another businessman, start fixing up his house (paying someone for the paint or whatever) and the money starts to circulate. It's just bits of paper but suddenly it's moving around organizing stuff and motivating people.
That's really the only difference between the third world and the first world. In the first world in the second half of the 20th century average citizens had spare cash in their pocket and the government provided jobs and money so that infrastructure and other services could be maintained, fixed or even improved.
If you take this money out of the economy and out of people's pockets then the organization and motivation starts to break down and things slow down and get worse for the majority of people.
*BTW I'm not saying that this situation is true of all African countries. Some African countries are making big strides in economic development.
undergroundpanther
(11,925 posts)with the people who need?
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)To just feed someone who sits watching you and gives nothinh in return. If I was to supply you with food what services would you give in return and would they be valuable to me rather than just somethomg you want to do. Sorry buy a few beads or some pieve of your art might work once but not a lifetime.
magellan
(13,257 posts)Neither do sick partners, disabled siblings and debilitated old folks. Yet we all toil for one or the other at some point, because we love them, or at the least feel it's our duty to care for them.
Are the children of a single mother with a HS diploma and a minimum wage job of less value than those of a married couple who are both high earners? Capitalism says yes. A market based economy will always assign a currency value to people and resources. It rewards greed and punishes those who, for whatever reason, are unable to game the system in their favor.
We think that's a natural state only because its been imposed on us for so long by those at the top of the resource chain...but it isn't natural, or necessary. There's more than enough for everyone.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)Will support us in the future, our partners are our partners so we support them. The question is would you work your ass off just to support someone elses hobby with no real gain for yoi or your family. The poster wants no money yet to have their needs met by others so they can create. Would you work your ass off to support them.
magellan
(13,257 posts)Unless I misread you and you didn't mean that you shouldn't be expected to give something to those who sit around doing nothing.
magellan
(13,257 posts)...then there's no reason to "work your ass off" to provide for others. You'd "work your ass off" to be the best you can be, and to contribute your talent to the whole. Sure, there will be some who do nothing. As now. But there will be many more who, once unshackled from the need to grind away for the bare necessities, will take advantage of the freedom to enrich themselves and society.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)Cleaning toilets, sewers etc. there will still be hard and nasty jobs needing doing while a whole swathe of society sits around flyong kites, creating or pondering their naval.
magellan
(13,257 posts)We have the technology now to ensure that no one need slave at filthy jobs to sustain the rest of us. We have the science to create self-sustaining communities. The only reason it hasn't been deployed en masse is COST.
How many more people would have solar systems or be driving hybrids/electric cars if these things were made affordable to the majority? What exactly would be the downside to that?
You seem to be of the belief that without the whip of having to provide necessities for ourselves we'd all sit around watching the grass grow. That's a very dim and unrealistic view of human beings. It's akin to those who say people who live in social democracies, where they never need go without food or health care or a roof over their heads, prefer to live on those benefits than work. And yet they can't point to one social democracy where most people aren't fully employed whenever possible, and more often in professions THEY choose.
People want to be productive. Most would prefer it be at something they're actually interested in. To suggest that given the choice everyone would sit around finger-painting tells me you don't get out much.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)Say the poster was to move into my river lot cabin, would you really expect me to have to provide all their needs including art supplirs so they could sit playing with beads as im working the land around them to provide for them. This is basically what the poster wants, why would I work my ass off when I could simply grow enough to feed my family and then go fishing. Without some sort of profit no one is going to work beyond the minimum needed. Would you work for free after you have put the minimum hours in.
magellan
(13,257 posts)Unless you invited them and had laid out the conditions first, that would be silly. And that isn't what the OP is saying at all.
The reason most people want profit is to ensure they always have what they need. When access to resources and technology is no longer limited by what you can afford, you're freed to educate yourself in a discipline that interests you, one you can excel at, and that way give back to society.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)And that labour would be unpaid. The op talks about people being provided for and then doing just what they want, my point is why would I grow more food than I need when the time saved could be mine. Who would want to do the shitty jobs that need done if they could just stay home and play xbox or do their hobbies. In order to get people to do this work you need to recompense them or it wouldnt get done. Are you willing to come work my land every day from first light for nothing, I dont think anyone would.
magellan
(13,257 posts)But it wouldn't be work in the sense of having to do it to survive. You wouldn't need to grow more food than you need, or even what you need for yourself, though you could work in farming if that's what you enjoyed. All kinds of people are motivated to get out bed in the morning because they love what they do, not for the paycheck. Farmers, doctors, researchers, teachers, etc...all necessary components of a thriving civilization who do what they do because it fulfills them. And that's the key.
There will always be people who are happy to find new and more progressive ways to grow food, cure disease, get from A to B, and yes even clean up. They go into those fields now, despite the cost, because they want to make a difference, not to make money. How many more would join them if they could access an education in the required discipline? How much better off would we all be for the untapped potential and ideas out there?
Maybe I can see the possibilities in the OP more clearly because money has never meant much to me; I need it like everyone else, but I have no desire to amass it. I'm more interested in ideas that make the world better for everyone. We're on the cusp of a revolution in how we look at what we do with the world and in our lives. The mistake is in believing that money can be part of a future that doesn't continue to oppress us.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)But how many people do you think will just do their hobbies, the op even said all they want to do is create, now what if their stuff is crap and millions of others do the same stuff. Human nature being what it is who would put their life and limb at risk if they could spend all their days watching tv or doing their hobbies for the same reward. Right now would you still work if someone matched your salary and you could spend your time in your own way, not many would. How would you get people to be foundry workers or miners or work in lots of other fields that are hard if they had the option of not. Farms are a good example, if everybody in the country just grew enough to feed themselves then how would the cities eat, even with barter what would the average city person be able to offer in barter for food. Even in the smallest groups values are assigned to certain skills and people with the skills are rewarded for performing them.
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)But my place is not big enough to hold 7 Billion people, and my cupboards are not big enough to hold 7 billion people's worth of food.
undergroundpanther
(11,925 posts)money is a burden to me.I pay off bills,buy food some art supplies...than what else do I need? My motive to create comes from the desire to create.I have something in my mind I want to create to put on canvas or see in beads,I do it for the joy of making beauty.
Lurker Deluxe
(1,039 posts)I would be more than happy to take it off your hands to "unburden" you.
Let me know how you want to send it to me ... depending on if it will cover travel expenses I can come get it from you if it's easier.
Thanks, in advance.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)But they need you to work in the tar pits instead or should someone else have to do that while you sit home and create.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)to earn a living.
Other people have older family members to look after, that motivates them.
I was the same as you, a single person with simple needs...but now I've got people who rely on me. So that motivates me now.
me b zola
(19,053 posts)My husband is a tinkerer/innovator. His skills are wasted at mindless jobs to pay our mortgage. We long to be free of this house in the city where we ca be free(er) to
cali
(114,904 posts)*poof* disappear, aren't thinking clearly. It's human nature that is the problem.
so who administers this utopian program? How do you ensure that everyone desires exactly the same thing? How do you keep corruption out of the system?
Creepy suggestion.
undergroundpanther
(11,925 posts)Can go live in control land.
There are many emotionally capable people besides me that do not need to be controlled by a token system who can handle themselves and don't have to control others,who are in touch with the needs of others as well as thier own needs,in balance and are not afraid to share.
I find the money system is a control game and it makes me sick.I hate being tied to a fucking token system that was made to serve assholes that have too much and never share anything.
http://moneymorning.com/ob/economist-richard-duncan-civilization-may-not-survive-death-spiral/
We have existed for a very long time as a species and we had civilizations without money.
The life of white men is slavery.
They are prisoners in towns and farms.
The life my people want is a life of freedom.
I have seen nothing that a white man has,
houses or railways or or clothing or food,
that is as good as the right to move in the open country,
and live in our own fashion.
Why has our blood been shed by your soldiers?
[Sitting Bull drew a square on the ground with his thumbnail]
There! Your soldiers made a mark like that in our country,
and said that we must live there.
They fed us well, and sent their doctors to heal our sick.
They said that we should live without having to work.
But they told us that we must go only so far in that direction.
They gave us meat, but they took away our liberty.
The white man had many things that we wanted,
but we could see that they did not have the one thing we liked best--freedom.
I would rather live in a tipi and go without meat when game is scarce
than give up my privileges as a free Indian,
even though I could have all that white men have.
--Sitting Bull (Tatanka Yotanka), told to Journalist James Creel in 1882
cali
(114,904 posts)Comparing tribal societies with vast complex societies, is silly.
People are people and there isn't some magical group that is going to be without greed, jealousy, etc.
Grappling with reality is messy and frustrating. I get that. But what you're doing is simply vain fantasy.
undergroundpanther
(11,925 posts)and it is nothing but a belief, you pretend something has value and con-vice others to believe it does.That's all this money system is based on is vain fantasy and brute force we allow others with too much to control us with.. .Why is there a consumer confidence index for?
cali
(114,904 posts)(and living in a household of egghead types, that was natural enough) that money wasn't real and I went around prattling on about it.
"Nothing but a belief"? To not recognize that reality IS a shared belief system is a tad naive- and that's putting it kindly. I'm not pretending anything. You, alas, are. You are pretending that a belief system isn't reality. And I don't convince anyone of anything to do with such lofty things.
Monetary systems have been around for thousands of years. You declaring that money doesn't *really* exist, isn't going to change reality. It's like someone declaring that God isn't real. That's simply not the point.
Again, when it comes to how humans organize themselves, reality is our shared perceptions and belief systems.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)However, I agree that it's better to live a more self-sufficient life, which is difficult when you're trapped in the system just trying to get by.
Silent3
(15,284 posts)The people who most need to be controlled are the ones who least want to be controlled. They wouldn't go live in "control land", they'd come into your naive utopia and tear it apart. Simple "not tolerating" these intrusions be enough to stop it. Preventing them from happening would require police and/or military personal. Who is going to do that work instead of raising sheep or creating beautiful tapestries or whatever else you imagine your idealized populace doing of their own accord?
snooper2
(30,151 posts)"Money is meaningless"
Deep in Siberia's Taiga forest is Vissarion, a cult leader who looks like Jesus and claims to be the voice of God. He's known as "the Teacher" to his 4,000 followers, who initially seem surprisingly normal. Over time, however, their unflinching belief in UFOs and the Earth's imminent demise made this group start to look more and more like some sort of strange cult.
cali
(114,904 posts)thanks for posting it.
snooper2
(30,151 posts)Imagine going deep into Siberia to find the North Korean labor camps with a Russian mob dude called "The Fish", your Korean interpreter and a shotgun dodging the Russian FSB (former KGB) and Korean security forces 
Part 1 of 7,
treestar
(82,383 posts)They seem to be living it up right there. They've got electronic equipment and everything. Just learn some Russian and you're in!
Codeine
(25,586 posts)ten hours a day under a blazing sun bringing in the spinach harvest, or will they all be too busy playing with art supplies?
undergroundpanther
(11,925 posts)Don't tolerate it,enable it or let it hide and fester.Have some courage and a sense of fairness. INTEGRITY,Stand against it,and help others stand against it.In your choice say, no I'm not gonna let this shit go on.It's wrong. And DO something to expose it,help others expose it. and organize against it and fight, argue, expose,shame,reject the corrupt until it is eliminated and the corrupt realize their shit does not play anymore...and they either go away,stop it ,or make themselves dangerous enough so you have to eliminate them.
cali
(114,904 posts)kill? torture? Imprison?
Eliminate? yep. that's good.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)Why would anyone work their ass off only to have people watchong them wanting the fruits of their labours.
hunter
(38,330 posts)No matter, nature always deals with innovative "hard working" species that experience exponential growth the same way, and it won't be pretty.
The "innovation" of money has caused one of the great mass extinction events in earth's history, and we are in the midst of it.
Next stop on this wild ride our civilization dies.
It will be noted by the survivors that money wasn't such a good idea.
We could probably bring this civilization down for a safe landing by creating a world of "lazy" people who walk very softly on the earth and don't have too many babies, but we won't.
This civilization will hit the ground nose first, engines at full throttle, and all the money in the world won't matter. There will be nothing left of it but a smoldering toxic hole.
It's happened before to other "successful" innovative species throughout the long history of life, and it will happen to us. We're nothing special just because we wear clothes. All the energy flows, all the resource flows, all the population curves look the same as all those other species that crashed.
Have a nice day!
treestar
(82,383 posts)People do like to work. And people should work, but not work their asses off. Don't see why it has to be all or nothing in this area - the right wingers seems to have succeeded in getting that silly idea across.
undergroundpanther
(11,925 posts)What Money Is & What Money Is Not
Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom.
If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it.
--Dostoevsky (House of the Dead, part 1, chapter 2)
Money is incarnate desire.
-James Buchan (Frozen Desire)
Money is not a dollar bill or a check or a penny, nickle, or dime. Money is not gold or silver or copper, nor is money cowrie shells or gems or salt blocks or cattle. Money is not a credit card. Money is not even an electrical current or binary code in a computer! All of these things represent money, but they are not money.
Money is not a material substance.
Money is a belief in the head.
Money is a shared belief of two or more people. A German mark is nothing but a piece of paper with pretty pictures on it to a Yanomamo in the Amazon jungle. The Yanomamo sees it with the eyes of reality.
Both the buyer and the seller must
believe in money
or it's not money.
Money is credit.
Credit is belief.
The very first definition of credit in The American Heritage Dictionary is: ‘Belief or confidence in the truth of something”
The word credit comes from the Latin credere, “to believe.”
So does the word creed. Creed is another word for religion, for both refer to a shared (cultural) belief.
Money is credit, a creed, a religion.
Credit is also praise (also called honor, glory, award, prize). Praise is the opinion, the beliefs, of others.
The word praise comes from the Latin pretire, meaning “to prize”, which comes from the Latin pretium, meaning “price”! And this is derived from the Indo-European root per-, which means “to traffic, sell”!
The words prostitution and pornography come from per- [see Love & Possession - Sex & Money for a discussion of prostitution, the root of all professions].
Working for money is ulterior motivation.
When you work for the sake of working itself, you are being real.
When you work to gain the credit of others, you have ulterior motivation; you are pretending, not being real; you are prostituting yourself; you are adulterating yourself; you are an adulterer; you are serving an image in the head (your imagination); you are thus an idolator.
The word hypocrite is actually the English form of the Greek hupocrite, which means actor, pretender.
You cannot work for both Reality and imagination. For either you will hate the one and love the other, or else you will be loyal to the one and despise the other.
Yes, Money exists no place but in the mind!
In the same way that we could point to a dollar bill and call it money, we might point to a photograph of John F. Kennedy and call it John F Kennedy, even though we know the photograph itself is not John F Kennedy, and that's okay, the nature of symbol. Now if we actually believe the photo itself is John F. Kennedy, then we are deluded, superstitious. We might point to Michaelangelo’s painting of God on the Sistine chapel and say “This is God” knowing that the painting itself isn’t God. But if we actually believe it is God, then we are idolators. Idolatry is simply an archaic word for superstition. Idolatry is mistaking the symbol for the thing it symbolizes, blindness to Reality.
You can pledge allegiance to a symbol or you can pledge allegiance to Reality. You can't do both.
You can pledge allegiance to stars and stripes, to scriptures, to money, or else you can actually care about real things, real people. It's impossible for you to do both.
You can't serve both Reality and Mammon.
But most adult people in the world believe money to be a real substance. Most adult people in the world are deluded, superstitious, idolators. This is not a statement of judgement, but of simply what is. Look around: are not people, at this very moment, sacrificing living beings, human and animal, and even whole nations, as well as destroying the natural environments they depend upon, for this delusion, this imagination, this idol, that exists only in the mind?
People bicker and war over symbols, over creeds, not over Reality.
Many natives in the Americas were astonished at their European conquerors’ lust for a yellow substance called gold – a lust so great they massacred whole populations and environments to get it. Natives, like Black Elk, commonly called gold "the yellow metal that makes white men crazy" and the thing that they worship [Black Elk Speaks]. Why do people lust so much after something so useless? Many Christians and Muslims and Jews love to condemn other religions as idolators even as they themselves sacrifice themselves and their fellow human beings before this idol called money, this idol they serve with all their hearts, minds, and souls, even as they mouth praises to God. And they eat food offered to this idol.
Wars and animal exploitation and environmental destruction are all sacrifices to this idol, hopelessly beyond rationality.
http://io9.com/5872764/the-greatest-mystery-of-the-inca-empire-was-its-strange-economy
http://www.countercurrents.org/steinsvold110708.htm
http://www.sikantis.org/sikantis.org/?p=247
http://www.realitysandwich.com/end_money_future_civilization
https://sites.google.com/site/livingwithoutmoney/Home/1--why-do-you-live-without-money
cali
(114,904 posts)DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)It was what allows you to get things you need to live even if you have nothing to barter.
graham4anything
(11,464 posts)Everything else is credit card.
Paper money/coins are 100% antiquidated and there would be NO robberies if no one had any paper money.
get rid of it.
Why does it exist?
(just make paying for everything on a debit or credit card.)
Same with checks, another passé thing who shortly time will have passed for it.
(and in reality, credit cards are the safest form, because any buyer has 90 days to file a complaint against the charge if it is
bogus and then the customer is NOT liable for it.
(and we pay off 100% of our c/c bill, so there is zero interest we pay on it.
And we get a full record of every transaction making it easy to see if one doesn't belong).
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)Or when the computers are down and the credit and debit cards cannot be processed?
I still have vivid memories of the great blackout of 2003, and gratitude for the fact that I had enough cash in pocket to keep the generator going so my sick father was not overcome by the heat of August. The stores and gas stations that were open could not process plastic.
graham4anything
(11,464 posts)always easy answers.
(because of course, stores weren't able to open their electronic doors when the power goes out, which is why
gas stations last year in NJ were not able to open, even though gas was a plenty.)
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)Sometimes thete are network issues and only cash is accepted.
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)But to process the cards, not only does the gas station need power and connectivity, the data and routing centers do as well.
Municipal water systems need a source of emergency power as well. That was a major problem in '03.
graham4anything
(11,464 posts)those should also have mandatory generators or some other form
(or be located in varied places where a local event won't stop it).
and while the lights, cable tv and phones that came from the "triple play" all were down in Sandy,
smart phones and cell phones worked, as did (for those with cars, the ability to charge up things in their car
(and had we all listened to Jimmy Carter and not had democratic voters who voted for Ronald Reagan or John Anderson in 1980,
or mad that Teddy didn't get the nomination, and we all had reelected Jimmy Carter, by now I bet 100% of the people could
be driving cars in America that used zero gas.
One now can just get an ap and put their check in and instantly it is in the account.
One doesn't need to be reliant on electricity, and if the ATM is working (and if in a storm, it is working,but the people who
refill it aren't there, what is the good of an ATM at all?
No, cash is outdated and not needed at all.
There is an end around to every problem, because taken to the extreme, most people do NOT have access to enough cash to
get them through more than a very short period anyhow.
If you get rid of cash/coins, then if you asked me, it would take away an extremely large portion of street crime knowing that
someone is not going to be able to take one penny from anyone.
More important is to get away from the need of gas and find a different way to power everything.
(btw, I think in the next 10-20 years, no one will have the need for a physical credit card/debit card at all, that too will be passé.)
JVS
(61,935 posts)People would just have to steal the things they need/want rather than money or things they can sell.
What's more, without paper money, some item would eventually be settled on as a makeshift currency, just like cigarettes and bottles of liquor did in post WWII Europe and in the late stages of the USSR.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)I think greed, over-reaching ambition, and a failure to understand that what is good for everyone can be good for the individual would continue to be just as problematic even if we got rid of money. Instead we would have someone gathering up more homes than they need, and offering them to those who don't have them to do his or her bidding, to kill the other half, as it were.
I think it's more basic, some drive to "have more", which seems to have displaced "creating" or "imagination" as goals for too many. I think those people have always been with us, but it doesn't seem that people looked to them as models, or kowtowed to them as much as they do now. Until we can reverse that I'm not sure the currency matters.
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)No, you can't eat it or touch it or swim in it or climb it, but that doesn't make it not a part of reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_reality
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)that is to be. But for right now we need to concentrate on an agenda for a foreseeable future.
Real universal healthcare
A real economic security net
Real representation for workers in management
An end to this unsustainable global military empire
The development of a more cooperative based economy and society
Even these ideas are revolutionary enough. Abolishing money, private property and the wage system are a bit farther down the road. But every step toward progress is a step toward the day when it will be possible to remove the last vestiges of class privilege. But for now let us concentrate on what is possible for the foreseeable future,
"Join in the only battle where no one can fail. For though we fall and die our deeds shall rise and prevail." - William Morris
whistler162
(11,155 posts)SARCASM
FreeJoe
(1,039 posts)I went through almost exactly the same thought process when I was younger. Alas, I don't think the world would be a better place. I am certain that my life would not be.
Without money, how would I obtain the things I need to live (food, shelter, clothing)? The fact that my wife does all of our gardening is because I have proven so inept at it. I did volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity and found that I am lousy at construction work. I haven't tried making clothing yet. My point is that if I had to produce all of the things that I consume, I would live a much, much poorer life.
I could trade for the things that I consume. I could find someone that is good at producing food and given them something that I produce. That would be inefficient because I would spend a lot of time trying to find people interested in the things I can do for them that also have things that I want. It would be particularly challenging when I want something complex like a bicycle. I don't see a barter system creating bicycles because of the complexity of gathering all the raw materials, transporting them, and assembling them.
It would be lovely if everyone contributed to society without the need for something in exchange. The problem with that is that people would contribute much, much less. When I decide how much I'm going to do for other people, how much I will get back from them in return plays a big part in that decision. I do a fair amount of volunteer work, so I know that, absent any direct benefit, I would still do things for other people, but I would do much less of it.
So to me, we need money as an efficient means of exchange so that people can trade goods and services without having to barter. We cannot rely on altruism because people, without getting benefit from their work, will work less and society will be poorer for it.
Travis_0004
(5,417 posts)We have a need for garbage men, and many other occupations that people would rather do. One way we get people to do those jobs is by increasing their pay enough so that people are willing to apply for those jobs.
DanTex
(20,709 posts)First of all, yes, we need money to have a modern economy. Obviously. You can't build TVs and airplanes in a barter economy.
Second, even if there was no official money, some form of currency would arise spontaneously in its place, like cigarrettes in prison. Probably gold, based on historical tradition.
You can't get rid of money.
YarnAddict
(1,850 posts)He does his job and is compensated with every comfort man has made or will make in moderation.
Who gets to decide what "comforts" he will be compensated with, and what "moderation" is? Because those things vary from person to person. You mention a TV. Well, I know people who have no TV at all, and some who want the biggest, baddest TV available. Should there be only "moderate" TVs. And how big is a moderate TV? Is it HD? Is it plasma?
What is "moderate happiness?" Is it an annual trip to Disney World? Is it a once-in-a-lifetime trip? Some people would be moderately happy to climb Mt. Everest. Some would be ecstatic. Should only the ones who would be moderately happy get to do it, and the ones who would be ecstatic have to settle for something else?
Humas are too individual to attempt to inflict a one-size-fits-all lifestyle on them.
Javaman
(62,534 posts)because how else with the rich have-even-mores laud their wealth over us peons?
Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)And some would ask a similar question about work itself:
http://www.whywork.org/
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)berries and hunt rabbits to survive, sure.
Otherwise, a medium of exchange is necessary.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)Who will do nothing but create art. Whether we think its good or not.
MineralMan
(146,334 posts)Walk away. Become homeless. Thousands live like that in every large city in this country. Try it for a while, and you'll learn how that system works. You won't like it.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)As for today, it could never happen. That being said, I think they system we have, our capitalist system, could actually be used for doing good. I even think many Americans might prefer it did.
We have so much wealth & power and we haven't used it for anything you might call noble since WW2. We had the trappings of a semi-fair and decent working middle class society after that and instead of protecting and expanding it, we allowed it to be sold out for short term profits.
Instead of using our money & power to lift the world and promote democracy, we use it to quash fledgling democracies in order to exploit and abuse them for our own gain.
If we could actually create that working middle class society again, if we could export freedom and peace instead of puppet dictators and war, if we could start living in the world as adults, maybe we could make the best of the cards we are dealt and make the rest of the world want to work with us, again.
Neoma
(10,039 posts)Shelter, showers, holodeck time and replicating rations.
hunter
(38,330 posts)In a truly abundant society people wouldn't want to burdened with more crap than they can carry.
The incentives for owning stuff would go away.
If you knew you could wander anywhere on earth and find food, shelter, a good twenty-hour-a-week-two-month-vacation job, free medical care, etc..., just for being human, why would you bother accumulating things?
You might stay in a place for friends, family, pets, a job, a garden, or a natural environment you love, but beyond that "owning" stuff would simply be a burden.
Neoma
(10,039 posts)And no, that wasn't purely Voyager. In Next Generation Picard kept arguing with his brother over not embracing new technology, aka replicator. People still held on to things. Like antiques, or something dug up from a archeology dig. A baseball card that *gasps* still has the bubble gum smell! Then there's latinum. But people who were in Star Fleet didn't actually need it. Unless they wanted something from the Ferengi that is. Also, there was a lot of bartering going on there...
brooklynite
(94,748 posts)look it up
hunter
(38,330 posts)I always figure the crew got an allowance to play with in the backwards places.
Scott and his engineers would put together a bunch of toys to sell to the rubes, things that could be easily replicated on the Enterprise. They'd then divide the "profits" equally among the crew so everyone would have spending money for shore leave. Using money was a colorful tradition of primitive societies, something not to be missed. But naive crew members frequently had to be reminded that primitive people will kill, torture, or imprison you if you offend their gods, and in some places money WAS god.
Do notice how I phrased that: The "rubes" in these frontier places were buying stuff from Scott that he could make at no cost out of ordinary dirt. The money he got was purely profit. The creative act was knowing what the local rubes would buy and that was usually easy to scope out, something the engineering crew did while playing poker and drinking. It was a game, recreation, not officially sanctioned by Star Fleet. The official shore leave rules were "look, don't touch, pack your own lunch, you don't need money."
Harry Mudd did this sort trading obsessively. Back in the civilized universe he'd be a nobody because nobody would tolerate his crap, especially women. But out in the frontier Mudd could create himself as a grandiose character chasing exotic women. The thrill of the chase, the thrill of "profit," were his only motivation, not the consequences of his actions.
Civilized people thought there was something seriously wrong with Mudd.
brooklynite
(94,748 posts)If you're in from Ceti Aplha 5, and somebody offers you 100 credits for your dilithium, will you accept them if you don't know that someone in authority is prepared to vouch for their value?
The notion of barter is "quaint" (as Mr. Scott would put it), because it depends on you engaging in a negotiation every time you need to obtain something? If you want my tomatoes, and have apples, but I already have apples from the last person who came buy, you have do decide what else to offer me that I'll value equally. You might do that in a small town marketplace, but you can't run a large economy on that basis.
hunter
(38,330 posts)We have tools now that we don't have to boil the "value" of everything down to a single currency, a single variable.
But non-believers in this state religion of money are killed, abused, or expelled from the community.
Believers have embraced this religion of money so thoroughly they are entirely unable to imagine a society without it. They believe if we stop dancing for their god, if we stop making sacrifices to their god, then surely their god will destroy us.
I say there is no money god, undergroundpanther says there is no money god, other people here say there is no money god, and the believers get very upset.
How do we build a society where money is unimportant? How could such a society exist?
To the believers it is unimaginable that such a thing might be possible. They've danced and sacrificed their entire lives for this god. If their god does not exist, what is the meaning of their lives? It is a question they dare not ask.
I look around at what people do for money, things I've done for money, and most of those things do not make the world a better place, in fact most of those things destroy the environment and make other people miserable.
Money is a pretty gruesome religion. We throw our gentle children into the fire to appease an imaginary god.
brooklynite
(94,748 posts)All we're saying is it isn't realistic. We don't "believe" in money; we acccept it as a commonly agreed to medium for transactions. And the only response we've heard is "just because we can't explain how a national/world economy would work without money, and just because you can't imagine it doesn't mean it's not possible."
I'd say the religious faith (def: belief without evidence), is being expresed on your side.
hunter
(38,330 posts)... but some of us look around, and clearly it's not working. Money is the means by which a wealthy minority controls the majority. The USA has become an oligarchy.
Maybe the "liberty and justice for all" we seek is impossible in an economy where everything and anything can be exchanged for money, either legally or illegally.
Maybe we should remove certain things from the ordinary market, things like adequate food, appropriate medical care, safe shelter, and education; make it a human right to simply "be," to watch the butterflies if that's all we want to do. Possibly we could establish a national service of farmers, doctors, educators, builders and conservation workers. Or, if you like, we could express these same values as a guaranteed monetary income. We could determine what percentage of the gross national product is required to support everyone in some generous fashion, and then say that every citizen has a single "share" in that portion of the U.S. economy, with a single vote, and an equal stake in every corporation that is allowed to do business here. We might accomplish our goal with taxes.
People will say, "Oh, giving people a free ride will kill productivity, it will kill the incentives to work."
Personally I think killing "productivity" as it is now defined would be a very good thing. Our productivity is destroying the natural environment that ultimately supports us. I also think most people will strive for more than a basic living, especially if free education is available. The nation will be shaped by the dreams of its people, and not by the very wealthy people who measure the value of all things, including their own "success," in dollars.
brooklynite
(94,748 posts)...your issue is "profit" and the notion that some choose to and can acquire more than they "need".
Let's assume there's no money. Let's assume you and I have an apple orchard. Let's assume that I'm more industrious than you, by choice, and I carefully tend my orchard and plant more trees. I have more and better apples than you, and can trade them for more and better goods than you do. Is that wrong in your world?
hunter
(38,330 posts)My father-in-law turns them into apple sauce in pretty recycled jars with new lids and hand written labels. He also makes jams from our 100% organic grapes.
Sometimes I make ciders and wines too. I made a killer wine/cider last year. Tequila psycho quality plus vitamins and micro nutrients, minus the hangover. Too bad the yeasts and bacteria were wild and random and I'll never find them again. Maybe that should be my next Quixotic quest. I posted some great stuff here on DU while I was high on that, a few things in my journal. Probably about physics.
My wife and I trade other stuff for things we need. She gets paid much more than I do for her altruistic pursuits, but I quit work involving blood and death. I'm done with that, mentally I'm just too fragile. It's the women in my family who can suffer the "dead baby" days or the "scraping brains off the pavement" days and keep showing up for work. I can't. Hell, I couldn't even handle teaching in an urban public school where half my teen students were hungry, smelly, bad tempered and couldn't read. Creating a little oasis of safety for them was not easy. Maybe they learned some science in my class, but I'm not optimistic. I'm sure a number of them are dead now. A few of them got dead while they were in my roll books. Cross that one off.
I'm almost happy in my present state but I'm a little bit worried about the chemicals you are using in your orchard. I also don't care how "industrious" you are. Actually, I tend to think "industrious" is a vice, sort of like greed and gluttony.
My backstop condition is living in a broken car in a church parking lot, no crazy meds, been there, done that. Beyond that, starving to death as a crazy homeless guy living in a cardboard box covered with plastic sheeting I found in a dumpster is an option that doesn't worry me much. People die. I'll be one of 'em someday.
They now have meds for my kind of crazy, meds that used to be very expensive before they went generic. There were times when paying $390 a month to the "intellectual property" people on top of our crappy incredibly expensive and inadequate COBRA really, really, hurt. My "credit rating" is in the toilet with that and my wife's (successful) surgeries and chemotherapies.
But still, I'm fearless.
undergroundpanther
(11,925 posts)I have been through shit most people don't ever face.To the point I'm not afraid anymore of death,life whatever. Shit hurts and the world that bows and scrapes kills and destroys for money creates more hurt and fear than life would already contain.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)But if you want to consider a "real" Star Trek, their technology obviates the need. Trade requires scarcity, if you have the capacity to create anything there is no scarcity and so there is no need for trade.
longship
(40,416 posts)Just kidding.
But seriously, I don't think this idea would work too well. Reminds of the US Senate candidate who wanted people to pay for medical services with chickens.
Nice try, though.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,382 posts)than we currently do. There'd be significant environmental concerns if the whole world had a car. We should remember that our western lifestyle is well above the average for the world. Money enables you to live above the average lifestyle for the world.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)meet the need. Where the problem lies is in that production is directed to producing perishable products and we produce perishable products in order to maintain production for profit.
The firearms industry can be a useful example. With reasonable care, guns last damned near forever and that's a huge problem for the gun industry. There are still examples of the first guns ever made floating around and some would still work. People all over America have fully functional firearms from over a century ago that are considered treasured family heirlooms. Much of what we make in such a way that it will deteriorate and be disposed of could easily be made to be durable, but isn't because the producer wants/needs to keep producing it.
hunter
(38,330 posts)There's a couple of thought experiments I do, one would be "How does the economy in Star Trek Next Generation work without money?" The Ferengi use money, and money seems to be used in rough-and-tumble frontier societies, but the civilized worlds of Star Trek no longer use it. I guess when you've got replicators replicating replicators and plenty of cheap energy it makes a traditional market economy moot.
But in a sense we've always had those things. Take a handful of seeds, some fertile soil, water, and sunshine, and we can replicate food and many useful medicines. So where did we go wrong?
Like yourself, I loathe the money games. I limit my own participation in this economy. I never wake up in the morning wanting to buy something. I avoid shopping for anything but food. Occasionally I drop into the thrift stores. Most everything I acquire besides basic foods (rice, lentils, beans, greens, fruits, and olive oil...) is by a process of serendipity. If I have food and a safe place to be I feel secure and I branch out from there. I think food security and security of place and self is a basic human right.
My last personal "consumer" indulgence was a Kobo e-book. I bought that with a Borders gift card as they were closing. Previously my wife and I would keep a supply of Borders cards to give away, which was our small effort to get kids excited by reading. We'd also give them to teachers. (My wife and I were urban public school teachers when we met. We gave a lot of stuff and a lot of ourselves to kids who had nothing. I wasn't resilient enough to make that my career, but my wife went on to an altruistic career of even greater brutality. She sees things that no one should see, especially not in a nation that claims to be "first world."
The only computer thing I buy any more is a mediocre DSL internet connection, which I share with anyone who's within range of my wifi. Our new next door neighbors used it for a few weeks until they were settled and that was fine with me. I haven't bought a new computer since the 'nineties, I now "upgrade" my personal computers whenever I find something better for free, install Linux (the product of a sharing economy, btw) and I'm good to go.
We don't have cable or satellite television, our internet connection is not fast enough for anything like netflix, and we haven't watched any broadcast television this year. The television is used exclusively for DVDs we rent from the RedBox, tapes and DVDs we share among friends and family, or tapes and DVDs we find in thrift stores or bargain bins.
I have very little exposure to ordinary advertising in my daily life (the vast majority of ads I see are technical) so when I do see them they often seem pernicious.
Our society is sick, and the way we use money is a large part of the problem. Measuring the "value" of so many things in dollars corrodes the human spirit.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)
cigsandcoffee
(2,300 posts)Godhumor
(6,437 posts)dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)I would rather live in the world as you envision it than the world that we are living in. There are some small-scale communities living this way to some degree or other, even not so far from where I live here in northern California. At present, from what I can tell, existing in those scenes is highly dependent on one's ability to cultivate mutually beneficial social networks, not a strength of mine, or I absolutely would pursue such a path, I've been yearning for it my entire life.
I fully believe it is a better way to live, and would take us back to a sustainable society whose basic characteristic isn't the need for perpetual expansion and exploitation of natural resources.
Freedom. We throw the word around so readily, but there is not a lot of it to be found in our society. Even in the world you describe freedom has its limits, we are not free from biological needs and so will never be truly free on this earth, but we could certainly be free of the wage-slave, boxed in and highly abstracted lives most of us now lead.
The society we live in is a fairly recent human development, replacing tribal organization with corporate and large-scale government structure. It is capable of producing things like the internet (which your proposed world probably is not capable of creating), but at a great price, and looking at climate change, that price is likely to be fatal to our modern society.
The Transition movement is heading in a direction you might have some resonance with.
http://transitionus.org/home
Many people see collapse ahead. If (when) it comes, we will need visions such as yours or Transition. We could probably avoid collapse by incorporating such visions now, but other than a small number of outsiders, that seems unlikely, and to avoid collapse it needs to happen on a large scale.
One of the things that has most saddened me about our current system is its hostility to tribal people. It would be wonderful if we would allow the old ways to thrive as competing models of human organization. It seems that society does not welcome this comparison, and aggressively works to assimilate or conquer tribal, cooperative societies. The world is large enough for there to be areas of different social and monetary (or non-monetary) systems. Instead, capitalism sees this as a threat and also demands access to natural resources everywhere.
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)Good questions in the OP, and this is an interesting thing I didn't know that goes into the debt aspect of our currency:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/debt-free-united-states-notes-were-once-issued-under-jfk-and-the-u-s-government-still-has-the-power-to-issue-debt-free-money
Pragdem
(233 posts)Nimajneb Nilknarf
(319 posts) olddots
(10,237 posts)It's probably been this way since Uhg stole Shmug's sea shell collection and tried to sell them to Bluhg .
You made us think undergroundpanther -----that is a special talent.
brooklynite
(94,748 posts)How about the computer you're posting this on. Do you image it could be developed and produced strictly on a profitless barter system?
How, by the way do you eliminate profit from the equation? If your need for my corn exceeds my need for your knit sweaters, I'll make a profit on the transaction.
Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)inequities today will be what solved some of our economic inequities in the past. Advancements in technology. More automatization, not less. If we are diligent and use the advancements generated by Science and Capitalism, eventually, like other past economic systems, Capitalism will phase itself out and usher in a new economic system. The problem is dependence. We can't defeat inequities by going back to older systems, even ones that were more equitable like hunter gatherers because there still was dependence on others in those older systems, as there is in capitalism and socialism. There will always arise conflict where one person is dependent on the labour or wages of another.
The only way to solve this dilemma is to consciously push forward, not back, to the production of more self-sufficient technologies. Relying on old technologies will only get us old social-economic systems. We need self-sufficient and automated technologies. They are exactly analogous to the state we are trying to achieve between people: self-sufficient families don't get in conflicts with others - like strikes and walkouts and union busting and lower wages - because they are not directly dependent on others for basic survival neccessities. If basic survival needs are regularly met without dependence or servitude to others, those instances of greed and conflict the DUer cali claims to be genetic are reduced. As an extreme example I often use, I'm sure there was a time in our history when canabalism for survival (not ritualized) was more prevalent in our species or at least our ancestral species. It would not be an unreasonable guess to conclude the general demise of the practice had something to do with the availability of meat and the introduction of cooperation among our ancestors sparked by technological change.
And so too today, some of our conflicts will go dormant as we become more evolved socially and technologically at fulfilling our basic needs without conflict.
Today the conflict is people just don't want to be at the mercy of an employer anymore because we recognize the inherent conflict that can arise from such a relationship. Yes, we can adopt more equatable models such as the one proposed by economist Richard Wolff but, ultimately, we will still have the problem of adults dependent upon necessary behavior patterns of other adults that, more or less, need to be consistently maintained for the system to not break down.
Ultimately, it is advances in automation and self-sufficient technologies that will introduce a new social-economic system. In mining, manufacturing and, ultimately, healthcare: robotics, gene modification and nano technology. In food production: hydrogardening and cloning. In energy production: home solar, wind, etc kits. In energy consumption: micro devices, local markets. In education: automated teaching via the Internet. In housing: mobile micro homes.
The more mining and manufacturing is automated, the less value will be placed on the raw material. The less value on the raw material, the less things cost. The less things cost, the less people have to work. And once this process is started it will only grow as new technology is introduced and improved to the point where everything is automatized, hardly anyone is working (if indeed anyone), nothing costs anything because there is no one being paid to produce and deliver it. Most everyone will be out of work but no one will be starving or homeless.
And the thing about this economic model is it is probably evolutionary and quite out of our hands. It's possible the major corporations and technology manufactures can see it and try to squash it and hold it at bay but, as long as we stay conscious and diligent, we can direct and steer where we want our economic future to go.
Captain Stern
(2,201 posts)It sounds like you believe that if everybody just did what they loved, that somehow homes, cars, and televisions would still exist. They wouldn't.
Sure, people would still come up the ideas for cars, houses, and televisions...........but the problem is somebody actually has to make that shit. There just aren't that many people that "love" working on an assembly line. And there are even less people that "love" working on a paving crew or roofing crew when it's 95 degrees out.
Dash87
(3,220 posts)I don't love spending 8 hours of my day at work. I do it because I have to in order to get money. I would much rather spend my entire life on the beach doing nothing all day.
Without money, no research, no restaurants and small businesses to produce goods, only local items (enjoy eating the same thing every day, like bread, if you're one of the lucky ones that can get food), no travel that isn't local, no cars, no hospitals, no medicine, no entertainment outside those around you, no television, no lights, no electricity, no running water unless if you're near a river, no government services, no information flow, no education, no infrastructure, no safety, no police or firefighters, and a very dumb populace that does nothing all day and has no worldly possessions necessary to survive.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)purpose. That makes you a beast of burden owned by that someone else. Many of us (though not enough) do what we do because we love doing it and would keep doing it any case. Far more people are doing something they don't want to do simply because they are forced to do it through the threat of deprivation.
The people that do the things you listed well, do them because they want to, the one's that do it only for the money are usually the ones doing it badly.
If you were very seriously ill, who would you prefer to be your doctor, the one that is a doctor because she loves to help people heal, or the one that is a doctor because the pay is good?
Dash87
(3,220 posts)working for a corporation or cleaning people's vomit off the ground. Most people don't like being an Accountant or Scientist all day as opposed to spending time at home. Also who would want to work in an assembly plant, or as a mechanic all while getting absolutely nothing in return and letting their families starve at home (no food, because there's no way to get it).
After the mass die off, people would go back to being scavengers with a limited bartering system of things like crude weapons, animal parts and locally scavenged food, and other primitive items (or what's left over from when there was money).
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)One example; given his choice, my dad would be a trash collector. I don't really get it either, but that's what he loves doing, but the necessity of pursuing money forced him to move into management and he hated every minute of it. Two other men I know that hold degrees from Ivy League schools, one is a janitor the other a carpenter. They're both doing what they want to do rather than what they could do for a lot more money.
Artists, athletes, authors, and actors are other examples. Hardly any of the people that pursue these vocations ever make a living at it, but it's what they feel they have to do. If not for their privacy, I can give you half a dozen names of people that just love accounting and wouldn't do anything else. It sounds like you would rather be spending your time at home being with and caring for your family. Well, the only thing stopping you is you and likely debt that you took on. So what are your real priorities?
The point is that not everybody is like you any more than everybody is like anybody. Everybody has their own thing and given a choice would be doing it.
Dash87
(3,220 posts)You need great machine and people power to produce something like a car. You need resources. It would be totally impossible.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)spend all their spare time wrenching on their car, or working in their yard?
This is about the difference between a system of cooperation vs, a system of coercion. Cooperation is more difficult to gain, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.
loli phabay
(5,580 posts)I highly doubt there would be many cell phones getting built by tinkerers or autos or much volume of anything, what about electricity or sewage treatment or any of the millions of other stuff you use daily. Also that same guy may not want to work on your car for no recompense or your yard but be happy to do his own.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)Dash87
(3,220 posts)Money keeps goods flowing throughout the world, which is needed for trade. If that doesn't occur, everybody would have to buy local or be farmers.
People would never band together to mass produce things. There would be no incentive to. Without money, everything would be heavily localized, leading to mass starvation.
Uzair
(241 posts)And not only because of the run-on sentences.
whistler162
(11,155 posts)why can't they teach Groucho or Harpo instead of the failed ideas of Karl?
Warpy
(111,359 posts)and works in some of the tribes on reservations, it breaks down completely when you confront a complex society.
While you might be able to give commodities to the doctor who treated you for a cut or broken bone, how on earth would you barter with the cast of thousands it would take to get you through a serious pneumonia requiring hospitalization? How could you possibly get things like cars or vacuum cleaners that are produced by hundreds of people on assembly lines?
Money is a debt marker. It allows us to exchange our labor for what we need through something portable, with agreed upon value. That's why and how it was invented
Problems occur when some people want to hold all the money in the country and labor is not being paid what the labor is worth. Should we ever devise a mechanism to prevent the greedy from doing this--and the New Deal with its nearly confiscatory top tax rate nearly accomplished it--we will find fewer problems arising from the system of exchanging tokens for units of work for things the worker needs.
bobclark86
(1,415 posts)"We will now open bids for the new highway interchange construction..."
Bid 1: 4.67 million rabbits, uncooked. No bullet holes larger than 1/4-inch.
Bid 2: 567,000 pairs of commemorative The Hobbit 3-D glasses, 14,000 cheeseburgers from Wendy's, 50 copies of every Beatles 8-track ever produced and three weeks in Vegas with your 17-year-old daughter (the hot twin, not the ugly one... actually, on second thought, both).
Bid 3: 2 million beaver pelts, 15,000 cart loads of wheat and a new surround sound system for my office.
Yeah, that sure sounds like a good idea.
Cleita
(75,480 posts)I would rather scrip were exchanged for labor. There could be compensation by the hour, but also degree of education and skill. So a day's labor should get you what you need to survive and if you improve your education and learn to do something special it should get you additional scrip. I really believe once you really reward labor instead of giving it just lip service you will have an equal society. Also, we, who still can labor need to help support those who can't, like the unemployed, children, the disabled and the elderly through an equitable tax structure.
hunter
(38,330 posts)The basic unit of "scrip" as you call it would be for everyone, working or not, and represent a person's share in the overall economy. It would cover enough for safe basic shelter, healthy food, and a few extras. We would all be "trust fund" children of the nation itself. Education and medicine would be free for everyone too. Then a basic hourly labor unit for simple, unskilled, no-risk labor, rising to some small multiple of the basic hourly labor unit for highly skilled, high risk, or unpleasant work, a multiple certainly less than ten; in effect saying no single person does the work of more than ten men or women.
There would be no taxes, this would not be money. The notes or "bits in the computer" would simply be created or destroyed as necessary, according to very strict rules to keep system stable. Hoarding money or wealth would be impossible, wealth that was not kept circulating, wealth that was not "shared" would simply cease to exist. Property and property rights would exist in the sense that everyone would be secure in their place, but there would be no monetization of property, and in the overall economy no borrowing or lending or "financial markets."
It wouldn't have to be a centrally planned economy at all, in fact the rules would be set up to dissipate great concentrations of power; set up to discourage oligarchies, political machines, and dictatorships. The democratic force countering these would arise from the "one share, one vote" we all had in the overall economy.
TRoN33
(769 posts)The movement against the currency system are growing. One thing I will dare to say that there are many small faction of teams that realize we can thrive without the currency system. I am willing to expose myself in here that I am one of them. My friends and I are being careful because we are well aware of wealth elite's greed dystopian attitude can easily bought off governments to 'erase' us from the existence. U.S. government is an example of the governed body cannot survive without the money system and they will do anything to protect it from being the dust in history books.
I personally believe that someday inthe future if we chose to stand up against the wealth elite and chose our own future, we will be successful and thrive without proverty, greedy, selfishness, slavery, and if elite have their ways, there will be no more Earth by year of 3000.
Captain Stern
(2,201 posts)In itself, it is neither good or evil. Money doesn't cause greed, selfishness, or slavery. Those things can exist perfectly fine without money. Money just keeps us from having to directly barter with every supplier of what we want or need.
Spike89
(1,569 posts)The problem is that there will always be scarcity of something and that will prompt economic activity (i.e., some form of money). I will concede that eventually even the most intractable drudgery jobs will be automated and basics such as food, and even clothing will be essentially free. However, we will never be able to provide everyone (or even most people) everything they want.
There are and always will be limits (scarcity) on some things. Space is the obvious one. Living space, farm land, recreational, commercial/utilitarian, etc. are all pretty much finite. Does everyone get a certain allotment of land for living? Who gets the best places? Someone needs to live by the sewage treatment plant, a highway, etc. and someone else gets to live by the river/on the hill, near the orchards etc.
There will never be infinite levels of everything and people will always attach value and compete for limited things. Already we can produce near flawless reproductions of art, but the originals maintain or even increase in value the more they are reproduced. Gold isn't inherently better or more useful than iron--it is simply rare. If those two metals were distributed in inverse amounts over the earth, Ft. Knox would have been full of iron bars and our landfills would be full of glittering gold scrap.
People compete. We can try and regulate that competition to make it more fair to adjust what "wins" (we call that civilization), but you can't stop the competition. When you make "everything free" you're still left with people competing against and for each other. There is nothing more scarce than the partner you want.
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)Spike89
(1,569 posts)Competition in and of itself is simply a fact of life for all creatures, even those without the capacity for ego or greed. If there is a shortage, organisms will compete for it. There will always be shortages from an individual's standpoint. We compete for social standing within the community, and we compete for mates/friends. Competition is neither good nor bad.
When ego and greed run unchecked, competition becomes distorted. The rules of civilization ideally put breaks and limits on distorted competition. Essentially, all politics and laws are systems designed to fight the distortion...of course, many bad laws/politics have the opposite effect.
konzay
(1 post)competition between humans exists as a game to forget mortality
Mojo Electro
(362 posts)...hopefully not forever.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)Eliminating money is not going to be a magic solution for all our problems. And eliminating money alone would not even necessarily be a solution for social inequality or resource inequality. But it could be an important piece of the puzzle, part of a good solution, moving toward a better form of social organization.
If there are some people who want to go live outside the regular economy, without money, the government should give them some land to live on. They could practice sustainable living. It's going to take some trial and error to figure out how we are going to survive on a hotter planet.
It's also worth experimenting with alternative money forms where currency represents hours of labor time, or forms where currency loses value over time, to help mitigate extreme accumulation.
It's legal to print your own currency so some people have been experimenting.
http://www.ithacahours.org/
http://baltimoregreencurrency.org/about
