Moneyless society : Would it benefit society?

[Qfwfq]

Hello, John Lennon! B) B)

 

Human wellbeing always comes second to profit. In a moneyless society human wellbeing will come first. Quality living, quality food, quality travel, everything will be made of the finest we know of today. There will be no property. But you will have access to everything you need to live. You can "borrow" a house until you want to move or until you die, then it becomes available for another human. If you want to move to Bahamas, a house will be ready for you to move in. No countries, as we realize we are symbiotic with the ecosystem and the planet as a whole.

Before money existed there was barter.

 

Economy worked much the same, there were merchants going between production and consumer. There certainly wasn't finance and banks but these came a while after money anyway. And yup, speculators too; they have existed ever since the natural principle of two dudes trading one thing in exchage for another. The Clever Dick simply goes for what nobody wants right now and keeps it till everybody wants it.

 

The way money started was exactly the meaning of the word: when the metals most used as currency were minted into coins. This was just to make transactions simpler, instead of having to weigh the gold, silver or copper as well as the wares they were exchanged for. Humbler labour was still often paid in grain and some services also with less cheap commodities including salt (salary). Debt was important and history shows some Roman emporors screwed it up with interest rates with disatrous social effects.

 

The haywire thing about today is that money is no longer what it was. It has become an abstract unit of value, depending simply on how much of it is issued. Yes it's a crazy system, it's subject to being badly managed, but what's behind it is as old as the hills.

[Buffy]

One thing also that will mark the paradigm-shift, is the announcement of a free-energy device. There are many machines made which claim to produce more energy than they use. The law of thermodynamics have been broken so many times now, that it is just a matter of time now before something comes to the marked. Problem with this is of course, that the economy will implode should such a machine be available to the public. We await.

...and we'll wait....and we'll wait...and we'll wait...

 

This particular point is seemingly getting off-topic, but I'd argue that Baldershymn is on to something here: formation of a moneyless pretty much *requires* that we figure out how to break the Law of Thermodynamics because otherwise--as described ad nauseum above--there's no other way to get around the "lack of motivation for anyone to do anything that's necessary but not intrinsically enjoyable to do."

 

And of course you'd *still* need to talk people into building all those automated machines that would do everything for us that we didn't want to do, and the machines to maintain them, and the machines to maintain the maintenance machines, and the machines to maintain the machines that maintain the machines....

 

So, um, QED folks...

 

My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work in a lumbermill there... B)

Buffy

[Boerseun]

I just finished reading Eon by Greg Bear (for the umpteenth time), and in it he describes a future society of humans (around 1,300 years after us - but that's immaterial) who've done away with money. They still work, however, but for "advantages". All their physical and material needs are catered for by the automation Baldershymn describes in his post above. The "advantages" Greg Bear talks of, might be anything else, like information over adversaries, social standing, access to higher levels of entertainment, general information, etc.

 

For instance, you will be willing to work through the week, because on Saturday you will have access to watch the World Cup Finals. All your other needs are catered for. Or, you will work through the week because come Saturday, you will have unlimited access on a science website about a specific topic that you're interested in as a hobby. Sating your curiosity as payment, so to speak.

 

Of course, this also counts as "money", but not money in the classical sense. It is indeed payment for your labour, but instead of payment that speaks to greed, it speaks to the other human character traits like curiosity. Greed has been sated by everybody having access to whatever material needs they might have. So now you will work in order to satisfy your curiosity.

 

I know - it's pie-in-the-sky, but what the hell. It made for a good read.

[Qfwfq]

...formation of a moneyless pretty much *requires* that we figure out how to break the Law of Thermodynamics

Gee I forgot to address that point when I replied! :rolleyes:

 

It isn't necessary to break the 2nd principle of thermodynamics, it's enough to find perfect ways to exploit sources of vast amounts of available energy. It's more a matter of what economic consequences would ensue. My guess is that, as soon as folks know about it and have no doubt, there would be an economic turmoil until a new equilibrium settles in. In the end, if it leads to a generally better welfare for all, you would need really tight birth control enforcement to keep the global population sustainable. Land would eventually become the resource of limited availability.

[Baldershymn]

I just finished reading Eon by Greg Bear (for the umpteenth time), and in it he describes a future society of humans (around 1,300 years after us - but that's immaterial) who've done away with money. They still work, however, but for "advantages". All their physical and material needs are catered for by the automation Baldershymn describes in his post above. The "advantages" Greg Bear talks of, might be anything else, like information over adversaries, social standing, access to higher levels of entertainment, general information, etc.

 

For instance, you will be willing to work through the week, because on Saturday you will have access to watch the World Cup Finals. All your other needs are catered for. Or, you will work through the week because come Saturday, you will have unlimited access on a science website about a specific topic that you're interested in as a hobby. Sating your curiosity as payment, so to speak.

 

Of course, this also counts as "money", but not money in the classical sense. It is indeed payment for your labour, but instead of payment that speaks to greed, it speaks to the other human character traits like curiosity. Greed has been sated by everybody having access to whatever material needs they might have. So now you will work in order to satisfy your curiosity.

 

I know - it's pie-in-the-sky, but what the hell. It made for a good read.

 

John Lennon here... Imagine! It´s easy if you try. :rolleyes:

 

Yeah, we seem to be drifting off-topic... Would it benefit society?

 

Well hehe... that´s a really easy one. Yes of course. 95% of all crimes are related to money-gain, or gain of wealth. If you had access to house, clothes, good healthy food, transportation for free, and access to the best equipment needed to pursue your art, science, music or what it may be, you wouldn´t even think of stealing. If you stole something, you certainly couldn´t sell it. And getting a new one would be easy as dialing the factory. If you wanted to golf, the equipment would be handed to you at the golf course, and you would leave it there for somebody else to play. Most likely you would not "own" a car. You would press a button or dial something, and a driverless car would come to you. Dinner in Tokyo? No problem. A mag-lev train running at 3-4000 MPH would totally eliminate air-travel and get you from one side of the earth to the next in two hours.

 

In todays society you never know if someone is corrupt. You never know when your doctor tells you that your kidney needs to come out, if he is telling the truth or if he needs the money for a downpayment for his yacht. Corruption is everywhere in a money-based society. In a moneyless society trust in your fellow man will return, since you don´t need to worry about money crimes.

 

When our basic needs for survival are met, we no longer worry about money, rent or food, and our happiness increases, our energy increases and I believe our creativity increases. When we no longer need to stock shelves at Wal-Mart for a lousy pay, we suddenly are free to engage in higher education, arts and meaning of life. One could argue that one becomes lazy in such a system without the money incentive, but most of the known scientists(Einstein, Tesla..) or artists did what they did with no profit motive in mind.

 

Human behavior is dependent on its enviroment and not its genes actually. If you grew up in China you would behave like a chinese and speak like one too. So if the enviroment changes, we change. It would probably take a couple of generations to get used to this new society. The new generations would be so vastly different from us. They would be enrergetic, caring, loving, creative... Science would just literally go through the roof...

 

I´d say it would benefit us. :phones:

 

These are the thoughts and ideas of a very old man who dedicated his life to this research, Jacque Fresco. You may have heard of him. He is currently traveling around the world to hold lectures about it at an age of 93. In 1974 he was interviewed by Larry King. What is really amazing is that his ideas then still is futuristic today.

 

YouTube - Larry King Interview 1974 (Full Version) Part 1/5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCH0BQ2nSMo&feature=related

 

His life´s work is called "The Venus Project" and since the release of the movie Zeitgeist Addendum soon two years ago, he has really gotten momentum to his work. I find this very amazing. The Zeitgeist Movement is the activist arm of The Venus Project which aims to make it happen.

[Qfwfq]

If there's any hoope at all, it'll take a massive effort to make it work and also to keep it working. How does the economy of this great effort work out?

 

I found many thing in the video quite dubious. I started to think of Bradbury's Farenheit 451, then of Logan's run... I hope Fresco won't run into the shortcomings of these.

[Buffy]

...Yes of course. 95% of all crimes are related to money-gain, or gain of wealth. If you had access to house, clothes, good healthy food, transportation for free, and access to the best equipment needed to pursue your art, science, music or what it may be, you wouldn´t even think of stealing.... Corruption is everywhere in a money-based society. In a moneyless society trust in your fellow man will return, since you don´t need to worry about money crimes.

 

When our basic needs for survival are met, we no longer worry about money, rent or food, and our happiness increases, our energy increases and I believe our creativity increases...

Would be nice, but you know once we get beyond the need for money--talking about the uber rich in *today's* society--it is no longer about money, it's about power.

 

To cut your objections off, this is not about greed or insecurity or even need for stardom: I know plenty of folks in this group who are Ayn Randian types who are on a crusade to make the world safe for other "deserving" folks.

 

I'm not going to argue that Nirvana is not a nice goal nor that we should not pursue it with zeal, but if you read the earlier posts in this thread, you'll see that there's little evidence to support the statements of yours that I just quoted.

 

That's the real obstacle: human nature does not make it possible to become a society in which "live and let live" drives human interaction simply by taking away the "need for money"--or more precisely, full satisfaction of desires. Seeing as how we are driven by genetic instincts embedded in our DNA going back millions of years, the question becomes how long will it take to evolve them away?

 

The basic pro argument always seems to come down to: "it's simple: just remove the money and the scales will fall from people's eyes and the next morning all will be beautiful and perfect!"

 

I've heard more convincing arguments at Pentecostal revival meetings.

 

So, bottom line:

• Money is not the problem, limited resources are.
  
• In a world of limited resources, money is an awful lot more useful than barter, or "advantages" or "obs"*
  
• "Giving peace a chance" and putting a "chicken in every pot" are really good societal goals that we should all expend lots of energy on.
  
• Simple solutions never are.
  

Soooooooo, to keep from boring people too much and keep the troll-beaters from splattering too much blood about the forum, the best way for this thread to continue is to talk about what those obstacles in human nature are, and what techniques we can use to evolve societal norms that *effectively* suppress millions of years of evolution.

 

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Q: yah, "practically limitless" power source would be equivalent to breaking thermodynamics, but I'd argue that the former is only slightly more achievable in the next thousand years or so.

 

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other, :phones:

Buffy

 

* If someone can point me to the sci-fi short story that uses that term that I read back when I was a kid, I'd really appreciate it! Been trying to locate it for ages!

[TheBigDog]

You and I are on the same side of this one Buff, but cmon! Have you read Rand? Deserving?

 

I objectivist!

 

Bill

[Donk]

In a world of limited resources, money is an awful lot more useful than barter, or "advantages" or "obs"*

 

* If someone can point me to the sci-fi short story that uses that term that I read back when I was a kid, I'd really appreciate it! Been trying to locate it for ages!

The Great Explosion, by Eric Frank Russell. Full text HERE :phones:

 

One of my favourite sf authors of the time - one of the few who managed to inject humour into his stories. Though the outright funniest part of this book was the cover blurb, obviously written by a copywriter who hadn't read past the title: "He had created undreamed-of power for mankind. And doomed Earth to the terror of The Great Explosion."

[Baldershymn]

Would be nice, but you know once we get beyond the need for money--talking about the uber rich in *today's* society--it is no longer about money, it's about power.

 

- In an emergent society we realize that we are one. We realize that we have more power combined than we have one by one. Actually, it is not an option anymore, we have to, since we are depleting the planets resources and destroying the symbiotic ecosystem. The body is greater than it´s organs. And should an organ fail, the body fails, and all other organs in the body fail. You and I are one. That means that your wellbeing is of most importance to my own wellbeing. Power becomes shifted from "me" to "us all", because the whole is greater than the individual. It is imperative that we learn to cooperate instead of chipping of eachothers money supply. There can be no powerful elite in an emergent society, they can only be elites if they "have" something others dont.

 

By the way, what do you think happens to the "powerful" people when FIAT money reaches it´s intrinsic value of 0, and when nanotechnology or some other "alcymist" technology turns stone into gold? You really think they have power anymore then? They only have power because they have plenty of what is scarce on this planet. It´s no true power. One on one I would kick their *** any day, so would you :cheer:

 

To cut your objections off, this is not about greed or insecurity or even need for stardom: I know plenty of folks in this group who are Ayn Randian types who are on a crusade to make the world safe for other "deserving" folks.

 

I don´t know Ayn Randian, and I´m not sure I understand what you´ve written here... Please excuse me if I interpret it wrong: My above statement clearly advocates that all and everyone is included. Maybe some think that they and their likes deserve this world, and you and I not, but I am not of that understanding. My heart cannot fathom elitism as I see us all as important working parts of the whole. Right man for the right job, yes, but no-one is better than someone else.

 

I'm not going to argue that Nirvana is not a nice goal nor that we should not pursue it with zeal, but if you read the earlier posts in this thread, you'll see that there's little evidence to support the statements of yours that I just quoted.

 

The idea about Nirvana or Utopia is that they are final destinations of some dreamed up heaven. The Venus Project is not. It is based on today´s technology, known and tested scientific knowledge, resources and trends. AND it is well aware and designed with the thought that future children will invent new things to make this "Utopian" dream obsolete. I can back up everything I´ve said with evidence or reference.

 

That's the real obstacle: human nature does not make it possible to become a society in which "live and let live" drives human interaction simply by taking away the "need for money"--or more precisely, full satisfaction of desires. Seeing as how we are driven by genetic instincts embedded in our DNA going back millions of years, the question becomes how long will it take to evolve them away?

 

Human DNA is nothing but latent traits or abilities that are triggered by enviroment. Twins that grew up in different enviroments would be very different in behavior than alike. It is our enviroment that really shapes us. If children grew up in a money less society with peaceful surroundings, the desires would change dramatically. Greed and Jealousy for instance would be the first to go. Give it one generation, and you would see a tremendous change. Instincts would transcend into finer desires like that of higher education, higher values, higher sex, higher art, and finally pursuit of happiness and divinity.

 

The basic pro argument always seems to come down to: "it's simple: just remove the money and the scales will fall from people's eyes and the next morning all will be beautiful and perfect!"

 

It will not be perfect, no, but it will be the best we can envision right now. And no, the transition can be painless, but most likely very painful, but it must be done. If you knew all the negative aspects of the profit-motive, you would agree. Lets look at a few:

 

-You cannot profit from abundance, only on scarcity. Keeping things scarce is like throwing half of your food-production to keep prices high, although people starve.

-Planned obsolessence - If a car was made with the best materials and the best technology available with easy replaced parts, built to last a hundred years, what would happen to profits made by car-repair companies, car-parts manufacturers, and not least the sale of new cars. Just imagine...

 

YouTube - Money, the Profit Motive and Sustainability http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5P3rJ55UB8

 

I've heard more convincing arguments at Pentecostal revival meetings.

 

Sorry, I don´t know what Pentecostal revival meetings are, and since you put this sentence out negatively, I don´t think I will spend energy Googleing it.

 

So, bottom line:

• Money is not the problem, limited resources are.

 
Not true - There are resources enough to give us all a life better than Bill Gates ever had (yeah, him included, he would be astounded). Money inhibits the abundance of resources because the profit-motive must keep resources scarce to make money from them.
 

In a world of limited resources, money is an awful lot more useful than barter, or "advantages" or "obs"*

 
Not true - FIAT Money has an intrinsic value of 0. It would be more useful to use pebbles as they have more value. Barter was a more just way of trade than money is.
 

"Giving peace a chance" and putting a "chicken in every pot" are really good societal goals that we should all expend lots of energy on.

 
I agree! Peace comes when there is no profit-motive! Why do you think USA is way deep in middle-east? Resources? You might be right.
 

Simple solutions never are.

 
Yes they are. If you dont believe it, you have no options to work from. If you do believe it, you have options. If you believe it is simple, you will find a simple solution. At the time Orville brothers flew the first plane, books were written on how man will never fly. I guess the Orville brothers never read that book. Don´t be one of those writers... ;)
 

Soooooooo, to keep from boring people too much and keep the troll-beaters from splattering too much blood about the forum, the best way for this thread to continue is to talk about what those obstacles in human nature are, and what techniques we can use to evolve societal norms that *effectively* suppress millions of years of evolution.

 

You need to address the root-cause of human misery before you can evolve. Human nature have changed radically within a single generation, and with evolution gearing up and accelerating exponentially, who can tell what is around the next corner. Luckily we will see evolution happen by itself as corruption like a cancer cell will eat up the body of capitalism. And judging by this latest debt-bubble that cannot be kept artificially going by neither more debt or by monetizing it, there´s no escaping evolution. If you wish to stay stagnant, be prepared to be run over by evolution.

 

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Q: yah, "practically limitless" power source would be equivalent to breaking thermodynamics, but I'd argue that the former is only slightly more achievable in the next thousand years or so.

 

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other, :phones:

Buffy

 

Ignorant statement. There are always the choice of peaceful, just transactions. If you take away money and property, making everything available for everyone, there will be peace, because you will have access to everything you need. Why would you deal with someone in a destructive way then?

[Turtle]

... I can back up everything I´ve said with evidence or reference.

 

 

Human DNA is nothing but latent traits or abilities that are triggered by enviroment. Twins that grew up in different enviroments would be very different in behavior than alike. It is our enviroment that really shapes us. ...

 

i'll take a dabble of that back-up on your claim of environment & twins. :cheer: here's what i found contrary to that claim. :phones:

 

(page 4) ...One of the most surprising findings of behavior genetics has been that, statistically speaking, family environment plays no consistent role in determining personality or intelligence. Some family environments, in fact, tend to exaggerate the differences among siblings -- even identical twins -- rather than making them more the same. ...

 

full article: >> WashingtonPost.com: The Mysteries of Twins

[Buffy]

You and I are on the same side of this one Buff, but cmon! Have you read Rand? Deserving?

 

I objectivist!

Of course you do, dear.

 

So do all the Randians who take her seriously (you too Pyro!)...

 

Yes, I read a lot of Ayn in high school, because at that time *everyone* did (boy, does that date me?). What set me rolling in the aisles--and accusing of my dreamy eyed intellectual friends of rank stupidity--was sitting down and reading her essays on objectivism. Ever since then I find it very difficult not to break out in laughter when people start talking about it, because to me, the lack of self-awareness that is so evident in the conflict between what she says she *means* versus what she actually *says* in her stories is just so stark that it's, well, laughable!

 

My favorite Rand is The Fountainhead, and I think the conflict shown in it is lost on men. It's clear that Howard Roark is a classic "bad boy" and she puts him up on a pedestal: he *is* The Fountainhead. But while he's the only one who doesn't "sell out", he's the bad boy, the screw up, the one who is so into self-sabotage that he's unintentionally shown to be the one you do NOT want to emulate.

 

As much as Ayn tries to make him the hero, it's obvious that quite frankly the one she'd actually want to marry is Ellsworth Toohey, who while a total sellout (but only known to us and the omniscient author) is the only one who in the end is a continued success and ultimately destroys Roarke.

 

Read her work on objectivism and the cream that rises is certainly the Ellsworth Tooheys whose ego wins out over any supposed "lack of talent."

 

Success is its own reward in Ayn's book.

 

So sorry guys, my personal opinion is that Randians are willfully clueless about the contradictions and intellectual weakness of Randism...

 

It doesn't help these days that the "intellectual tea baggers" (an oxymoron in itself) treat her as some sort of demi-god....

 

I play the stock market of the spirit and I sell short , :phones:

Buffy

[CraigD]

I’ve posted a lot over the years at hypography on the relationship of money to abundance and scarcity or fungible and non-fungible goods (for example this 2005 post) so will refrain from rehashing old arguments, and follow Buffy’s example of stating my bottom line conclusion.

 

Money, barter, socialistic or meritocratic allocation of goods by central authorities, tooth and nail competition, and any other system of allocating goods to their consumers, is useful and efficient only when the good being allocated are scarce enough that owners of the goods can prevent consumers of them from taking them. For example, it’s impractical to sell and buy ordinary air, because it’s technically impractical to prevent people from breathing as much of it as they want and need.

 

Technology can make once scarce goods abundant. For example, prior to 1400, Holy Bibles were so scarce that they were owned only by large churches and noblemen, and thus were, literally, priceless. By 1600 they were scarce and expensive. By 1850, Bibles were affordable by many families and ordinary individuals, and common as gifts. Since 1950, Bibles are effectively free. This is due to a decrease in the cost of manufacturing bibles, and religion-promoting individuals and organizations (eg: the Gideons).

 

I doubt that money will become impractical as long as goods and services necessary for survival – primarily food, shelter, and security services – are scarce. When such goods and services are abundant – that is, more are available to nearly all people than are needed, even when many people over-consume and waste them – I think money will become impractical. I doubt that money will cease altogether to be used, but rather, most people will not use it.

 

How and if such ubiquitous abundance can be technologically achieved is a broad, deep, and fun subject.

[Buffy]

In an emergent society we realize that we are one. We realize that we have more power combined than we have one by one...

Kumbaya, dude.

 

Who's "we"? Me and you certainly. Sarah Palin? Not so much.

 

The trick here is to stop thinking in the theoretical and abstract, and MOST importantly, stop doing the *exact* same thing that those who *usually* trash your opinion do: "if you'd all just think the same way I do, the world would be beautiful."

 

Sure it would, but the fact of the matter is that a minority--your tribe--thinks the way you do. If you want to make the world better, you're going to have to find *compromises* with people whose worldview is radically different than yours.

 

And it's not just a matter of convincing them you're right: "compromise" does not mean "everyone has a right to my opinion."

 

While admirable, most would call your argument here "naive". Don't worry, it's common among the young and--to bring in Mr. Fresco--the young at heart.

 

Being old makes you cynical, true, but it does not always make you think that the goal is pointless and impossible. It just adjusts your expectations.

 

Nonetheless, we old folks get called names for not "opening our eyes to the possibilities."

 

Boy the crap I get for being a Berkeley radical. Does my honorary membership in the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade not count for anything any more?

By the way, what do you think happens to the "powerful" people when FIAT money reaches it´s intrinsic value of 0, and when nanotechnology or some other "alcymist" technology turns stone into gold?

Wow! Abstract philosophy! My fave!

 

Actually this is exactly my point: power is NOT equivalent to money. Power is power. In Mexico and Columbia, power is access to drugs and having the muscle to protect it.

 

Is money the intermediary for easing the trade of goods and services? Certainly.

 

Is it necessary to maintain power? Shirley, you jest.

 

Maintaining the personal relationships that are necessary to match the providers--say the assassins needed to intimidate the police--with the goods that motivate them--the safehouses, food, access to stolen cars. Communists always laughed at the "pointlessness of the middlemen" and then found everything from the politburos to the village committees dominated by them because, well, they held the power because they knew all the right people. No different than in "money-driven" capitalist societies.

 

I don´t know Ayn Randian, and I´m not sure I understand what you´ve written here...

Apparently. Wouldn't be a bad idea to learn what hasn't worked before calling people idiots for pointing out possible flaws in a particular argument you're making.

My above statement clearly advocates that all and everyone is included. Maybe some think that they and their likes deserve this world, and you and I not, but I am not of that understanding. My heart cannot fathom elitism as I see us all as important working parts of the whole.

Yes, so reading some Ayn Rand would be appropriate. While some disagree (see my previous post), Rand was all about some people being more deserving of success/power/money/worship than others.

 

It is a philosophy that is completely at odds with the worldview that you're espousing here.

 

Perhaps there is a possible route of compromise between these two worldviews. I dunno. Worth looking in to, but not "simple" and not possible to dismiss with a "My heart cannot fathom."

 

Sorry!

Human DNA is nothing but latent traits or abilities that are triggered by enviroment.

Contradicted by endless facts. The twins argument you use has many many counterexamples.

 

Another area of study I'd recommend to you before you make absolute statements of "fact."

It will not be perfect, no, but it will be the best we can envision right now. And no, the transition can be painless, but most likely very painful, but it must be done.

Honest, go back and read all the posts in the thread.

 

One of the most amusing aspects is the evolution of the Moneyless argument from "it simple" (cf. your first post), to "sure it will be difficult but we must" (cf. your last post).

 

If you knew all the negative aspects of the profit-motive, you would agree.

Now *there's* how you convince people! Obviously I don't understand why we must because I don't understand why the profit motive has negative aspects! Whoa! You're saying it has *negative* aspects? Really? And they all have no countervailing aspects? Really?

Lets look at a few:

Okay! :cheer:

You cannot profit from abundance, only on scarcity.

Yep. There's an abundance of cattle manure because we all like hamburger. There is a scarcity of cattle manure taker-awayers, because the manure is so, um, odorific. If there is no profit in taking manure away, who is going to take it away?

 

No you're right, scarcity is an evil plot by the greedy. Has nothing to do with natural causes whatsoever. Nope.

Planned obsolessence - If a car was made with the best materials and the best technology available with easy replaced parts, built to last a hundred years, what would happen to profits made by car-repair companies, car-parts manufacturers, and not least the sale of new cars. Just imagine...

Yes, imagine when we can afford to just throw things away before their useful life has expired, because some other part in the machine failed...

 

Henry Ford came up with this concept. He sent his designers to the junk yard and they figured out which parts failed last, and then figured out how to make them so they didn't last as long, which meant that they cost less to make, which meant that he could lower the price of a Model-T, which meant that more people could afford to buy cars.

 

Oh but in a moneyless society everyone would understand that cars were selfish and bad for the environment and naturally would no longer want them....

 

Sorry, I don´t know what Pentecostal revival meetings are, and since you put this sentence out negatively, I don´t think I will spend energy Googleing it.

You should! Knowledge is power!

 

Oh. Wait. That's right, I've been arguing that it's not Money, it's Power, so you should hate that too.

 

Let's all destroy knowledge! Don't worry your little heads about this. If you just believe it will all work out.

 

That, my friend, is what you get out of a Pentecostal Revival Meeting....

 

But honest, it's worth Googling! :phones:

There are resources enough to give us all a life better than Bill Gates ever had (yeah, him included, he would be astounded).

I wouldn't argue against that in the abstract.

 

There's a little problem though: it's not *accessible* now. Nor is it likely to be in the near future: that's why a bunch of us are pointing out the "limitless energy"/"breaking the Law of Thermodynamics".

 

While there's an inability to *deliver it*--AKA "scarcity"--you are not going to be able to do this, which means:

Money inhibits the abundance of resources because the profit-motive must keep resources scarce to make money from them.

...is an entirely unsupported argument.

 

Money does nothing to "create scarcity." Money is a mechanism for defining abstract value, which allows scarce resources to be traded indirectly.

 

Let me repeat that, because this is the central fallacy of the Moneyless Society:

 

Money does nothing to "create scarcity." Money is a mechanism for defining abstract value, which allows scarce resources to be traded indirectly.

 

It does not matter whether there is money or barter, scarcity is what creates "evil profit."

 

But as I mentioned earlier, the notion that "profit is evil" is just as fallacious.

 

Profit is necessary to eliminate scarcity because in most cases scarcity is simply because a lot of work--sometimes manure hauling work--is involved that discourages delivery of the goods or services.

 

So if you want to eliminate profit and *still* provide even "necessities"--not even talking about "luxuries"--you're going to have to not only have limitless energy, but limitless technology to ensure that the scarcity is not even possible.

 

That is, until we have Star Trek replicators, we're still gonna have scarcity and we're still gonna have to have to have profit to deal with it.

 

And eliminating money does nothing but mean that you've got to drag all your cows along with you and trade one cow for 57 palettes of toilet paper when you need some.

 

Gee that's an arrangement I'd *really* enjoy!

You need to address the root-cause of human misery before you can evolve. Human nature have changed radically within a single generation, and with evolution gearing up and accelerating exponentially, who can tell what is around the next corner.

Well, one can hope.

 

I think that indeed our reaction to war has changed somewhat radically in a few generations, but unfortunately a lot less than you'd imagine. Most of it had to do with the increase in communications allowing average folks to see the results of their bloodthirsty hatred of "the other."

 

But again, I think you've blinded yourself to how little a very large number of non-liberal-thinkers have changed their attitudes on this front:

 

YouTube - Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg

 

But to be fair, I'd like to call attention to the fact that this is not a left or right issue:

 

 

Luckily we will see evolution happen by itself as corruption like a cancer cell will eat up the body of capitalism.

That's conflation, dude: Profit is not Corruption. This is the same theme as all the rest of the arguments: taking away money does not eliminate corruption, and profit can indeed exist--especially when everyone *knows* what's right and what's wrong--without causing corruption.

 

Indeed, I'd argue that to get to where you and I would like us all to be, we need to figure out a way to do so.

 

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other, ;)

Ignorant statement. There are always the choice of peaceful, just transactions. If you take away money and property, making everything available for everyone, there will be peace, because you will have access to everything you need. Why would you deal with someone in a destructive way then?

First, you ought to look up what I was quoting. And maybe understand where the sentiment comes from.

 

Then maybe think about the possibility that there are many reasons why people would choose violent repression, even without the existence of money. Not recognizing this fact might be considered ignorant as well....

 

The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind, :phones:

Buffy

 

An appropriate and timely explanation for new members: :phones: is known in this author's posts as 9095, which behooves the reader to :cheer: it, and maybe even research it a bit for full edification.

[Qfwfq]

Whoah Buffy, I can't keep up with ya!

 

Certainly, money does not create scarcity of resouces, it's a certain kind of businessfolk that do it. They create scarcity and abundance to their liking. It's as old as the hills. It isn't money that's evil, it's people. Some of them just have it in their DNA to dominate someone else.

 

Q: yah, "practically limitless" power source would be equivalent to breaking thermodynamics, but I'd argue that the former is only slightly more achievable in the next thousand years or so.

B: that wuz just the hypothetical clause for illustrating the concept.

 

If it ain't energy, if it ain't gold, if it ain't food, if it ain't Elvis Presley's toothbrush, in the end it'll be land.

[lawcat]

If you knew all the negative aspects of the profit-motive, you would agree.

stop doing the *exact* same thing that those who *usually* trash your opinion do: "if you'd all just think the same way I do, the world would be beautiful."

 

There are two kinds of people in this world, oh yes I said it: those sensitive to self interest, and those sensitive to fairness. But as far as money:

 

Money is labor

 

So let's not talk about money but about labor. When labor is not necessary, there will be no need to be compensated for labor. In human relations, someone will always have to be specilized in something, doing something, and that labor will be desired, and since a human only has 24 hours in a day, human will have to be compensated somehow. Who cares if it's green paper, or potato peels, it's always some fiat currency. So

what do you think happens to the "powerful" people when FIAT money reaches it´s intrinsic value of

Powerful people will still own labor, and labor will be compensated in some fiat currency, and that fiat currency could be gold. :phones:

when nanotechnology or some other "alcymist" technology turns stone into gold?

 

If I owned all resources contributing in and to CERN, my sole goal would be just that. For, what else really matters. If we are smashing particles, the constitutional requirement should be that the ultimate goal is to produce gold from manure. No other goal is as worthy, and everything else is a consequence. Gold from Dung.

There's an abundance of cattle manure because we all like hamburgers

 

Yes, we will still need cattle, and hamburgers. Yes we will still need labor. But how wonderful would life be if the fiat currency was gold. Life would be shiny and bright, and getting paid would be doubly fun.

[TheBigDog]

Of course you do, dear.

 

So do all the Randians who take her seriously (you too Pyro!)...

 

Yes, I read a lot of Ayn in high school, because at that time *everyone* did (boy, does that date me?). What set me rolling in the aisles--and accusing of my dreamy eyed intellectual friends of rank stupidity--was sitting down and reading her essays on objectivism. Ever since then I find it very difficult not to break out in laughter when people start talking about it, because to me, the lack of self-awareness that is so evident in the conflict between what she says she *means* versus what she actually *says* in her stories is just so stark that it's, well, laughable!

 

My favorite Rand is The Fountainhead, and I think the conflict shown in it is lost on men. It's clear that Howard Roark is a classic "bad boy" and she puts him up on a pedestal: he *is* The Fountainhead. But while he's the only one who doesn't "sell out", he's the bad boy, the screw up, the one who is so into self-sabotage that he's unintentionally shown to be the one you do NOT want to emulate.

 

As much as Ayn tries to make him the hero, it's obvious that quite frankly the one she'd actually want to marry is Ellsworth Toohey, who while a total sellout (but only known to us and the omniscient author) is the only one who in the end is a continued success and ultimately destroys Roarke.

 

Read her work on objectivism and the cream that rises is certainly the Ellsworth Tooheys whose ego wins out over any supposed "lack of talent."

 

Success is its own reward in Ayn's book.

 

So sorry guys, my personal opinion is that Randians are willfully clueless about the contradictions and intellectual weakness of Randism...

 

It doesn't help these days that the "intellectual tea baggers" (an oxymoron in itself) treat her as some sort of demi-god....

 

I play the stock market of the spirit and I sell short , :phones:

Buffy

You have just demonstrated that reading and understanding are separate things. Through the prism of your own values I am sure that everything you say is true. But your interpretations are far from my own. I would ask you what bile tastes like when you type things like this, but you would probably tell me it is not bile and it tastes sweet.

 

And quite an artful way of turning her into poison so to taint any well that might make mention.

 

Cheers! :cheer:

 

Bill