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DossarLX ODI 12-23-2010 02:17 AM

A world without money.
 
This is something I've been thinking about for some time now. What would happen if money didn't exist? If the absence of money caused problems, what do you think could be done to rectify the situation (without bringing money back)? Do you think the world would be better without money?

A few things I can see about having no money is that insurance won't be needed, surgery would be free, nobody needs funding for medical research, and everyone has a chance at attending a higher level of education (college). To prevent the laziness, there could be some law passed that makes it so every person is required to have some type of job. And there would be limit to what you can have too - even though things would be free, you can't and don't need 500 cars unless you wanted to loan out or sell them (which isn't really necessary since you're not selling for currency).

Shikari 12-23-2010 02:34 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI (Post 3377757)
A few things I can see about having no money is that insurance won't be needed, surgery would be free, nobody needs funding for medical research, and everyone has a chance at attending a higher level of education (college).

Wait a second... Never crossed your mind that people like medics, professors, even lawyers, would be their job for a favor, and not for free?

Humanity is greedy, it'll always find a way to make profit with anything, that's why you have prostitutes, for example, making money with intercourse. In a world without money, favors would be the new money, physical/bellical power would be the money, and so on. Yes, it could be a good thing in some ways, like no more inflation, poverty in any case, and situations like that, but it doesn't mean that people would start to give and do things for free, it'll always has something else involved.

foilman8805 12-23-2010 03:07 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI (Post 3377757)
This is something I've been thinking about for some time now. What would happen if money didn't exist? If the absence of money caused problems, what do you think could be done to rectify the situation (without bringing money back)? Do you think the world would be better without money?

A few things I can see about having no money is that insurance won't be needed, surgery would be free, nobody needs funding for medical research, and everyone has a chance at attending a higher level of education (college). To prevent the laziness, there could be some law passed that makes it so every person is required to have some type of job. And there would be limit to what you can have too - even though things would be free, you can't and don't need 500 cars unless you wanted to loan out or sell them (which isn't really necessary since you're not selling for currency).

Without really picking this apart, I feel like you're unknowingly suggesting or maybe aiming at some kind of Utopia. Here are a couple concerns I have with this idea:

When you eliminate money from every day society, you are essentially equating everything. The worth of the complicated brain surgery to remove a malignant tumor from your head is nothing (or as you've implied worth the same as everything else) when you remove money from the equation (this is obviously excluding the intrinsic value of life, which can't be valued by money or currency anyways). So is the effort the garbage man puts in to sit in his truck and remotely operate a robotic arm that catapults trash into the back of the truck. These are two vastly different tasks with enormously different qualifications that have for all intents and purposes become equal. This brings us to the real problem: is that fair?

I think a whole separate thread could be started and discussed on simply the fairness of eliminating money from society. A lot of things would need to change if money were not to exist, most notably the very nature of the human being.

Additionally, proposing limits on what people can and cannot have is a problem that you probably haven't thought about very deeply. It would most likely require some very totalitarian governmental actions to control what people have. You can bet your ass that no one is going to willingly give up the things they have purchased and acquired for the sake of collectivism (this is called communism btw and make sure to note that this has never been successful). Humans are innately individualistic and I do not see that ever changing. Whether you admit it or not, this will forever prevent money or currency from becoming extinct.

qqwref 12-23-2010 03:11 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Problem is, we just don't have the resources right now to give people whatever they want. So we need a system like money to prevent every resource from being either (a) completely first-come-first-serve, or (b) doled out equally to everyone by the government. Money is also an incentive, to get people to do work, or help someone out, or whatever.

In the far future, we might have enough resources to give everyone what they want (maybe we have some kind of matter replicator, and enough energy is being produced to easily power everything, including that). I imagine we'd also need a pretty strong legal presence to make sure enough work gets done to keep the society running, and to make sure people don't just spend all day being mean to each other. In that case we could do away with money entirely, if we wanted.

justaguy 12-23-2010 03:18 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
tradeoffs

the entire premise of this is uhhh brainless (quite literally)

Izzy 12-23-2010 03:53 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
This reminds me of communism. Or at least the concept of it. I think it might be called marxism, but I don't think it has ever worked in reality though.

Reincarnate 12-23-2010 08:47 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Wow holy **** massive misunderstanding of how money/economics work ITT

Reincarnate 12-23-2010 09:27 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Money is a standardization. It's a way we can judge the relative worth and value of things in a form that everyone can exchange on. Even in ancient civilizations, economies existed without money ("If you kill these boar for me, I'll protect your family"). The "problem" arises when people start trying to maximize their utility functions. Am I really getting a fair deal in this boar/family protection exchange? Is protecting a family worth this price in boar? How much boar? How much protection? Am I working too hard for what I'm providing or getting? Could I be getting a better deal elsewhere?

When you start adding entire societies into this mix, you have a wide range of services intermingled amidst the supplies and demands. The easiest thing to do is to make an intermediary -- money -- as a way to normalize it all.

Without money, you're basically operating on this sort of premise that suddenly everything will be easier to acquire. Just because you eliminate money, that doesn't mean you're making everything free. NOTHING is "free" because there's always an underlying cost. That cost comes in the form of underlying RESOURCES which are usually scarce (and therefore more valuable). Rarer materials are scarce. Skill is scarce.

A lot of people would opt out of doing work because, well, why bother if everything's free? Even if you require that people work something, people will take the route of least effort. Why bother going to school for years and years to become a banker/doctor/lawyer who works 24/7 if you can just test video games all day and be just as wealthy? Why invest anything for no return? A lot of the things we would WANT to acquire for free would no longer be available because nobody would bother making them anymore. The products we COULD acquire would be of ****ty quality because the few people that would bother to make such products would have no incentive to optimize their performance.

Limiting what people can own doesn't work in practice, either. In communism, everyone gets equal share of the fruits of labor and the government controls everything. It's not exactly a great life.

We need currency as a way to fix most of these issues.

Cavernio 12-23-2010 09:55 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Just more of what everyone else has been saying. If we just eliminate money without some other sort of system to dole out goods, people will still want payment for things. Literally paying someone in peanuts and cheese and cows and chickens and then a song is rather...odd. Money just makes all those transactions a lot easier and make much more sense, and gives perhaps a better value of what things are worth.

As other people have pointed out, money also gives incentive. This is where I think money fails though, personally. If someone needs money as an incentive to do something, then they shouldn't be doing that thing anyways. If this means that most people won't work, then so be it. Most people won't sit on their beds the rest of their lives either though. Unfortunately you can't really know someone's true drive to do one thing versus another in a society centered around money. Like, if we were to switch over to a money-free society, some sort of communism or something, initially, people would be lazy. I think that over a few years, and definitely over a generation, people would adjust their values, their ideals, and place more weight on things like honor, friendship, duty, doing the right thing, and what they like to do, in order to do things. Like I said earlier, people aren't just going to lie around and do nothing. Some people see this as ridiculous and not probable, but I disagree. For example, most people on this cite don't get paid much to run it, but they still do. I'll stay late at work, when they need someone, not because I need the money, but because I feel bad for the people who have to work short-staffed, and for those people who have to wait in line a long time. Sure, money's nice, but is only one of the reasons I'll stay.

But then there's also how our resources are going to get divided. This I think could be a real issue, especially if people are used to being greedy, (which they would be if we were to switch over from capitalism), and is also a more serious issue when there's not enough of a necessary resource to go around. I do, however, think that outside of healthcare, society and the globe possess enough resources to house, feed and clothe everyone, and give every household cellphones and laptops and TVs. Of course, we likely wouldn't have so many of these things being made, because I think that most factory work is not what most people would choose to do. I suppose we could also have some sort of strategy for rotating the ****ty jobs (that don't require a whole lot of skill) to different people if we wanted to get that organized though too.

I think we're fast coming up, or have reached, a point in human history where adopting some sort of communism would be very feasible. The internet makes the exchange of anything that can be transferred digitally so easy, and that basically means infinite digital resources for everyone. In fact, there's still issues with how to fit the internet into capitalism successfully, a task which, if you think about it, really is ludicrous. We only do it because we're set on being capitalist, and its not fair for people who used to make a living doing something suddenly lose it. We DO have enough food to feed everyone, and I already opt to work less and play more, just because of the multitude of things we produce for fun.

Also, can we please ban justaguy or at least delete his posts or something?

Reincarnate 12-23-2010 10:45 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Cavernio (Post 3377937)
As other people have pointed out, money also gives incentive. This is where I think money fails though, personally. If someone needs money as an incentive to do something, then they shouldn't be doing that thing anyways. If this means that most people won't work, then so be it. Most people won't sit on their beds the rest of their lives either though. Unfortunately you can't really know someone's true drive to do one thing versus another in a society centered around money. Like, if we were to switch over to a money-free society, some sort of communism or something, initially, people would be lazy. I think that over a few years, and definitely over a generation, people would adjust their values, their ideals, and place more weight on things like honor, friendship, duty, doing the right thing, and what they like to do, in order to do things. Like I said earlier, people aren't just going to lie around and do nothing. Some people see this as ridiculous and not probable, but I disagree. For example, most people on this cite don't get paid much to run it, but they still do. I'll stay late at work, when they need someone, not because I need the money, but because I feel bad for the people who have to work short-staffed, and for those people who have to wait in line a long time. Sure, money's nice, but is only one of the reasons I'll stay.


I think we're fast coming up, or have reached, a point in human history where adopting some sort of communism would be very feasible. The internet makes the exchange of anything that can be transferred digitally so easy, and that basically means infinite digital resources for everyone. In fact, there's still issues with how to fit the internet into capitalism successfully, a task which, if you think about it, really is ludicrous. We only do it because we're set on being capitalist, and its not fair for people who used to make a living doing something suddenly lose it. We DO have enough food to feed everyone, and I already opt to work less and play more, just because of the multitude of things we produce for fun.

Errr, money gives plenty of incentive. Why SHOULDN'T it be sufficient incentive? If you want a money-free society where people "change their values" and do what they want, that doesn't mean they're going to provide value. You cite examples of people running this site. How do you think Synth is able to keep this site up? It's certainly not self-sustainable. It's Synth's server -- servers don't operate for free. They leverage resources to operate, and these resources come at an underlying cost. People who volunteer here do it because it's fun and they enjoy the community -- but it's not ALL they do (aperson, for instance, works as a sysadmin for hostgator). At the end of the day, you still need a paycheck -- you need a way to pay for your resource use. If you're not old enough to work or go to college, then you're likely being supported by parents. If you're in college, you're likely supported by scholarship and/or financial aid and/or parents still. If you've graduated, you're likely supported by the fruits of your labor.

Furthermore, online resources are not "infinite." The internet lowers transaction costs. It makes information easier to acquire, and there is value to that. It makes economic deals easier to excute and process and manage. I can trade stocks, manage my finances, purchase things, buy food, sell products, start businesses, play games, design things, explore, learn, communicate and plan, etc -- online. These services are not, again, self-sustainable. They are all driven by PEOPLE who design and maintain the frameworks you leverage. The underlying OBJECTS of these services are still real, tangible items in most cases.

qqwref 12-23-2010 01:43 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Cavernio (Post 3377937)
This is where I think money fails though, personally. If someone needs money as an incentive to do something, then they shouldn't be doing that thing anyways. If this means that most people won't work, then so be it.

While this sounds at first to be better, think about it a bit more. Society would collapse.

At this point, we need plenty of people to do jobs that nobody would do if they had free time and could do anything. We still need garbagemen, data entry/management people in companies, factory workers, cleaners, fast food workers... in fact I'd say that most jobs nowadays would fall under the category of something almost nobody would even consider doing without a serious reward. There's just too much that needs to be done that we can't automate. Maybe in a few hundred years we'll be beyond that, and everything tedious/dangerous/unpleasant will be done by machines (or won't need to be done at all), but right now it is very important to have a clear incentive (money) available.

DossarLX ODI 12-23-2010 10:06 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
First off, I'd like to point out that when I made this thread, I understand that money won't ever be abolished and that this is a totally utopian idea. Just trying to abolish money itself is what would be the focus if this idea really were to take place - I just wanted you guys to think about a world without it.

Now with that out of the way, I just want to say a few things after reading these posts.

I definitely have to agree that a legal system would have to be set up if money were to be abolished - but at the same time I do understand that value is not always money, and that underlying cost still exists. We could pass a law that everyone must have a job or be in school. Since nobody has to pay you anything, I'm sure any business would love to have somebody come in to sweep the floor, wash the dishes, take out the trash, or whatever else. No matter what you do, you must be employed. All you'd need is verifiable employment, and welfare won't be needed when you can just pick out a house, a car, some toys for your kids maybe, and all the food you need.

This raises another point: Nothing will get done? I think more would get done, actually - say someone wanted to be an electrician or go to a medical school. With this system, those fields would not require costs - if you're tired of power outages, you can go to a free university and become an electrical engineer and work for a power company and take care of those types of problems. With this being said, getting rid of money could possibly make more jobs available.

If money is abolished, demand for nearly everything would skyrocket. As the demand goes up, there would be a near frantic need to increase supply to keep up with the ever-rising demand. In order to increase supplies, every industry would have to drastically increase their workforce, which is not a problem since it costs nothing to do so. With all the unemployed people out there, they can be trained and they can all be employed.

The biggest problem I see with this though, like previously mentioned in other posts, is that a whole new division of the government would have to be opened to regulate this.

As for communisim, this economy is not an assurance that you'll get everything your neighbor has. Unlike in a communist system, the government isn't going to step in and take away your neighbor's TV just because you didn't get one too - you'll get one later, so just wait lol. Granted, there will be the communist aspect that a man who licks stamps for a living can have all the same stuff as a guy who does tough labor like loading concrete blocks. But so what? It's time for people to get over the idea that they're entitled to "more" for doing a job that needs to be done. The job won't do itself and if you don't do it, you won't get anything.

But then, wouldn't everyone just take the easy jobs then? I can see that happening for a few weeks. But once the power goes out, the people will get back to work or they'll get replaced by all the people who want their power back on. Once the water stops working, the people from those works will go back to their jobs or they'll be replaced. Once the trash piles up, garbage men will go back to work. After all, supply can't meet demand if there's nobody boosting the supply. Most people will learn that very quickly if they don't know it already.

If you don't work to earn things, you get nothing. In fact, I think this would prevent people from being spoiled. Under a non-monetary system, their trust fund is worthless and they too will have to work for the things they want. This could also prevent illegal employment from surviving.

However, the biggest flaw is...... money is not the only type of value. Greed will somehow come back in a different form. Again I know this is probably a really insane idea but I've really put some thought into it and I understand it does have its flaws. Feedback?

Cavernio 12-24-2010 07:10 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
DossarLX: Although it seems like you may carry a view similar to mine Dossar, I think I'd rather be in a capitalism than have the government say I need a job as defined by them. A lot of people nowadays don't have what most people would call a 'job', that would be hard to classify as a job from a government standpoint. Like pretty much any artist. Most of them don't 'art' 24/7, many of them don't perceptively work at them full-time either, yet by saying they'd HAVE to have a job could very well decrease their overall art output. Also, you'd have to label all those things people do as work, that people already do for 'free', like their own dishes, laundry, looking after their kids, etc. If you didn't, your system isn't fair, but if you did, your system now has exchanged the motivation of 'I get a clean house' to 'I need to eat this week so I need to clean my house'. That's pretty ****ed up. I hate money because it makes motivation, and ergo I definitely would hate something that essentially works just like money, except instead of giving me a positive motivation for doing something (ie: I get money and then I get some extra money so I can go on a trip) to simply negative motivation because I HAVE to work OR ELSE I don't get anything.
Your supply demand thing, although outwardly making sense, falls apart because without money, or without another motivating factor to cause people to supply more to someone other than themselves, there's no guarantee supply will rise to meet demand. I mean, the hope would be that we'd sort everything out so that it would work, but I have no statements that it would necessarily just have to work because of supply and demand.

Reincarnate: Money shouldn't be 'sufficient' incentive because its outward incentive. Its shallow. To be cliche-(ay), it doesn't make people happy, especially when it overpowers one's own inner incentives. (Which is essentially what all outward incentive does according to what I learned 5 years ago in school.) This is all totally a personal opinion here though, in regards to not wanting to have money get in the way of what I actually want. I would just love to see more people doing things because they're internally motivated to rather than externally motivated to.
I'm very aware that this cite isn't self-sustaining, and that a lot of effort is put into it; that just makes the point of what I was so saying that much stronger. I cited it (ah haha I mades a pun) because its a clear example that people WILL put effort into things they WANT to. Any example I can give where people are putting in free or cheap hours on something, especially when to do so is actually counter monetary gains, or where someone puts money into doing something most people would consider 'work', strongly supports my ideals and makes me see that something closer to utopia might actually be possible. I wasn't trying to say that this cite runs for 'free' to make it seem like there's no effort involved into keeping it up and running it. I didn't include all the background needed for the internet to exist at all because that's, well, not part of what I was trying to get at.

As far as I'm concerned, the information on the internet minus the hardware necessary to keep all the information on it up and flowing, IS infinite. Art, information, games... they're not like food where if I eat something, someone else doesn't get to eat it. Its the perfect medium for share and share a-like. Yes yes, people still work to keep things up and things that are sold and whatnot that actually have a physicality to them aren't, but all that stuff is really more about 'but who will do all this stuff if we don't get paid to?'

"If you want a money-free society where people "change their values" and do what they want, that doesn't mean they're going to provide value."

I think addressing this line also addresses qqwref too, so here it goes. I guess I haven't thought about this too much, so I could not be considering many aspects of this, but I really think that your quote is just wrong. People will find things to live for, and I'll try to show it. Without values, people have no reason to live. Of course this doesn't mean that people will necessarily adopt them, but seeing as we've evolved into who we are, it seems pretty fail of evolution to create such beings that intellectually want reasons for doing things, and then have the species NOT try and find reasons to live. To not just be totally rhetorical here though, there's quite a few examples to use. Religion is the biggest one. People for some reason adopted religion, and to me its just people giving themselves something to value. And its a reason/value still in use today! A specific subset of people who have been known to have nothing, or not a whole lot, would be poor black teenagers. I'm specifically thinking about LA gangs (I recently watched a thing on TV about it, so its on my mind), or any other type of 'street group' or whatever. These people, these teenagers, people growing and becoming adults, have **** to live for. Drug addicted parents, no money. Gangs specifically give someone something to live for. Sure they morals of the group are in question with societal norms and perhaps an even 'higher' morality (like just don't kill anyone), but to the people in those groups, they have a 'family' now, they have expectations to meet, and they belong. I really think that people join these groups is so that there's something to live for. People who already have something to live for generally avoid joining a group like that, but its the people who value nothing who find that something, even something that involves killing, is better than valuing nothing.
Heh, I'm painting a pretty picture here, do away with money and we'll just end up with fanatical street gangs, yay~! But its not just negative values that people will create. I mean, most of ALL of our values are 'created'. Something like pride. Pride doesn't really seem to be valued very much in our society these days, so it makes it something easy to see as really not being much of anything. Its just a way someone acts that can actually be kinda dumb and in fact be more harmful than anything, but some people still value it. Why? I dunno, we just made it something that people do and that's valued. Family? I guess there's claer biological incentive for this one, but to value something like having a mother and father and eating around the dinner table each night, that's just a made-up value we've adopted.

And finally, to address qqwref's stuff about there being more mundane jobs now than ever before, oh I soooo disagree. It feels like society 'creates' jobs so that people can work. Beaurocracy feels like that, that's why its like a dirty word to some people. But beyond that, most growth in the north american job market is for things that require thinking and brains, which I think at least, are going to be more interesting jobs. Sure factory jobs are on the rise globally, but if a factory is run well, its still better than plowing your fields by hand or some other such archaic job. Besides which, there are A LOT of factories which will opt to have jobs that machines can easily do, actually be done by people, just so that they support the economy, because we DO lose unskilled labor jobs as technology takes over.

kommisar 12-24-2010 07:30 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
monopoly would be based off manipulative power and trade. that's all there is to it. rather than inventing legal tender out of thin air, this would be an interesting concept to go back to. lets make our own country and see if it works out in 10 years

foilman8805 12-24-2010 07:42 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Dossar, you assume a lot about the nature of the human being that you clearly just don't know, or can't predict. You assume a person will happily work a job moving concrete blocks while their buddy has a job licking stamps and both will be satisfied with having the same things as a result. As I said above, it ultimately raises a question of fairness. After a short time the concrete block mover will become pretty pissed off when he comes home sore every day and with jacked up hands while his buddy kicks back and licks stamps all day.

The only way something like this would work is to establish a society that has never had previous experience with money and form a government and the society around the concept of no currency. It can't be introduced into a society that's already working with money. Just can't happen.

Without A Contraceptive 12-24-2010 07:52 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
this thread doesnt work right


like foil said; people wont work without compensation. what incentive do i have to go to college if there is no money for me to earn to enable me to buy all the cars houses hoes drugs etc?

Reincarnate 12-24-2010 08:52 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
dossar never become an economist

Arch0wl 12-25-2010 12:35 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Most people have covered what I was going to say ("if there wasn't money, something would take its place") but there's one other thing I'd like to add:

People do not always do things for strict monetary compensation. Sometimes the 'compensation' is more indirect. On the internet, for example, recognition goes a long way. In fact, the entire open source community runs on recognition. Community service runs on the feeling that you've accomplished something good and made someone's life better. Though, calling this 'compensation' is really stretching the term.

justaguy 12-25-2010 12:36 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
i'll contribute something that's more than one line. if you missed the key point earlier then here it is again:

Quote:

tradeoffs
elaborated eloquently:

Quote:

Money is a standardization. It's a way we can judge the relative worth and value of things in a form that everyone can exchange on.
essentially all individuals have their own preference (modeled by utility for you economics wizards, as rubix also explained) for anything. i prefer that, you prefer this, etc. it's a fundamental behavioral concept. the goal any individual is to attain their preference by whatever means they choose, with employment being the most common means. by attaining a preference, the implication is that you are trying to make yourself better off relative to your current state. if money ceases to exist you're suddenly faced with fewer means of attaining your preference, making it more difficult to seek out. in other words, if one man grows apples and another oranges, how would the man with oranges get apples if the man with apples did not prefer oranges? he would need to trade his oranges for another good that the apple grower preferred. the apple grower's preference is inconvenient for orange grower because it adds an extra step in trade. would trade not be more efficient if all steps were condensed to one? which brings us back to:

Quote:

Money is a standardization. It's a way we can judge the relative worth and value of things in a form that everyone can exchange on.
and further:

Quote:

tradeoffs
you're maximizing the efficiency of tradeoffs by developing a medium that everyone prefers. aka doing the rational thing.

and:

Quote:

This is where I think money fails though, personally. If someone needs money as an incentive to do something, then they shouldn't be doing that thing anyways.
are you kidding me? if unknown student left their steaming feces in the middle of a high school bathroom, you're telling me the simple satisfaction of cleaning it up is enough of an incentive?

Quote:

If this means that most people won't work, then so be it. Most people won't sit on their beds the rest of their lives either though.
and uh, what gives you that impression? you're implying that satisfaction of performing work should be an individual's only incentive and suddenly they'll be shifted into gear once they've realized their "drive." why are you presupposing something like drive within the context of work? they are not coupled entities.

Quote:

Unfortunately you can't really know someone's true drive to do one thing versus another in a society centered around money.
really, you're implying those driven by money are less productive than those driven by their "true drive"?

Quote:

Like, if we were to switch over to a money-free society, some sort of communism or something, initially, people would be lazy. I think that over a few years, and definitely over a generation, people would adjust their values, their ideals, and place more weight on things like honor, friendship, duty, doing the right thing, and what they like to do, in order to do things.
i think your short run analysis is incredibly naive. place more weight on honor? and why would they do that? why would they place any more weight on friendship than they had already? at what point does removing money from the societal equation suddenly motivate people to "do the right thing" (i won't even start the right vs. wrong debate)? i think you're under the impression that underneath the evil that is money there exists the bunnies and rainbows of passion and community.


Quote:

Like I said earlier, people aren't just going to lie around and do nothing. Some people see this as ridiculous and not probable, but I disagree. For example, most people on this cite don't get paid much to run it, but they still do. I'll stay late at work, when they need someone, not because I need the money, but because I feel bad for the people who have to work short-staffed, and for those people who have to wait in line a long time. Sure, money's nice, but is only one of the reasons I'll stay.
you're using FFR as an example to rationalize your reasoning...? here's a sizable anecdote that maybe makes sense to you: for example, most people that work late do it because they need the money. this may come as a surprise to you, but golly gee, why is overtime sometimes pay and a half? is it because employers have modeled human behavior and realized employees need a greater incentive to work more hours than they originally preferred? or because they really feel like people should be rewarded for staying around late and helping the short staffed?

Quote:

Your supply demand thing, although outwardly making sense, falls apart because without money, or without another motivating factor to cause people to supply more to someone other than themselves, there's no guarantee supply will rise to meet demand. I mean, the hope would be that we'd sort everything out so that it would work, but I have no statements that it would necessarily just have to work because of supply and demand.
woah woah pump the brakes, i thought you were riding the satisfaction wave? suddenly everyone is doing things for themselves and not for the good of other people? supply and demand falls apart without money? lol.

Quote:

Reincarnate: Money shouldn't be 'sufficient' incentive because its outward incentive. Its shallow. To be cliche-(ay), it doesn't make people happy, especially when it overpowers one's own inner incentives.
uh, how is money shallow? money appeals to my emotions because it relieves my stress and permits a comfortable lifestyle, does this make me shallow? money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. for the few that consider money an end, shouldn't they be more passionate and productive than anyone else? they aren't confined to any specific means of employment, they just simply want money, so would they be diligent in any context?

Quote:

I would just love to see more people doing things because they're internally motivated to rather than externally motivated to.
ah, here we go, it's that darn projecting thing. stop projecting this promising image you have of humanity on realistic situations.

Quote:

"If you want a money-free society where people "change their values" and do what they want, that doesn't mean they're going to provide value."
woop woop. in other words, even if people do what they want that doesn't necessarily mean they're contributing anything worthwhile to society.

Quote:

Without values, people have no reason to live. Of course this doesn't mean that people will necessarily adopt them, but seeing as we've evolved into who we are, it seems pretty fail of evolution to create such beings that intellectually want reasons for doing things, and then have the species NOT try and find reasons to live.
regardless of how poorly you interpreted the previous quote, your analysis of your own interpretation is still bad. people can rationalize reasons within the context of humanity but cannot rationalize their existence within the context of the universe, though they will try. people have been pondering their own existence since they were cognizant enough to ask why. it seems pretty fail of evolution to produce stupid people. why'd evolution do a thing like that?

Quote:

Religion is the biggest one. People for some reason adopted religion, and to me its just people giving themselves something to value. And its a reason/value still in use today!
lol

Quote:

A specific subset of people who have been known to have nothing, or not a whole lot, would be poor black teenagers. I'm specifically thinking about LA gangs (I recently watched a thing on TV about it, so its on my mind), or any other type of 'street group' or whatever. These people, these teenagers, people growing and becoming adults, have **** to live for. Drug addicted parents, no money. Gangs specifically give someone something to live for. Sure they morals of the group are in question with societal norms and perhaps an even 'higher' morality (like just don't kill anyone), but to the people in those groups, they have a 'family' now, they have expectations to meet, and they belong. I really think that people join these groups is so that there's something to live for. People who already have something to live for generally avoid joining a group like that, but its the people who value nothing who find that something, even something that involves killing, is better than valuing nothing.
i don't even know the relevance of this at all. this doesn't have anything to do with the social impact of removing money it just kind of says that youth with no direction are impressionable. thanks though.

Quote:

Something like pride. Pride doesn't really seem to be valued very much in our society these days, so it makes it something easy to see as really not being much of anything
what is even the significance of this?

Quote:

Why? I dunno, we just made it something that people do and that's valued.
right, that's it, you got it dogg. where the hell did pride come from? we just made that **** up. nobody knew how to be proud of themselves before i made it glaringly obvious to everyone that it was something they could feel.

Quote:

Family? I guess there's claer biological incentive for this one, but to value something like having a mother and father and eating around the dinner table each night, that's just a made-up value we've adopted.
i think you just keep writing random words in your posts completely unaware of how little sense they make and how irrelevant they are.

Quote:

And finally, to address qqwref's stuff about there being more mundane jobs now than ever before, oh I soooo disagree. It feels like society 'creates' jobs so that people can work. Beaurocracy feels like that, that's why its like a dirty word to some people. But beyond that, most growth in the north american job market is for things that require thinking and brains, which I think at least, are going to be more interesting jobs. Sure factory jobs are on the rise globally, but if a factory is run well, its still better than plowing your fields by hand or some other such archaic job. Besides which, there are A LOT of factories which will opt to have jobs that machines can easily do, actually be done by people, just so that they support the economy, because we DO lose unskilled labor jobs as technology takes over.
you soooo disagree? you're saying that the majority of jobs could be worked without a reward? uhhhh? you wrote a wall of text about one line of his post that didn't even showcase the point being made (that i made earlier also) which was that people aren't going to work without a valid incentive. and... they aren't.

and for future ref: if you're going to PM me about my (surprisingly relevant) two line post in a thread and then request a ban about at least be able to "critically think" so you don't **** out walls of useless text.

Arch0wl 12-25-2010 12:45 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
also, I had some Fridge Logic a second ago: even if you got rid of all money and went back to the tribal level where of Maslow's basic needs were satisfied, people would still compete over other people. As in, romantically. I'm not even saying this in the pop-evolutionary-psychology "lol alpha males" nonsense that you read on PUA websites--just look at any circle of friends with a surplus of men and deficit of women. Humans have a rapacious inner dickwad and until our technology is sufficient enough to make "better" humans (i.e. transhumanism) we're stuck with all of our evolutionary baggage.

justaguy 12-25-2010 12:52 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Arch0wl (Post 3380327)
Most people have covered what I was going to say ("if there wasn't money, something would take its place") but there's one other thing I'd like to add:

People do not always do things for strict monetary compensation. Sometimes the 'compensation' is more indirect. On the internet, for example, recognition goes a long way. In fact, the entire open source community runs on recognition. Community service runs on the feeling that you've accomplished something good and made someone's life better. Though, calling this 'compensation' is really stretching the term.

sure, yeah. it's an implicit benefit of working or performing any task free of charge. ie making stepfiles and graphics gets you KNOWN in this community. but it is implicit, so there's no way of quantifying the benefits across multiple individuals... which is why having explicit benefits quantifiable to everyone works well.

also hey arch0wl how u been

edit: chances of me ever making a post that long again on this site = Slim2None Because The Implicit Benefit Reaped From Spending However Long Typing Posts Of That Length Ceased To Exist Years Ago.

McLaReN212 12-26-2010 03:08 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
To the OP, this is a ridiculous notion. People have pretty much covered it already; people need resources, and without interacting with other people, it will be impossible to attain all of the resources you need. People will resort to some sort of barter system in the end; it only makes sense to institute a standard medium in order to increase efficiency.

I do want to point out one thing that Hayden and various people have said that I don't agree with though; that being the "incentive" argument. Of course, I agree that incentive is an important aspect of work. However, I think you all are really overstating things... are you really telling me without compensational incentive people won't work at all? No... what will happen is that they'll institute an incentive. However, if there was no such way to do this, you can't tell me that human would let everything go to **** because there was no compensational incentive to fix things... that contradicts the very evolutionary imperatives that drive us.

Reincarnate 12-26-2010 10:08 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by McLaReN212 (Post 3381430)
I do want to point out one thing that Hayden and various people have said that I don't agree with though; that being the "incentive" argument. Of course, I agree that incentive is an important aspect of work. However, I think you all are really overstating things... are you really telling me without compensational incentive people won't work at all? No... what will happen is that they'll institute an incentive. However, if there was no such way to do this, you can't tell me that human would let everything go to **** because there was no compensational incentive to fix things... that contradicts the very evolutionary imperatives that drive us.

Of course people work towards some sort of incentive. You brought up evolutionary imperatives, so we'll work from that framework.

You have an incentive to live, right? To live, you need resources. To acquire those resources, you need to earn money. To earn money, you need to work. Therefore money is usually a pretty damn good incentive to do things.

People work because they have to -- it's the fundamental thrust of economics: scarcity. We have seemingly unlimited human desires but only so many resources to go around. We wouldn't NEED an economy with money if we could just walk outside and get everything we wanted/needed without any skill or effort.

But our life doesn't work that way. We aren't able to provide everything we want for ourselves -- we don't want to design our own shoes, invent our own technology, make our own movies, grow our own food, make our own living residences, generate our own electricity, gather our own information, etc. We have services that specialize in these various functions and we pay for them. We can pay for them through money, which we acquire in exchange for our OWN specializations.

In an ideal world, everyone is compensated by fair value. If I am able to provide a service that generates more value, I get more money for it. If I work longer or smarter or give up more of something, I am compensated for it. That's why money is perfectly fine as an incentive -- it represents the ability to acquire more resources and services.

The problem is that you have no way to standardize anything without money. It's not that people wouldn't work -- it's that people wouldn't have incentive to bust their asses for no return. If money is somehow forbidden in my society, I'm not going to work hard if my services are going to be free. I'm going to sit on my ass and do what I want all day. But so will everyone else. It's not a very stable sort of society. At some point, everyone needs each other's skills and resources to perpetuate. So people WILL work -- but luckily, we have something called intelligence. This intelligence lets us know that it's better to create money as a compensation metric, because it's no fun living in a society where you aren't rewarded much for your labor. It all ultimately comes down to what is fair. It's an unsolvable problem that is always swinging in equilibrium.

Reincarnate 12-26-2010 10:22 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Arch0wl (Post 3380327)
Most people have covered what I was going to say ("if there wasn't money, something would take its place") but there's one other thing I'd like to add:

People do not always do things for strict monetary compensation. Sometimes the 'compensation' is more indirect. On the internet, for example, recognition goes a long way. In fact, the entire open source community runs on recognition. Community service runs on the feeling that you've accomplished something good and made someone's life better. Though, calling this 'compensation' is really stretching the term.

All compensation is ultimately utility (happiness). Whether it's for recognition or food on the table, we contribute skills because they ultimately net us something we want or need. Those things can be valued in terms of money -- which is what market forces are all about.

Reincarnate 12-26-2010 10:39 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI (Post 3378465)
If money is abolished, demand for nearly everything would skyrocket. As the demand goes up, there would be a near frantic need to increase supply to keep up with the ever-rising demand. In order to increase supplies, every industry would have to drastically increase their workforce, which is not a problem since it costs nothing to do so. With all the unemployed people out there, they can be trained and they can all be employed.

I seriously can't tell if you're trolling or just woefully misinformed about how finance and economics work.

Yeah, if you set p=0, demand is nuts. Nobody's going to pass up free utility. Setting something to no price means more supply will be needed to sustain the demand. But this means more resources are required. That is a real cost. You can't just say "it'll cost nothing" by removing money. You're still using resources. If every single supply curve got shocked to maximum value, we'd be short all-around. We don't have enough resources to provide every single person access to everything. If we could do this, we wouldn't need an economy.

dragonmegaXX 12-27-2010 01:28 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI (Post 3377757)
This is something I've been thinking about for some time now. What would happen if money didn't exist? If the absence of money caused problems, what do you think could be done to rectify the situation (without bringing money back)? Do you think the world would be better without money?

A few things I can see about having no money is that insurance won't be needed, surgery would be free, nobody needs funding for medical research, and everyone has a chance at attending a higher level of education (college). To prevent the laziness, there could be some law passed that makes it so every person is required to have some type of job. And there would be limit to what you can have too - even though things would be free, you can't and don't need 500 cars unless you wanted to loan out or sell them (which isn't really necessary since you're not selling for currency).

Kind of sounds like Anthem.

Without money, people would just start bartering and it wouldnt really do anything major. People would just start trading their stuff for other peoples stuff.
If you took away everyone's stuff and had them start from scratch, society would probably collapse because people wouldn't be motivated to try to learn important skills like medicine or surgery. That is unless you assign everyone jobs.(Again, Anthem, which didnt turn out well for that civilization)

WaterMan90 12-28-2010 02:25 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Why do people make money? They put their heart and effort in the hopes that they will achieve some form of return. It's like conversation, really. Money is just one of many ways to concretize this sort of return. Of course, some may do jobs because they desire to help others, they wish to fulfill a "duty", or they think it's "fun" - but the act is never selfless :-|. There is no selfless act, or one would never perform the act at all. Now, we know that if people work toward a common purpose, they feel more unified. A strong currency strengthens an economy, and thus a nation and culture can be strengthened. Money is such a grand thing that almost every human being is involved in, and in a way it brings us together - unless there are those who try to take advantage of it, criminals and misers who hoard/manipulate with it. Without money, people really won't be as motivated to strive for goals or desires - the key idea people have mentioned here - thus collapsing society into more or less chaos. I should make a point here, though: First society, then money, not the other way around. Technically, you can't have a world without money or there would be no "world".

Quote:

Without money, people would just start bartering and it wouldnt really do anything major. People would just start trading their stuff for other peoples stuff.
Bartering is fine, but you're right, it won't do "major" things. Back in the day when people were not so unified as today with its technology and Internet culture, bartering was an efficient way of fulfilling your needs and those of others as well. But to have a set standard for the grand abstract idea we call "value" ( :shock: ), money makes such trading more convenient in the fast-paced society.

Cavernio 12-31-2010 08:22 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
are you kidding me? if unknown student left their steaming feces in the middle of a high school bathroom, you're telling me the simple satisfaction of cleaning it up is enough of an incentive?

I clean because I don't like things dirty, same goes for **** as for anything else. I never said that work was its own reward. (Although hard-work can be valued for itself.) People do work so that something good happens because of it, like not having **** of the floor. I don't know why you'd WANT to have **** on the floor. On another note, perhaps you'd be more inclined to find the perpetrator and make sure they wouldn't do it again if you weren't paid to clean the **** up. Besides which, if you got paid to be a ****-scooper your entire life, you might in fact get upset if people started to become more decent and stopped ****ting everywhere, because you'd then have no work. Such situations DO happen in real life. They're called luddites. They're largely a by-product of money.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
and uh, what gives you that impression? you're implying that satisfaction of performing work should be an individual's only incentive and suddenly they'll be shifted into gear once they've realized their "drive." why are you presupposing something like drive within the context of work? they are not coupled entities.

Driven people do things, most of the things people do is work. We could get into a discussion about what defines work, but I'd rather not do that. I'm not saying anyone will suddenly be shifted into doing anything, either. I'm saying that doing nothing is boring, and that to assume that everyone would stop doing their job because they suddenly stopped getting paid for it is as equally assanine as saying rainbows and bunnies are what exists when money is removed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
really, you're implying those driven by money are less productive than those driven by their "true drive"?

No. I specifically tried to NOT imply that. I'm trying to say that I don't give a **** if society's productive if society isn't happy. I am also saying that I believe we have enough 'product', to live comfortably, (thanks to technology) even if people produce a lot less.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
i think your short run analysis is incredibly naive. place more weight on honor? and why would they do that? why would they place any more weight on friendship than they had already? at what point does removing money from the societal equation suddenly motivate people to "do the right thing" (i won't even start the right vs. wrong debate)? i think you're under the impression that underneath the evil that is money there exists the bunnies and rainbows of passion and community.

People would place more weight on non-monetary incentives because we'd all start to become like disillusioned teenagers. If you take away someone's prime reason for doing things, they'll become lost for a short period of time before other things fill that void. That is my theory. You've already said that you agree in part with it, but you apparently don't agree that it would also work in non-critical (ie: nothing to live for) situations. Perhaps that is valid, but you've got to give me more than 'I don't see that working'. You say that most of my previous post doesn't address the right thing at all, but yet you obviously do understand how relevant it is, judging from your your response here.


Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
you're using FFR as an example to rationalize your reasoning...? here's a sizable anecdote that maybe makes sense to you: for example, most people that work late do it because they need the money. this may come as a surprise to you, but golly gee, why is overtime sometimes pay and a half? is it because employers have modeled human behavior and realized employees need a greater incentive to work more hours than they originally preferred? or because they really feel like people should be rewarded for staying around late and helping the short staffed?

But why should we add extra incentive for working more hours at all? I've already said, I don't care about being more productive, I care about being happy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
woah woah pump the brakes, i thought you were riding the satisfaction wave? suddenly everyone is doing things for themselves and not for the good of other people? supply and demand falls apart without money? lol.

Supply and demand have been studied under a society that revolves around money, and which uses money as an integral measure of them. If you remove the money, the validity of the models of supply and demand would at the very least be questionable. I also never said people would be doing things for the good of other people. In fact, some would say that if we produced less stuff means we'd by definition be doing worse as a society.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
uh, how is money shallow? money appeals to my emotions because it relieves my stress and permits a comfortable lifestyle, does this make me shallow? money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. for the few that consider money an end, shouldn't they be more passionate and productive than anyone else? they aren't confined to any specific means of employment, they just simply want money, so would they be diligent in any context?

If we have enough products and goods such that your stress would largely be non-existant for things like food and shelter and other comforts, money IS shallow. Besides which, if you want to bandy words and meanings, money DOESN'T make you comfortable. A soft bed does. (Furthermore, if money is not shallow, then please tell me what is...its like your saying shallowness doesn't exist really.) People who do consider money an end ARE more productive. They choose to run giant corporations which they choose to be tax exempt, and which often pay workers minimum wage, or who use slave labor, and who will do all types of not nice things in order just to get more money. I dunno if they'd work as hard in any other context, it would depend on the person and if they could find something else to take over what money gave them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
ah, here we go, it's that darn projecting thing. stop projecting this promising image you have of humanity on realistic situations.

Religious fanatical gangs is promising? I'm under no pretense that all non-monetary values are good. I just have a very negative image of humanity right now, and a lot of it seems to stem from capitalism.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
woop woop. in other words, even if people do what they want that doesn't necessarily mean they're contributing anything worthwhile to society.

Now you're on the trolly. Except that people are social, and they will overwhelmingly contribute to other people regardless. Whether or not you consider helping your kids or spouse or friends helps society; or whether people would adopt a strong sense of wanting to help society as a whole; that's in question. Keep in mind that if any sort of social reform were to happen, everything that's in place right now won't magically disappear. It might fall away, but we will still have organization.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
i don't even know the relevance of this at all. this doesn't have anything to do with the social impact of removing money it just kind of says that youth with no direction are impressionable. thanks though.

right, that's it, you got it dogg. where the hell did pride come from? we just made that **** up. nobody knew how to be proud of themselves before i made it glaringly obvious to everyone that it was something they could feel.

Pride is made up because of society. I strongly disagree that pride is an innate feeling. Most feelings we have are a result of being socialized. That we innately possess the biology to get these emotions I will agree with, but the interpretation of what all these mean are most definitely not innate. No one has to make something glaringly obvious for something to be 'made up'. Most people going into gangs don't think to themselves 'I need something to live for' before they join.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
you soooo disagree? you're saying that the majority of jobs could be worked without a reward? uhhhh? you wrote a wall of text about one line of his post that didn't even showcase the point being made (that i made earlier also) which was that people aren't going to work without a valid incentive. and... they aren't.

And if you don't see the connection between adopting incentive and most of my previous post, you're dumber than you seem, because most of your post strongly implied that you did. Just because you didn't agree with what I was saying or you didn't understand it for whatever reason, doesn't mean I wasn't addressing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3380329)
and for future ref: if you're going to PM me about my (surprisingly relevant) two line post in a thread and then request a ban about at least be able to "critically think" so you don't **** out walls of useless text.

I'm sorry if I'm verbose and use paragraphs properly. Not all ideas can properly be expressed in a sentence. Also, I PMd you after bitching about you publicly, not before. Also, I requested a ban for more reasons than just 1 post. Your siggy was representative of that. Although I do hope your ban isn't forever, because you've finally started talking.

Stewie7Griffin 12-31-2010 09:53 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Maybe instead of implementing the idea of abolishing money completely, we should find a solution to prevent people from using the system to their advantage. For instance, I see this A LOT, people get WIC, Food Stamps, TANF, and Medicaid, not because they can't afford the stuff they need, but only because they can't afford the stuff they want.

I find it kind of dumb that the top paid CEO of a company makes as much money as the 7th top paid NBA player. What is the NBA player getting paid to do really? Entertain? People loot and steal because they don't have the money. If they only stepped back and actually thought, if they don't loot or steal, they wouldn't have to loot or steal in the first place. People don't think this way, it's called ignorance and stupidity.

*EDIT*
The only way to change this is by an evolutionary change to the human mind.

devonin 12-31-2010 10:10 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
I'm amused by the idea that if you abolished currency you'd be "left" with the barter system. You do realise that money -is- the barter system still, we've just allowed a way for two people who don't actually have something the other one wants to deal by providing a universal intermediate step they can trade to anybody.

Reincarnate 12-31-2010 04:12 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by devonin (Post 3385065)
I'm amused by the idea that if you abolished currency you'd be "left" with the barter system. You do realise that money -is- the barter system still, we've just allowed a way for two people who don't actually have something the other one wants to deal by providing a universal intermediate step they can trade to anybody.

Yup yup -- which is why this discussion is just silly. Removing money doesn't suddenly make everything "free." Completely stupid way to look at it.

Removing money doesn't improve squat -- you're just removing liquidity, which comes at a cost. Money saves us money (there is a value to our monetary system) and lowers transaction costs by its very existence.

The only caveat is that we operate under a fiat system where we "accept" that the dollar is worth its value, backed by the faith and credit of the government.

devonin 12-31-2010 08:57 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Yup, trading goods in hand for goods in hand is the only way to make sure that you're actually getting what you think you're getting, but the opportunity cost to trade my eggs for your wheat when you don't want eggs is ridiculously high.

We've all seen episodes of sitcoms where someone has to do the absurd chain of trades to get the one thing you wanted at the beginning. Hell, we've all done fetch quests in video and computer games, and we know how annoying it is.

The entirety of what money represents economically is the abilty to a) acquire goods when you don't have goods the other person wants and values equally and b) to stockpile resources in order to acquire something you couldn't ordinarily get in one transaction. Beyond that, it's not -like- bartering, it -is- bartering

mhss1992 01-1-2011 10:19 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
What bothers me about money is that it's not directly proportional to the true value of things. As I see it, it creates lots of stupid and unnecessary limitations.

I think that things could still work better without an exchange system but with a different credit system. Like this: as a normal citizen, you would have access to basic stuff like food, water, school, etc. But with limitations. In order to gain more privileges, you'd have to work and, depending on the utility of your work (which would have to be debated) gain a certain ammount of credit that would be recorded in some database. However, this credit would not be exchangeable. It would lower if you committed crimes or stopped working for a long time, but would only increase if you kept working (since you wouldn't really exchange it for anything).

Everyone would be given the same opportunities. No one would be born rich or poor. The government would have to provide stuff for people until a certain age, before they needed to start working.

The only problem is that something like this would only work if a large enough independent group of countries decided to do the same.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3385225)
Money saves us money

I do know what you mean, but, still...

Reincarnate 01-2-2011 01:18 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3386137)
What bothers me about money is that it's not directly proportional to the true value of things. As I see it, it creates lots of stupid and unnecessary limitations.

I think that things could still work better without an exchange system but with a different credit system. Like this: as a normal citizen, you would have access to basic stuff like food, water, school, etc. But with limitations. In order to gain more privileges, you'd have to work and, depending on the utility of your work (which would have to be debated) gain a certain ammount of credit that would be recorded in some database. However, this credit would not be exchangeable. It would lower if you committed crimes or stopped working for a long time, but would only increase if you kept working (since you wouldn't really exchange it for anything).

Everyone would be given the same opportunities. No one would be born rich or poor. The government would have to provide stuff for people until a certain age, before they needed to start working.

The only problem is that something like this would only work if a large enough independent group of countries decided to do the same.



I do know what you mean, but, still...


It's not a perfect system -- utility is a personalized concept, and prices reflect willingness/demand and its interplay with supply. The problem isn't with money though -- it's, differentiation of consumer demand profiles. I might be willing to exchange with you ten apples for your ten oranges, but someone else may want eleven or twelve -- others may not want anything from you at all. Therefore, the "value" of something is dependent on the market. Also throw into the mix the idea that identifying true value is not always easy. Our perception of value is oftentimes not perfect -- we don't always have all the information (and even when we do, it's hard to calculate), and our desires for additional profits pushes things further up the chain whenever we can get away with it.

Again though, this isn't a problem with money in itself, although problems CAN occur when you start ****ing with monetary policy (for instance, messing with the money supply over the long run and causing undesirable levels of inflation). Paying off your debts by simply printing more money doesn't necessarily SOLVE the underlying problem. It just buys you time.

foilman8805 01-2-2011 05:00 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Stewie7Griffin (Post 3385061)
I find it kind of dumb that the top paid CEO of a company makes as much money as the 7th top paid NBA player. What is the NBA player getting paid to do really? Entertain? People loot and steal because they don't have the money. If they only stepped back and actually thought, if they don't loot or steal, they wouldn't have to loot or steal in the first place. People don't think this way, it's called ignorance and stupidity

Sure, the NBA player is pretty heavily overpaid, but when you made this analogy you definitely didn't realize how much CEOs are overpaid as well, especially in the United States.

mhss1992 01-2-2011 08:33 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3386309)
It's not a perfect system -- utility is a personalized concept, and prices reflect willingness/demand and its interplay with supply. The problem isn't with money though -- it's, differentiation of consumer demand profiles. I might be willing to exchange with you ten apples for your ten oranges, but someone else may want eleven or twelve -- others may not want anything from you at all. Therefore, the "value" of something is dependent on the market. Also throw into the mix the idea that identifying true value is not always easy. Our perception of value is oftentimes not perfect -- we don't always have all the information (and even when we do, it's hard to calculate), and our desires for additional profits pushes things further up the chain whenever we can get away with it.

Again though, this isn't a problem with money in itself, although problems CAN occur when you start ****ing with monetary policy (for instance, messing with the money supply over the long run and causing undesirable levels of inflation). Paying off your debts by simply printing more money doesn't necessarily SOLVE the underlying problem. It just buys you time.

I guess someone could try to create a value system based on the ammount of work needed to produce things...

What about that suggestion, non-exchangeable credits?
It might still not reflect the true value of things, but it could be a more fair and safe system.

E.g: with 10000 credits, you can own a small house, a car and a computer. You'll gain 200 credits every month if you keep working. Does it seem possible?

devonin 01-2-2011 11:05 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by foilman8805 (Post 3386403)
Sure, the NBA player is pretty heavily overpaid, but when you made this analogy you definitely didn't realize how much CEOs are overpaid as well, especially in the United States.

Though I certainly agree that professional athletes are overpaid in the absolute sense, they -do- have a perfectly valid justification to be paid more per year than would be maybe more proper for what they do.

Professional athletes start training for their career as young as 3 or 4 years old, and basically have to dedicate their entire upbringing to that sport. By the time they are 17-19 (depending on sport) and old enough to be drafted into a professional league, they've spent more years on their 'education' than Doctors, and have as few as 10 years of prime conditioning in which to live out their career.

In that 10 years they basically have to make 45 years worth of income, because once they can't cut it as a professional athlete anymore, the majority of them have no education in another field, and very few transferable skills. And at any time, the wrong kind of injury can invalidate the entire course of their life, leaving them with nothing.

Mostly they retire onto their profits, or just slowly work their way down the existing leagues for another 10 or 15 years making dramatically and progresively less money.

I mean, it's their free choice to get into a career where the training takes more years than the career does, but if we're going to incentivise professional athleticism, it makes sense that they've got to earn their entire life's salary over the ten or fifteen years they actually have proper earning power.

Reincarnate 01-2-2011 11:45 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Let me put it this way, guys: How many athletes do you know of are actually good enough to participate with the others in the NBA? And, after you answer that question, consider this: After all profits are acquired, how do you appropriately divide said profits?

Athletes are paid what they are because of the fans. Without so much fan appeal -- without so many people watching/getting tickets to the games and reading/writing/caring about the players -- they wouldn't get paid what they do. You might be busting your ass off at your 9-5, but consider how much revenue pro players bring in and just how many people are being entertained at the same time. Further consider the advertising revenue and the profits generated to sponsors, etc.

It's all the result of market forces and value addition. You might sit back and say "Gah! These CEOs are paid so much! These NBA players are paid so much!" but you also have to consider that these guys are adding lots of value. The problems come in when, say, a particular player isn't really leveraging the skill that got them there (someone getting paid a ****load for a game they didn't really do squat in) or when a player gets greedy and jacks up salary demands past what market equilibrium/reasonable thresholds would imply (a sort of moral hazard -- the salary is meant to be seen as an investment of your value addition. You shoudn't get lazy just because you know the reward is coming, but this is why so many firms get into variable compensations and bonuses based on value addition on top of a given base). It's easy for the average joe to get pissed off at some NBA player who puts in a matter of hours in and reaps millions... but hey, if you think you're good enough to play alongside these guys, feel free to try it.

Same goes for actors, hedge fund managers, etc. You can have relatively small groups with extreme profits -- you just have to benefit a LOT of people with your tentacles of influence.

Reincarnate 01-2-2011 11:53 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3386444)
I guess someone could try to create a value system based on the ammount of work needed to produce things...

What about that suggestion, non-exchangeable credits?
It might still not reflect the true value of things, but it could be a more fair and safe system.

E.g: with 10000 credits, you can own a small house, a car and a computer. You'll gain 200 credits every month if you keep working. Does it seem possible?

Your system doesn't solve anything. How is saying "with 10,000 credits you can buy a house" any different from saying "with X dollars I can buy a house" -- only now you're limiting what people can buy as a way to keep resources at bay?

Rubin0 01-2-2011 12:46 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
I don't think human beings can exist without some sort of barter system. Money is just a refined way people have treaded for goods and services since the beginning of our species. If it weren't dollars, it would be shells, or something shiny. Even other primates have primitive form of barter systems. I scratch your back if you scratch mine. I'll give you this banana if you pick out the bugs from my fur. It's just the way we intelligent mammals role.

Stewie7Griffin 01-2-2011 04:00 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by foilman8805 (Post 3386403)
Sure, the NBA player is pretty heavily overpaid, but when you made this analogy you definitely didn't realize how much CEOs are overpaid as well, especially in the United States.

They may be overpaid, but I believe they should be paid way more than the NBA players. Not to bump up their salary, but to dumb down the NBA's salary.

mhss1992 01-2-2011 06:47 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3386488)
Your system doesn't solve anything. How is saying "with 10,000 credits you can buy a house" any different from saying "with X dollars I can buy a house" -- only now you're limiting what people can buy as a way to keep resources at bay?

You didn't pay attention. You can own one house, but your credits won't go down. You'll still have 10000 credits if you get the house. The number of credits only says what your privileges are.

Reincarnate 01-2-2011 07:30 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3386700)
You didn't pay attention. You can own one house, but your credits won't go down. You'll still have 10000 credits if you get the house. The number of credits only says what your privileges are.


You didn't pay attention. Your system doesn't solve anything. What do you think credit *is* to begin with?

mhss1992 01-3-2011 06:15 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
And I bet you'd give that answer to any system I proposed.

The difference is that there would be no direct exchange. Your privileges would be based on your credit level, but there would be no paper to give others when you acquired something. Perhaps a card like an ID would be enough.

Most basic services would be free, research would be free and there would still exist an incentive for work. There would have to be boundaries due to material limitations, but still, why wouldn't it be better?

Reincarnate 01-3-2011 08:50 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3386986)
And I bet you'd give that answer to any system I proposed.

If the system doesn't solve anything, then yeah, I'm going to say it doesn't solve anything.


Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3386986)
The difference is that there would be no direct exchange. Your privileges would be based on your credit level, but there would be no paper to give others when you acquired something. Perhaps a card like an ID would be enough.

Most basic services would be free, research would be free and there would still exist an incentive for work. There would have to be boundaries due to material limitations, but still, why wouldn't it be better?

It doesn't matter how you word this stuff. You cannot handwave costs by just making random assumptions and redefining things.

You're basically saying "Work X amount and you'll have a score increase -- and this score determines what you can buy." We hit a score of 100,000 or something and now we can buy a house. It doesn't matter that this variable isn't "exchangeable." If you're going to say "these are all the items you can achieve with this score," then it's the same as if we had a monetary system where we could pay a dollar amount equal to the sum of the prices of the items in question.

Renaming the system to be in terms of "nonexchangeable credits" doesn't get us anywhere. It's still an exchange -- we're exchanging goods and services. The utility increase of my work output results in an ability to purchase the outputs of others. Only now you're basically limiting what people can actually have.

mhss1992 01-3-2011 09:32 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3387008)
It doesn't matter how you word this stuff. You cannot handwave costs by just making random assumptions and redefining things.

You're basically saying "Work X amount and you'll have a score increase -- and this score determines what you can buy." We hit a score of 100,000 or something and now we can buy a house. It doesn't matter that this variable isn't "exchangeable." If you're going to say "these are all the items you can achieve with this score," then it's the same as if we had a monetary system where we could pay a dollar amount equal to the sum of the prices of the items in question.

Renaming the system to be in terms of "nonexchangeable credits" doesn't get us anywhere. It's still an exchange -- we're exchanging goods and services. The utility increase of my work output results in an ability to purchase the outputs of others. Only now you're basically limiting what people can actually have.

On the contrary... People would be able to get a lot more.
If you had a justification to get certain materials, you'd be able to get it for free. You'd be supervisionated and stuff, but, still, you'd get it.

E.g.: if you had enough education and could prove it, you'd be able to get permission to obtain materials for your research on teleportation for you university.

You could gain credits for even going to school, instead of having to pay for education, since going to school is useful to the world.

People who produced food would gain credits just for producing it, and people who needed the food would get it for free. The ammount of food you could get would be calculated depending on your weight, number of people living with you and you could get extra food with enough credits if you wanted to make a party or be a bodybuilder or something. (obesity rate would also go down)

No one would be homeless unless they wanted to.

Nobody would lose credits in order for someone else to gain.

Of course, it's still possible that the database which said how many credits each people had could be hacked and stuff, but it isn't any less safe than our current banks.


What are you complaining about? Of course goods would be limited. They are limited now, too. But they would be more fairly distributed. In what aspect, exactly, is the system I described inferior to our current capitalism?

Mechablob 01-3-2011 09:37 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI (Post 3377757)
A few things I can see about having no money is that insurance won't be needed, surgery would be free, nobody needs funding for medical research, and everyone has a chance at attending a higher level of education (college). To prevent the laziness, there could be some law passed that makes it so every person is required to have some type of job. And there would be limit to what you can have too - even though things would be free, you can't and don't need 500 cars unless you wanted to loan out or sell them (which isn't really necessary since you're not selling for currency).

Well, there are definitely the positive elements of a world without money, I guess, and I see you've highlighted a key one: "everyone has a chance at attending a higher level of education." That sort of equality reminds me of (maybe it's just me - not that it's a negative thing either) the foundation of communism - that was intended for equality.

However, a world without money might be flawed, right? I say this because, well, to speak plainly: if one man had a physical item that was of worth to him, and another person was wanting this item, they could maybe come to a trade - a trade of items, maybe? I guess that's where currency comes in. Many of us humans are quite materialistic, really, and without money, we can't exactly earn something due to kindness of heart - not every person on the planet is like that; willing to give out of kindness. Maybe currency is there as a status of worth?

I guess you're probably right, though: if we lived in a world without currency, we might be better off as equality would definitely be emphasised in the society we live in. I mean, various tribes around the planet manage to live without money, right? It wouldn't be a necessity if the society we were in completely dismissed of currency. Swings and roundabouts. Positives and negatives.

Reincarnate 01-3-2011 09:55 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
mhss1992: I don't understand your argument style sometimes. It's like you completely ignore the points that render your argument invalid and continue along with the same line of flawed reasoning.

You cannot create value out of thin air. At the end of the day you always have to ask "Who is paying for this?" You want to make education free, food free, etc -- without considering that these have implicit costs. You *have to compensate these costs in some way or these things won't get done*.

"People who produced food would gain credits just for producing it, and people who needed the food would get it for free."
-This is the same as the government subsidizing food purchases. Farmer A grows apples and gets paid X dollars by the government so that the average consumer B can partake in the food as dictated by the government. And where do you think the government is going to get this money?

"The ammount of food you could get would be calculated depending on your weight, number of people living with you and you could get extra food with enough credits if you wanted to make a party or be a bodybuilder or something. (obesity rate would also go down)"
-Just another example of the government controlling what and how you can spend your money. You're still going to run into "unfair cases." What if I want to eat for the pleasure of eating? Could I not just say I am constantly bodybuilding/throwing parties? How would you enforce such a silly thing?

"No one would be homeless unless they wanted to."
-More accurately, no one would be homeless if they worked to earn credits. Same can be said for this current economy. If you don't work, you don't earn any money. If you don't provide any value, you don't gain any value in return.

"Nobody would lose credits in order for someone else to gain."
-You're making the same mistake Dossar did. Just because you're "renaming" your system to cater to a "score" system doesn't mean you aren't still making some underlying exchange of goods. If I am gaining X items/services in exchange for your Y items/services, we're both losing something and gaining something. Any expenditure or deliverance of a good/service is a cost/loss that you desire compensation for.

"What are you complaining about? Of course goods would be limited. They are limited now, too. But they would be more fairly distributed. In what aspect, exactly, is the system I described inferior to our current capitalism?"
-Because *you are not solving anything* and are basically giving the government more say in how we can spend our money. I'd rather be able to spend my money on what I want without the government getting in the way of dictating what kind of lifestyle I choose to lead. You define it as "fairly distributed," but it's never going to be perfectly fair. If you divide resources among everyone with controlled limits, you punish fair-value compensation and live in a society with a lower standard of living and devalued incentives to work hard/innovate/etc. If you divide resources to those who provide value, you punish those who are either lazy, unintelligent, unskilled, born into poverty/abuse, born without opportunity, etc.

Reincarnate 01-3-2011 10:15 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mechablob (Post 3387017)
I guess you're probably right, though: if we lived in a world without currency, we might be better off as equality would definitely be emphasised in the society we live in. I mean, various tribes around the planet manage to live without money, right? It wouldn't be a necessity if the society we were in completely dismissed of currency. Swings and roundabouts. Positives and negatives.

We got along for plenty of years without currency, sure. But the lack of standardization and the larger inherent transaction costs and heightened levels of information asymmetry means we also got by with a much lower standard of living.

The only way a moneyless system would function is if we were willing to work for potentially no return where resources are considered.

Take a really, really basic example: An economy of two people. You grow apples. I grow oranges. Everything is free. But I don't like apples and have no desire to acquire them from you. However, you'd still be able to take my oranges since they're free. Why would I ever want to agree to this sort of system?

How about a system where you provide apples and I provide cars -- only I put countless years of effort into educating myself into developing the technology, gathering materials, testing, etc -- and let's say it's something I really dislike doing. And say I *still* don't want apples. Still a fair trade?

Now expand that to a community of a greater population with a greater number of goods/services with different levels of inherent costs.

~kitty~ 01-3-2011 10:31 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Sorry I didn't read everything, but I wanted to say that if everything was free, there would be no motivation at all for improvement (assuming we could work a way where we could make this "Utopia") and the quality of life will start declining. Money doesn't have to be currency, money can be things we have given value to, and if your problem was getting rid of CURRENCY, that also brings up the problem of how money should be regulated. Who gets to decide? There will arise many conflicts, as it is human nature to do so for such things. Example: I'll trade you my pokemon card for your lunch.

mhss1992 01-3-2011 10:44 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3387020)
mhss1992: I don't understand your argument style sometimes. It's like you completely ignore the points that render your argument invalid and continue along with the same line of flawed reasoning.

No, that's what you want to believe. Seriously, sometimes you never answer some of my arguments. It happened several times in the last discussion.

You have to understand something: it's not because one of us is necessarily wrong. It's simply because we disagree. That's why the other seems like an idiot sometimes, but we are both not idiots. Sometimes the other side misinterprets something and thinks the other side's wrong.

Excuse me, what rendered my argument invalid? We discussed almost nothing on this subject. You understood the system as superficially as someone could possibly have, and I'll show you:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3387020)
You cannot create value out of thin air. At the end of the day you always have to ask "Who is paying for this?" You want to make education free, food free, etc -- without considering that these have implicit costs. You *have to compensate these costs in some way or these things won't get done*.

Yeah, you're using capitalist logic in this other system, when it's completely different.

It's like this: People get incentive (credits) for working and producing goods. These credits would be attributed to people, but they wouldn't be stored anywhere.

Just like that. The credits don't come from anywhere. The government wouldn't own the credits, it'd just attribute them to people's names.

Think of a university: it doesn't own a "certain ammount" of degrees it can give. People study and receive these degrees based on their grades. Nobody needs to lose a degree for you to obtain one. There's no limit to how many degrees can be given. Same thing with these credits here.

It's like a card that gives you access to certain places depending on it's level.

Maybe it does sound absurd to someone who lives in a capitalist system, but work would still be done.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3387020)
"People who produced food would gain credits just for producing it, and people who needed the food would get it for free."
-This is the same as the government subsidizing food purchases. Farmer A grows apples and gets paid X dollars by the government so that the average consumer B can partake in the food as dictated by the government. And where do you think the government is going to get this money?

From nowhere, like I said. They can give as many credits as necessary. That's because there's no transference of credits.

Quote:

"The ammount of food you could get would be calculated depending on your weight, number of people living with you and you could get extra food with enough credits if you wanted to make a party or be a bodybuilder or something. (obesity rate would also go down)"
-Just another example of the government controlling what and how you can spend your money. You're still going to run into "unfair cases." What if I want to eat for the pleasure of eating? Could I not just say I am constantly bodybuilding/throwing parties? How would you enforce such a silly thing?
You wouldn't have to justify by saying you're a bodybuilder, it's just an example.

It's like this: you can have a basic ammount of food for free, and you can eat a lot more if you work and gain credits. For the pleasure of eating, too.

Quote:

"No one would be homeless unless they wanted to."
-More accurately, no one would be homeless if they worked to earn credits. Same can be said for this current economy. If you don't work, you don't earn any money. If you don't provide any value, you don't gain any value in return.
Capitalist logic again... Listen, you can't judge systems if your own judgment is already determined by the current system. You have to judge from outside, think outside the box.

Certain things could be stipulated as being free, such as small houses and food in certain quantities. The producers of houses and foods would still be gaining credits.

Why couldn't it work exactly as I'm saying? The producers are still gaining!

Quote:

"Nobody would lose credits in order for someone else to gain."
-You're making the same mistake Dossar did. Just because you're "renaming" your system to cater to a "score" system doesn't mean you aren't still making some underlying exchange of goods. If I am gaining X items/services in exchange for your Y items/services, we're both losing something and gaining something. Any expenditure or deliverance of a good/service is a cost/loss that you desire compensation for.
Degrees example, again.

Quote:

"What are you complaining about? Of course goods would be limited. They are limited now, too. But they would be more fairly distributed. In what aspect, exactly, is the system I described inferior to our current capitalism?"
-Because *you are not solving anything* and are basically giving the government more say in how we can spend our money. I'd rather be able to spend my money on what I want without the government getting in the way of dictating what kind of lifestyle I choose to lead. You define it as "fairly distributed," but it's never going to be perfectly fair. If you divide resources among everyone with controlled limits, you punish fair-value compensation and live in a society with a lower standard of living and devalued incentives to work hard/innovate/etc. If you divide resources to those who provide value, you punish those who are either lazy, unintelligent, unskilled, born into poverty/abuse, born without opportunity, etc.
I am giving equal opportunities to everyone!
The punishment system you've described is more what capitalism is like. Many people are born without opportunities and live in poverty.

You'd be able to do anything you can currently do with capitalism (well, perhaps not gaining in the lottery or stealing credits), only without the many limitations it imposes.

Reincarnate 01-3-2011 11:25 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387030)
No, that's what you want to believe. Seriously, sometimes you never answer some of my arguments. It happened several times in the last discussion.

You have to understand something: it's not because one of us is necessarily wrong. It's simply because we disagree. That's why the other seems like an idiot sometimes, but we are both not idiots. Sometimes the other side misinterprets something and thinks the other side's wrong.

No, it's not that we just disagree. It is *because you are wrong*. I am not misinterpreting you. You are not understanding why your argument doesn't make sense because you do not seem to be aware of basic economic principles.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387030)
Excuse me, what rendered my argument invalid? We discussed almost nothing on this subject. You understood the system as superficially as someone could possibly have, and I'll show you:

Do I need to explain why a toothpick bridge won't hold up cars? It's not "superficial" to dismiss an idea as silly when it's obviously silly. The analogy here is that you don't seem to understand that your idea is made out of toothpicks.


Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387030)
Yeah, you're using capitalist logic in this other system, when it's completely different.

Yeah, and you're using communist/socialist logic. It doesn't exactly have a great track record, unless your idea of living life involves lots of oppression, hunger, and lower standards.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387030)
It's like this: People get incentive (credits) for working and producing goods. These credits would be attributed to people, but they wouldn't be stored anywhere.

Just like that. The credits don't come from anywhere. The government wouldn't own the credits, it just attributes them to people.

Think of a university: it doesn't own a "certain ammount" of degrees it can give. People study and receive these degrees based on their grades. There's no limit to how many degrees can be given. Same thing with these credits here.

Maybe it does sound absurd to someone who lives in a capitalist system, but work would still be done.

Education comes at a cost. It doesn't own a certain number of degrees, but it costs money to house/feed/teach students and to ensure a certain standard of quality, especially when a degree gives you educational/earning power. You can't just pull credits out of your ass and say "they came from nowhere and nobody owns it." You're giving someone a metric for which it is a compensation metric for their work output to be used to achieve the output of others. Only now you're trying to make things free without explaining who is paying for it or why people should bother working hard. This is just bleeding obvious and you're missing it every time.


Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387030)
From nowhere, like I said. They can give as many credits as necessary. That's because there's no transference of credits.

Okay, so this is the equivalent of the government printing money to repay debts. It's the same as farmer A growing apples... and then for consumer B to enjoy the apples for free, the government is paying the farmer in the form of credits. The government is exchanging the fruit output for a credit increase for the benefit of the consumer who pays nothing for the fruit. You can't just say "well there's no direct farmer/consumer exchange of credits and the government can just give credits constantly to compensate the farmer."

Do you know what happens when you repay your debts by just printing money in this situation? INFLATION.

This is basic, basic economics. Prices go up after an increase in money supply because when people have money they'll spend some portion of it, meaning that retailers have to raise their prices to either profit or avoid running out of product. If the goal is to not run out of product if you hold the prices constant, that means they have to make MORE product. That means, in turn, that you run into potential capacity constraints, labor shortages, product shortages, etc.

Having more money doesn't mean we are more wealthy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387030)
You wouldn't have to justify by saying you're a bodybuilder, it's just an example.

It's like this: you can have a basic ammount of food for free, and you can eat a lot more if you work and gain credits. For the pleasure of eating, too.

Still the same as paying money for marginal consumption. Nothing is solved here.


Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387030)
Capitalist logic again... Listen, you can't judge systems if your own judgment is already determined by the current system. You have to judge from outside, think outside the box.

Certain things could be stipulated as being free, such as small houses and food in certain quantities. The producers of houses and foods would still be gaining credits.

Why couldn't it work exactly as I'm saying? The producers are still gaining!

Sweet lord man, take a goddamned Econ class.

"Thinking outside the box" doesn't work if your ideas are stupid. You're not thinking this through.

You can't just make certain things free without compensating for that cost somewhere. Otherwise there is simply no incentive to produce. It doesn't work to simply make things free by printing money (or as you call it, distributing non-exchangeable credits) to cover those debts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387030)
Degrees example, again.

No, it's "misunderstanding of value and compensation," again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387030)
I am giving equal opportunities to everyone!
The punishment system you've described is more what capitalism is like. Many people are born without opportunities and live in poverty.

You'd be able to do anything you can currently do with capitalism, only without the many limitations it imposes.


Yeah, because communist societies are totally not stricken with all sorts of poverty. 9_9
You can't do everything we can currently do with capitalism under your system because you aren't taking into account the fact that COST IS COST. You *cannot circumvent cost*. Nothing is ever "free" -- it has to get *compensated somewhere*. You cannot handwave this fact away and build a system around the notion of ignoring cost. You also need to understand what a cost IS to begin with.

mhss1992 01-3-2011 12:12 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Yeah, I know what cost is. I know what inflation is, too. What I'm suggesting is similar to socialism in some aspects, but not exactly.

OBVIOUSLY, if I just gave 100000000 credits to every human being on earth, those credits would be meaningless. That's why they have to WORK for it.

Everyone could have many credits, why not? they produced enough goods to make up for it, inflation doesn't need to happen.

Naturally, to avoid inflation, the "free" stuff would have to be very limited. And even people with lots of credits still wouldn't be able to have whatever they wanted.

For example: there could be laws that prevented each person from having 5000 rockets, 27000 computers and 987989 cars in their garages.

Certain things would need proven justifications other than just "credits". Or else everyone would be able to own an airplane.

If we reach the point where everyone has an absurdly high ammount of credits, things would have to be divided evenly. Of course, there would be many things, since credits can't come without work.

Oh, but you want people to have whatever they want with enough credits, right? Just like you would be able to if you had enough money. Well, it's impossible.

You have to choose: equal opportunities for everyone and limitations, or the possibility to own a whole planet with enough money. You obviously can't have both.

Reincarnate 01-3-2011 12:32 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387061)
Yeah, I know what cost is. I know what inflation is, too. What I'm suggesting is similar to socialism in some aspects, but not exactly.

OBVIOUSLY, if I just gave 100000000 credits to every human being on earth, those credits would be meaningless. That's why they have to WORK for it.

Everyone could have many credits, why not? they produced enough goods to make up for it, inflation doesn't need to happen.

Naturally, to avoid inflation, the "free" stuff would have to be very limited. And even people with lots of credits still wouldn't be able to have whatever they wanted.

For example: there could be laws that prevented each person from having 5000 rockets, 27000 computers and 987989 cars in their garages.

Certain things would need proven justifications other than just "credits". Or else everyone would be able to own an airplane.


Oh, but you want people to have whatever they want with enough credits, right? Just like you would be able to if you had enough money. Well, it's impossible.

You have to choose: equal opportunities for everyone and limitations, or the possibility to own a whole planet with enough money. You obviously can't have both.

Doesn't matter if you give 10000000 credits or 1000 credits or 10 credits. Any time you inject money like this, you're just devaluing what it can actually acquire. In the end, it all comes down to the actual goods and services being exchanged. Money is just a way to grease the wheels and make exchange easier and normalized.

If you give everyone credits, but only allow them to leverage these credits if they work and produce value, and the addition of credits is a function of the utility of their output, then this isn't any different from a system where you just spend money on goods and services. I seriously have no idea why you aren't grasping this.

You can't "avoid inflation" by making free stuff "in limited quantities." It's still a COST. Your "credits" will devalue in accordance with however many credits you inject into the economy without any real-goods exchange. If you're going to just reduce inflation by not increasing credit counts without underlying goods, then you must increase the counts WITH an underlying goods exchange. Yet again, the new proposed system isn't solving anything.

Limiting what people can achieve/own typically results in a ****ty life for everyone. It's generally seen as unfair by those who are capable of striving for something better, and it doesn't incentivize a lot of the utility synergies and value additions we'd like to have in our average lives. It also assumes people are OK with being held to a bound average and that the government has perfect information -- and you also assume the government won't also pursue self-interest and oppress the working classes.

You're basically trying to argue that your retarded "credit systems" will somehow result in cost savings, when it doesn't. That aside, you're otherwise advocating a socialist/communist economy.

The guy below average is going to like communism whereas the guy above average is going to dislike it. This is a separate debate. This thread is about a "world without money" -- which your credit system doesn't even address directly, and even if it did, it still doesn't solve anything. Communism vs socialism vs capitalism etc. are really just different ideologies that dictate how resources/money/power/etc should be distributed.

This thread should probably be brought to a close. It's been more-than-thoroughly addressed why a world without money wouldn't work for us at this point.

Mechablob 01-3-2011 12:47 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3387025)
How about a system where you provide apples and I provide cars -- only I put countless years of effort into educating myself into developing the technology, gathering materials, testing, etc -- and let's say it's something I really dislike doing. And say I *still* don't want apples. Still a fair trade?

Now expand that to a community of a greater population with a greater number of goods/services with different levels of inherent costs.

A fantastic point, that I tried referencing similarly in my post (although I guess I probably didn't type it out with such clarity). I also agree with what you have said, but as I tried hinting with my post, there will definitely be positives and negatives to the whole idea. You've highlighted a fair example of the negativity that could form. I think equality (equality would surely form in areas of society if we all were of the same financial disposition - sure, you will probably still have people thinking they are better than others in intellect or physique, but financial status wouldn't be an issue) is a positive example that could form in a society without money too, though.

Reincarnate 01-3-2011 01:16 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mechablob (Post 3387080)
A fantastic point, that I tried referencing similarly in my post (although I guess I probably didn't type it out with such clarity). I also agree with what you have said, but as I tried hinting with my post, there will definitely be positives and negatives to the whole idea. You've highlighted a fair example of the negativity that could form. I think equality (equality would surely form in areas of society if we all were of the same financial disposition - sure, you will probably still have people thinking they are better than others in intellect or physique, but financial status wouldn't be an issue) is a positive example that could form in a society without money too, though.

The more and more we move towards a world without money, the more idealistic we have to become with our assumptions. Economics is a function of scarcity. For money to not be needed, we need to make everything wildly available. If we were all skilled, moralistic individuals with ample resouces, health, and automation for things we wouldn't want to do ourselves (cleaning streets, managing waste, etc) -- we wouldn't need an economy to divvy anything up because we'd all get as much of the pie as we desired.

However, these are pretty huge assumptions... and even with these assumptions, there are problems.

We enjoy things like reading books or watching TV or eating out at restaurants or using computer technology -- but these things are all managed by people at the most basic level. It would be impossible to get everyone to agree that all these people should have equal purchasing power. Some work is harder, some work is easier. Some work takes skill, some work doesn't require as much skill. We gain utility from plenty of things ranging from low skill requirements to high skill requirements. That means we ultimately need people who provide these services -- but these services have different perceptions of fair compensation and value contribution.

For a moneyless society to work in this case, we'd need to be willing to work more for no return when compared to someone else working something "easier."

So, we'd not only have to be intelligent, healthy, moral, and with ample resources, but we'd also need to be okay with the notion of everyone having the same purchasing power regardless of effort. We'd have to be okay with potential freeloaders. Alternatively, we could simply NOT desire these things and only desire things that require little effort to develop/maintain/create/etc.

We ultimately have to start invoking a lot of assumptions for our society to operate without any sort of money requirements.

mhss1992 01-3-2011 01:37 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3387070)
Doesn't matter if you give 10000000 credits or 1000 credits or 10 credits. Any time you inject money like this, you're just devaluing what it can actually acquire. In the end, it all comes down to the actual goods and services being exchanged. Money is just a way to grease the wheels and make exchange easier and normalized.

But it's NOT MONEY. THERE IS NO EXCHANGE BETWEEN PEOPLE.

You're not even trying to picture it. It's like a level-based privilege system in which everything is, essentially, FREE.

You still get incentive for the goods you produce, but you're not receiving this payment from who consumes it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3387070)
If you give everyone credits, but only allow them to leverage these credits if they work and produce value, and the addition of credits is a function of the utility of their output, then this isn't any different from a system where you just spend money on goods and services. I seriously have no idea why you aren't grasping this.

Of course, because we live in a world where money is always obtained through work, right?

Quote:

You can't "avoid inflation" by making free stuff "in limited quantities." It's still a COST. Your "credits" will devalue in accordance with however many credits you inject into the economy without any real-goods exchange. If you're going to just reduce inflation by not increasing credit counts without underlying goods, then you must increase the counts WITH an underlying goods exchange. Yet again, the new proposed system isn't solving anything.
Credits don't need to devaluate by themselves, but the ammount of credits needed for specific products could increase depending on the availability/difficulty to obtain the product, while other prices remained the same. And, like I said, laws.

Quote:

Limiting what people can achieve/own typically results in a ****ty life for everyone. It's generally seen as unfair by those who are capable of striving for something better, and it doesn't incentivize a lot of the utility synergies and value additions we'd like to have in our average lives. It also assumes people are OK with being held to a bound average and that the government has perfect information -- and you also assume the government won't also pursue self-interest and oppress the working classes.
This is a seriously asinine argument.
Things are already NATURALLY limited, because they exist in a limited quantity in nature.
You can't allow everyone to buy as many apples as they want when there is only ONE apple in the world.

Also, problems with the government exist independently from the economical system.

Quote:

You're basically trying to argue that your retarded "credit systems" will somehow result in cost savings, when it doesn't. That aside, you're otherwise advocating a socialist/communist economy.
All that is needed to produce something is material and effort. These will be the same whether I pay 100 or 100000 dollars for a product.

What exactly define money's value? It's a function of the ammount of riches a country possesses divided by the amount of money?
What exactly measures riches, then? Why can't I say that I found a cool, really pretty and valuable stone and then create a new currency that can buy the entire rest of the universe?

There's no absolute referential. Every "value" is always relative to the person interested.

My point is that you treat certain concepts as real, concrete things, when they're not.

You're right when you say that money makes exchanges easier, but it doesn't change the fact that exchange itself will always be flawed because cost cannot be measured. Certain people like working and giving things for free. Others ask for too much or steal.

What I propose is a system where exchange between people is not necessary. And, in reality, it's not necessary. In this system, anyone could work and produce for free if they wanted, but that's too unlikely. Incentive still exists, only in a different form.

justaguy 01-3-2011 01:48 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387110)
What I propose is a system where exchange between people is not necessary. And, in reality, it's not necessary. In this system, anyone could work and produce for free if they wanted, but that's too unlikely. Incentive still exists, only in a different form.

ummmmmmm, a system where exchange between people is not necessary? do you understand the implications of that at all? lmfao. i think you have a very shallow understanding of life...

mhss1992 01-3-2011 01:57 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by justaguy (Post 3387117)
ummmmmmm, a system where exchange between people is not necessary? do you understand the implications of that at all? lmfao. i think you have a very shallow understanding of life...

But I don't...
Of course there would still be exchange on some level, but this exchange wouldn't have to directly happen between the producer and consumer of a product. Your reward could come from the government.

Reincarnate 01-3-2011 01:59 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Okay, then where is the government going to get this wealth from? How will the government provide?

At the end of the chain it's ALWAYS an exchange between people... you solve nothing with crap like "Well, you're being paid in the form of government-dispersed credits. There's no direct interpersonal exchange! Voila! Everything is free!" You're completely ignoring cost. I can't tell if you're trolling me or if you're a blatant moron. If you have to work in order to acquire something, then it isn't free. You're probably the kind of idiot that would try to run an infomercial offering something as being "free" under condition of purchase. Free is free. If I am giving away something for free, that means I am dispersing the outputs of my labor for nothing in return.

Mechablob 01-3-2011 02:07 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3387098)
So, we'd not only have to be intelligent, healthy, moral, and with ample resources, but we'd also need to be okay with the notion of everyone having the same purchasing power regardless of effort. We'd have to be okay with potential freeloaders. Alternatively, we could simply NOT desire these things and only desire things that require little effort to develop/maintain/create/etc.

We ultimately have to start invoking a lot of assumptions for our society to operate without any sort of money requirements.

I do agree with your post completely, and even share the same view (I'm sort of trying to keep impartial about the topic; trying to acknowledge both sides of the argument). I reply to your post though as to say you could argue that many people have already gained their luxuries (TV, computer, cars) with minimal time at jobs that may require little skill. Or with no jobs at all. The people with no jobs at all, some of these people are already potential freeloaders - and even though some people leech from the taxpayer's money - as frustrating as it is - we end up having to tolerate it.

Although, I see there being much of a change in this if we had a world with no money, maybe strain created from people not earning anything from hard labour and seeing these people gain such luxuries for little to no work - I guess a much larger amount of frustration would form, really.

Reincarnate 01-3-2011 02:53 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

mhss1992 01-3-2011 02:57 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3387125)
Okay, then where is the government going to get this wealth from? How will the government provide?

At the end of the chain it's ALWAYS an exchange between people... you solve nothing with crap like "Well, you're being paid in the form of government-dispersed credits. There's no direct interpersonal exchange! Voila! Everything is free!" You're completely ignoring cost. I can't tell if you're trolling me or if you're a blatant moron. If you have to work in order to acquire something, then it isn't free. You're probably the kind of idiot that would try to run an infomercial offering something as being "free" under condition of purchase. Free is free. If I am giving away something for free, that means I am dispersing the outputs of my labor for nothing in return.

I did a mistake when I said that everything was essentially free. I was trying to mean something else but, seriously... Whatever.
You don't have the capacity to deal with people you disagree with without being an arrogant, obnoxious jerk. I've discussed with people who believed the same as you or me, and they weren't like this. And I'm talking about doctors and people who have read thousands of books.

There is more than one possible approach at the cost issue, and I was trying to find something. You treat the system as idiotic even though it was never experienced before.

I was trying to say that certain limitations would not necessarily exist in every economical system. Even if I was actually wrong or ignored something I shouldn't have, all of this anger was completely unnecessary.

Reincarnate 01-3-2011 03:15 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387162)
I did a mistake when I said that everything was essentially free. I was trying to mean something else but, seriously... Whatever.
You don't have the capacity to deal with people you disagree with without being an arrogant, obnoxious jerk. I've discussed with people who believed the same as you or me, and they weren't like this. And I'm talking about doctors and people who have read thousands of books.

There is more than one possible approach at the cost issue, and I was trying to find something. You treat the system as idiotic even though it was never experienced before.

I was trying to say that certain limitations would not necessarily exist in every economical system. Even if I was actually wrong or ignored something I shouldn't have, all of this anger was completely unnecessary.

I'd absolutely love to meet a doctor or scientist who has read "thousands of books" claim to agree with the sort of retarded economic logic you've tried to invoke in this thread. What kind of crap are they reading -- the Bible?

Your system has already been "experienced before" and we understand the economic implications well. You simply just *do not understand the basics yet.* It makes you sound like a complete asshole when you try to defend something that is clearly flawed for a variety of reasons you either ignore or circumvent. You can't just back out and say "I made a mistake that everything was free" when that's the entire thrust of this thread and debate.

If you don't understand what you're arguing, then stop pushing misinformation so vehemently. Your system doesn't solve anything or result in any real wealth generation or cost savings.

We determine value and cost as a result of market forces and consumer demand profiles. It's called "marginal benefit," or the amount of extra utility I derive from utilizing your output. Cost is simply the utility loss (marginal cost) incurred from providing said service/item. We measure this utility in terms of money, which is our translation base between what we exchange and what we want. Market forces determine these values as an equilibrium resultant of the interplay between all the various profiles.

mhss1992 01-3-2011 03:34 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Only that last paragraph was actually useful.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3387172)
I'd absolutely love to meet a doctor or scientist who has read "thousands of books" claim to agree with the sort of retarded economic logic you've tried to invoke in this thread. What kind of crap are they reading -- the Bible?

Not at all. One subject has nothing to do with the other.
Strangely, though, you compared that system to socialism and communism, which were both very "non religious" systems, as far as I'm concerned.
At least try to keep your insults coherent, otherwise you're the one who'll look like a troll.

Quote:

Your system has already been "experienced before" and we understand the economic implications well. You simply just *do not understand the basics yet.* It makes you sound like a complete asshole when you try to defend something that is clearly flawed for a variety of reasons you either ignore or circumvent. You can't just back out and say "I made a mistake that everything was free" when that's the entire thrust of this thread and debate.
I can say that I made a mistake when I see I did. You clearly don't seem to have the same capacity.

No, it hasn't been experienced before, at least not in the way I suggested, because it's not the same as socialism. It's not anywhere nearly as absurd as you made it seem, either. Inflation and costs would be managed differently, that's all.

The suggested system wasn't even ready, I was trying to start building something that could be plausible, an alternative to the current system. Regardless of who's right, I know you won't accept this possibility.

Reincarnate 01-3-2011 04:07 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387183)
Only that last paragraph was actually useful.

Finally, he listens.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387183)
Not at all. One subject has nothing to do with the other.
Strangely, though, you compared that system to socialism and communism, which were both very "non religious" systems, as far as I'm concerned.
At least try to keep your insults coherent, otherwise you're the one who'll look like a troll.

Are you serious? That remark was intended to be derogatory.

Really -- are you serious?

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss1992 (Post 3387183)
I can say that I made a mistake when I see I did. You clearly don't seem to have the same capacity.

No, it hasn't been experienced before, at least not in the way I suggested, because it's not the same as socialism. It's not anywhere nearly as absurd as you made it seem, either. Inflation and costs would be managed differently, that's all.

The suggested system wasn't even ready, I was trying to start building something that could be plausible, an alternative to the current system. Regardless of who's right, I know you won't accept this possibility.


I'll admit I made a mistake when I actually make one. Last I checked, you were the one trying to argue in favor of retarded economic theories.

You don't even seem to understand things like inflation -- how can you claim that your system handles it differently? We know your system fails because we understand how supply and demand operate and how costs/benefits/values are calculated.

I swear, you're either the best troll I've ever met, or you are one of the thickest, most retarded people I've ever encountered.

Arch0wl 01-3-2011 10:05 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Talking about who "destroyed" who in a critical discussion is really counterproductive. It's fun, but it's basically just indulging your dislike for the other person or validating your perceived intelligence. Competitive framing like that is irrelevant to critical thought, because critical arguments are about playtesting ideas.

But beyond that, very few people will read a counterargument and say "oh wow, he completely destroyed me, I have to re-evaluate my whole life perspective now..." -- more than likely they'll find a creative way to avoid admitting they're wrong about some point, especially if they have a reason to dislike the person (personality, style of argument, whatever.)

If you're calling people trolls, agreeing to disagree, getting into deep meta-discussion about logical fallacies and feeling the need to conclude your argument dramatically with the hopes that people will read it and say "wow, destroyed" then you've failed to identify the loci of disagreement. I'm not just making this term up; 'loci of disagreement' is a common term in argumentation texts.

With all of that said, I couldn't let this one go

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhss
the last IQ test I've done in my life was at 2 A.M and I was half-asleep. It measured up to 200 and I scored 186 (deviation 16). It looked like a serious test, though I just did it out of curiosity. I can also multiply two numbers with more than 10 digits mentally. Unfortunately, I can't prove these here.

There are valid IQ tests online, but the test you took was probably not one of them. Also, many people can multiply two numbers with more than ten digits mentally. More importantly, the number of people who can do that far exceed the number of people with 186 IQ. The highest confirmed IQ I've ever seen anyone have on FFR was in the 160s; most "really smart" people on FFR range from the 120s to the mid 140s, with a few people (and I stress few) in the 150s. People usually overestimate their IQ by a few dozen points most of the time.

If you want, Reach (who has studied psychometrics extensively and worked with a lot of psychometric data) can take a relatively accurate measure of your IQ. I doubt you really want to, though, since it seems like you were just using this to build your ethos.

TC_Halogen 01-3-2011 10:24 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Read quite a bit in this thread, and my question is directed at mhss - don't have much to say:

What is the point of having a point system again when it's still essentially implied as a trade? You keep mentioning something about how a person working gaining points, or credit, but then you also mention that once they get x credits, they get y. If these points are to be exchanged, then it's essentially back to a currency again. If these points just are a measure as to what you can get, there has to be a limitation imposed -- who would decide this limitation, and how would it be deemed a fair limitation (going back to the previous argument of lack of payment v. skills)?

EDIT:
Quote:

If these points just are a measure as to what you can get [...]
relating to being able to get them, rather than a specific quantity.

Cavernio 01-4-2011 11:54 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
"Take a really, really basic example: An economy of two people. You grow apples. I grow oranges. Everything is free. But I don't like apples and have no desire to acquire them from you. However, you'd still be able to take my oranges since they're free. Why would I ever want to agree to this sort of system?"

Because if you only produced oranges, you'd have an overabundance of them, and they'd go to rot, and you would only make them rot if you wanted to punish the other person in some way or another, or if your society taught you that giving away things for free is wrong. Also, you could ask for something like...a massage instead of apples. Of course this is outside the lines of what you defined, (only oranges and apples for trade), but I think it makes a very useful point in that there's always something more to trade.
Or, another possibility, if there's not an over-abundance of fruit on either side, the other person would produce less apples, giving themselves time to start helping you with your oranges. We don't need money to figure out what people want to adjust what we do accordingly.

"How about a system where you provide apples and I provide cars -- only I put countless years of effort into educating myself into developing the technology, gathering materials, testing, etc -- and let's say it's something I really dislike doing. And say I *still* don't want apples. Still a fair trade?"
But you wouldn't make cars in the first place unless you thought it was a fair trade (like if you were impressing the hot apple grower next door or something) or if you DID enjoy it implicitly.

Speaking along the lines of what people currently DO that pays poorly yet which is integral for all society, is farming. Yet there's still thousands of farmers in Canada and the US who barely make enough to scrape by. Many farmers work for years in debt, with little hope of actually making money in any given year. Yet they still keep doing it. Most business owners work in a situation of debt for years before becoming successful. Many never become 'successful', but make just enough to about break even. These people do things despite losing money. Most people create some sort of art during their lives and make no money for it, and are happy enough if someone just LIKES what they do.

Societal values hold so much more power over us than I think most people like to think. Our country isn't in a shambles not because we have capitalism and punishment for crimes, its because we have values of hard-work, respect for others and their things, and an innate human need to fit in and be appreciated by others. I mean, everyday most of us could easily steal things if we wanted to, yet most of us choose not to, and not out of fear of being caught.

Arch0wl 01-4-2011 11:56 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by ~kitty~
Not only this, but what sort of "intelligence" is being measured? We can't accurately measure someones intelligence, really.

Are you very familiar with psychological modeling? By "accurately measure intelligence" I take it you mean accurately measure intelligence to correspond with intelligence as most people see it. Saying this is impossible is true, but don't take the truth of that to mean much -- it's like saying "you can't know exactly what 'good' is." This doesn't mean the model is flawed. In fact, quite the opposite: it means that most people construct extremely ambiguous, circumstantial and perhaps even hypocritical definitions of intelligence to (1) protect and/or raise their self-esteem (2) validate their own perceptions and attempt to invalidate perceptions they disagree with.

To give an example, on numerous political websites I have visited 'intelligent' is synonymous with "person who agrees with me." Most people in reaction tend to give this "it can't be measured" response like you've given to avoid clarifying the ambiguity, I suspect because doing so would force them to acknowledge ways in which they might possibly not fit their own definition. Other definitions ("what's your Gossip Girl IQ?") already have some parallel in psychometrics (in the case of gossip girl, it's knowledge) that they don't realize and haven't considered simply because they intentionally shut out any clarification of the word 'intelligence' to begin with.

All of this is a red herring though because it frames the debate as an attempt to meet some definition of intelligence to be agreed upon, which will never happen because the definition for so many people hinges on its use as a psychological defense. The most useful model of intelligence -- that is, the model with the most predictive power, is the psychometric model or 'general intelligence' or g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ~kitty~
Taking a standardized test that gives a person a number that's based on other peoples performances in certain areas, which do not cover the whole spectrum of thought, couldn't possibly give an accurate measure of intelligence.

What spectrums of thought do you think are unmeasurable? I feel like you're relying on the ambiguity of the phrase "spectrum of thought" here in expectation that I will accept it and shut up. What I think you're underestimating is just how much thought has indeed been classified by the cognitive sciences.

Again, though, you are relying on the ambiguity of 'intelligence' to coast you through this claim. Your defense here -- that intelligence does not cover the entire spectrum of thought -- suggests that intelligence should encompass something which it is not. "to cover the entire spectrum of thought" would imply that intelligence should strive to be the definition of something like 'cognition'. Intelligence, however, is a type of cognition. It occupies its own area on the spectrum of thought, to use your metaphor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ~kitty~
Using IQ tests as a way to validate one's own intelligence is a bit pathetic, in my opinion, and shows that this person is desperate.

I agree with the intent with which you probably wrote this claim but not with it as it is written. Thinking that you are so smart that you are beyond measurement is much more typical of narcissistic behavior than those who accept their intelligence is, perhaps, somewhat limited. I have interacted with several people who scored in the 30s of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and all of those people were incensed by the concept that their intelligence could be assessed by a test. In their view, it was beyond testing.

I understand where you're coming from though. There are certainly people who use IQ tests as a self-esteem booster and cling to that number like a banker clings to his money. This is not a healthy way of seeing the world, and because the premise (that smartness makes you "better") relies on a hierarchical system, the people who do this may devalue people who do not score well on tests, which is not a very happy way to live.

Reincarnate 01-4-2011 12:52 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Cavernio (Post 3387964)
"Take a really, really basic example: An economy of two people. You grow apples. I grow oranges. Everything is free. But I don't like apples and have no desire to acquire them from you. However, you'd still be able to take my oranges since they're free. Why would I ever want to agree to this sort of system?"

Because if you only produced oranges, you'd have an overabundance of them, and they'd go to rot, and you would only make them rot if you wanted to punish the other person in some way or another, or if your society taught you that giving away things for free is wrong. Also, you could ask for something like...a massage instead of apples. Of course this is outside the lines of what you defined, (only oranges and apples for trade), but I think it makes a very useful point in that there's always something more to trade.
Or, another possibility, if there's not an over-abundance of fruit on either side, the other person would produce less apples, giving themselves time to start helping you with your oranges. We don't need money to figure out what people want to adjust what we do accordingly.

The point of the initial quote was that an economy needs mutually beneficial exchanges to function. If we didn't need to trade anything, we'd just do everything ourselves (grow our own food, make our own clothes, etc) -- which we'd all rather not do (also due to our different skill sets, we may not be ABLE to). It's easier to specialize in what we're good at, and then have everyone leverage each other's talents.

If I don't want the apples that you grow but you want my oranges, you need to give me something I want. I may not want an apple or a massage or anything of the sort. I'd rather just acquire money from you so I can spend it to acquire someone else's services. If I knew that people were going to just take my oranges for free even though I didn't need anything from them, I'd grow just enough for myself and not bother to bust my ass growing oranges for others. It's not that giving away oranges for free is "wrong" -- it's that we, as humans, generally enjoy leisure to non-leisure, and don't see the point in incurring costs if there is no offsetting benefit.

Now, if you tried to FORCE everyone to contribute, you're also wasting resources if the demand isn't there. If I am forced to make oranges and you are forced to make apples, you'll certainly eat my oranges, but there will be a ton of apples I won't touch. Those apples will be needless inventory costs gone to waste. Wasted effort, wasted resources. Not only that, but I'm STILL not going to be happy about producing more oranges than I want.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cavernio (Post 3387964)
"How about a system where you provide apples and I provide cars -- only I put countless years of effort into educating myself into developing the technology, gathering materials, testing, etc -- and let's say it's something I really dislike doing. And say I *still* don't want apples. Still a fair trade?"
But you wouldn't make cars in the first place unless you thought it was a fair trade (like if you were impressing the hot apple grower next door or something) or if you DID enjoy it implicitly.

Speaking along the lines of what people currently DO that pays poorly yet which is integral for all society, is farming. Yet there's still thousands of farmers in Canada and the US who barely make enough to scrape by. Many farmers work for years in debt, with little hope of actually making money in any given year. Yet they still keep doing it. Most business owners work in a situation of debt for years before becoming successful. Many never become 'successful', but make just enough to about break even. These people do things despite losing money. Most people create some sort of art during their lives and make no money for it, and are happy enough if someone just LIKES what they do.

Societal values hold so much more power over us than I think most people like to think. Our country isn't in a shambles not because we have capitalism and punishment for crimes, its because we have values of hard-work, respect for others and their things, and an innate human need to fit in and be appreciated by others. I mean, everyday most of us could easily steal things if we wanted to, yet most of us choose not to, and not out of fear of being caught.

Generally speaking, there are plenty of integral jobs that don't pay well. Farming is very costly. You need a lot of land, equipment, workers, etc -- much of the crop sales go right back into the farm just to keep things operating. You can't change how quickly corn or chickens grow -- you can't change a field into something else on a whim. You're at the mercy of weather and other geo-rapings. However, there are plenty of reasons why farmers farm (genuine love of farming, family/generational influence due to being born into it, lifestyle choices, self-sustenance and security, etc). You can have jobs that pay little but have high levels of utility/happiness.

The problem is that you can't force everyone to feel the same level of utility. You are right that I wouldn't bother making cars if I didn't want to. That's the point of my argument -- it's not a fair trade to me if I am doing something I hate in exchange for something I don't even want. If everything were free, I would not bother doing something I didn't want to do.

Your next point may be, "Well, if you don't like making cars, then let someone else who enjoys it do it." This is true for cars, perhaps. But what about for professions that almost nobody WANTS to do and yet is still integral? The only reason we might provide a service we hate doing is because we're good at it and it yields profit. But if there were no profit to be had due to it being free, we'd be much less willing to pursue such a line of work (massively obvious example to me is investment banking. *Extremely* value-adding, and yet it's a profession that many people hate because of the educational requirements, long hours, and stressful work. As such, ibankers are paid more money than God, normally. Tell an ibanker they're working for free and they'll foam at the mouth and laugh themselves into a coma).

As for your final point, I think you are generally correct, but perhaps right for the wrong reasons. We don't do things like murder and steal because our society wouldn't be here otherwise. We've evolved the need and desire to work together in order to gain competitive advantage, and so these inclinations are built into our neurochemical hardwiring. Plenty of us will steal if we feel it's justified -- especially if there's little risk to getting caught.

~kitty~ 01-4-2011 03:24 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Arch0wl (Post 3387965)
What spectrums of thought do you think are unmeasurable? I feel like you're relying on the ambiguity of the phrase "spectrum of thought" here in expectation that I will accept it and shut up. What I think you're underestimating is just how much thought has indeed been classified by the cognitive sciences.

Again, though, you are relying on the ambiguity of 'intelligence' to coast you through this claim. Your defense here -- that intelligence does not cover the entire spectrum of thought -- suggests that intelligence should encompass something which it is not. "to cover the entire spectrum of thought" would imply that intelligence should strive to be the definition of something like 'cognition'. Intelligence, however, is a type of cognition. It occupies its own area on the spectrum of thought, to use your metaphor.

Just quoting a small portion of what you said, and I wanted to say that I truly was asking a question when I asked about what kind of "intelligence" was being measured. It's because I do not know I ask. I was trying to be ambiguous with what I said, because I feel like one process of thought, which would be considered better in society, to be discouraged. There are people who score very well on tests that measure cognition and all, but some people have abilities to do things, mentally, that those others can't. Personally, my IQ score was actually pretty high, but I do not want to rely on that to determine things such as creativity and my value of "intelligence." I don't know if I'm making this clear, I never really was good with English.

Cavernio 01-4-2011 04:14 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
"But what about for professions that almost nobody WANTS to do and yet is still integral? The only reason we might provide a service we hate doing is because we're good at it and it yields profit. But if there were no profit to be had due to it being free, we'd be much less willing to pursue such a line of work (massively obvious example to me is investment banking. *Extremely* value-adding, and yet it's a profession that many people hate because of the educational requirements, long hours, and stressful work. As such, ibankers are paid more money than God, normally. Tell an ibanker they're working for free and they'll foam at the mouth and laugh themselves into a coma)."

Firstly, I'm not sure there's any job that no one would end up doing just because they weren't paid. Most people I know don't want to be farmers simply because farming seems odius. Secondly, I really don't know what an investment banker does, beyond inferring what the name tells me. (Decides what to invest in.) However, my immediate reaction is that an investement banker would not be necessary in a world without money to invest. Someone would still need to determine what jobs would need to be done though, and that sounds like something interesting and also something possibly analogous to investment banking? Finally, if I'm completely wrong about what an ibanker does, and that their job is the most horrendous job of all, yet is incredibly utilitarian, then I would still say that if no one wants to do the job, then abandon it and find a better way to get the same result...(which would actually be a better result because how you get the result is a part of the result.) If no other way is possible, then it's not a good idea in the first place.
On another note, long hours is hardly a necessity for most jobs.
If we're talking about jobs that require educations though, there's plenty of people out there who spend thousands of dollars at school full-well knowing they're not going to get any money out of it when they leave.

The point about stealing was that society can build expectations and value things that would be conducive to a properly-run society, and that we can 'control' what people do in that way. Biologically we're inclined to follow the group, and hence values that a group adopts are likely to be adopted by the people in the group.

" as humans, generally enjoy leisure to non-leisure, and don't see the point in incurring costs if there is no offsetting benefit."
Exactly. So why the hell do we need some sort of outward source, like money, to influence what we want to do? If you don't understand the importance of your job and stand by it, then you shouldn't be doing that job. People are educated. Besides which, a point that I was trying to make was that the line between leisure and work is by no means clear. One person's work is another person's pleasure.

"It's easier to specialize in what we're good at, and then have everyone leverage each other's talents."

And realistically, if society were to switch over to a situation where money was not used whatsoever, all the organization and specificity of skills that we currently have wouldn't just suddenly disappear. If someone has a vision for something which requires lots of smaller parts working together to make a glorious whole, outward incentive, like money, is not an integral part of making that happen.

"Now, if you tried to FORCE everyone to contribute, you're also wasting resources if the demand isn't there. If I am forced to make oranges and you are forced to make apples, you'll certainly eat my oranges, but there will be a ton of apples I won't touch. Those apples will be needless inventory costs gone to waste. Wasted effort, wasted resources. Not only that, but I'm STILL not going to be happy about producing more oranges than I want."

Well I never did say I would support forcing anyone to do anything, seeing as that's what's the 'problem' with money is, as I see it, in that it coerces people into doing things they don't want to do. Also, I think there could only be less waste in a society not driven by money. I wouldn't feel compelled to waste my time and effort doing something I know no one else appreciates.

Reincarnate 01-4-2011 05:09 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Cavernio (Post 3388081)
Firstly, I'm not sure there's any job that no one would end up doing just because they weren't paid. Most people I know don't want to be farmers simply because farming seems odius. Secondly, I really don't know what an investment banker does, beyond inferring what the name tells me. (Decides what to invest in.) However, my immediate reaction is that an investement banker would not be necessary in a world without money to invest. Someone would still need to determine what jobs would need to be done though, and that sounds like something interesting and also something possibly analogous to investment banking? Finally, if I'm completely wrong about what an ibanker does, and that their job is the most horrendous job of all, yet is incredibly utilitarian, then I would still say that if no one wants to do the job, then abandon it and find a better way to get the same result...(which would actually be a better result because how you get the result is a part of the result.) If no other way is possible, then it's not a good idea in the first place.
On another note, long hours is hardly a necessity for most jobs.

Again, this operates under the same sort of fallacy of implying that without money, we somehow make something "free" or render the concept of "investment" obsolete. An investment is simply a way of saying "If I give you resources to produce value with, you can keep some of that value and return some to me as well." We generally invest in things that have a decent return. An easy to understand example: You might be a brilliant artist but perhaps you are constantly starving and spending your time looking for food. I might "invest" in you by offering to feed you while you spend your time making paintings -- as long as I get a cut of your profits (in whatever form that payment may be). Such a situation is a win-win synergy of value assuming the art is sufficient good and the demand is sufficiently high. You get to eat at a low cost to me -- in exchange for an artistic profit that we both benefit from. Another form of investment in this example might be a purchase of better art supplies. Maybe you're pretty good with pencils but you'd be brilliant with a decent set of paints -- but you wouldn't be able to leverage your skills as much without some outside help.

I stress again: Removing money *does not change the fact that money translates to underlying goods and services of value.*

But it ultimately comes to down your statement "If nobody wants to do the job, then abandon it." The problem is that this job might provide something of great value. Even if it's a job that a few people love -- we might still need MORE of them to achieve a certain quality of life -- and this would be done by giving an incentive/further compensation.


Quote:

Originally Posted by Cavernio (Post 3388081)
If we're talking about jobs that require educations though, there's plenty of people out there who spend thousands of dollars at school full-well knowing they're not going to get any money out of it when they leave.

Again, though, this is about utility. Those people spend thousands because they genuinely enjoy the subject and are willing to take on the costs. Such fields may or may not provide marketable value.


Quote:

Originally Posted by Cavernio (Post 3388081)
And realistically, if society were to switch over to a situation where money was not used whatsoever, all the organization and specificity of skills that we currently have wouldn't just suddenly disappear. If someone has a vision for something which requires lots of smaller parts working together to make a glorious whole, outward incentive, like money, is not an integral part of making that happen.

This line of action leads to lots of inherent problems. You still need investment of resources to get things lifting. Vision/drive alone doesn't result in innovation and improvements. It's harder to leverage resources without a simple normalized intermediary like money. Let's say I want to build better watches. I could simply acquire the resources I want "for free," but then what's to stop how much material I can acquire? What about the suppliers of my materials and their economic positions and incentives? Who controls what? If we simply leave it up to the government, how do they justify the distribution? How do you stop that system from being gamed?


Quote:

Originally Posted by Cavernio (Post 3388081)
Well I never did say I would support forcing anyone to do anything, seeing as that's what's the 'problem' with money is, as I see it, in that it coerces people into doing things they don't want to do. Also, I think there could only be less waste in a society not driven by money. I wouldn't feel compelled to waste my time and effort doing something I know no one else appreciates.

People wouldn't bother doing things they disliked unless it had a payoff. We may not *like* working a summer job in retail, but we do it because it gives us money to spend on things we want/need. Furthermore, if no one else "appreciated" your work, they wouldn't pay you, accordingly (otherwise that's being overpaid). Incomes/wages are investments. I pay a worker X dollars an hour because I know that the opportunity cost is greater by NOT hiring the worker.

devonin 01-4-2011 08:41 PM

Re: A world without money.
 
Cleaned out all the garbage. Seriously guys, I expect better from you in here. Even if you're feeling trolled, you just PM me or whatever, and I'll have a looksee. Letting yourself get baited into a flamewar just makes you -both- look like idiots.

Reincarnate 01-5-2011 08:57 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
not when you're right

devonin 01-5-2011 09:19 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Nope, even then. Winning at the special olympics and whatnot.

Reincarnate 01-5-2011 10:00 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Again, not really

The hilarious thing is that people with a lot of power in this country make really retarded mistakes like these in the favor of screwed incentives, lack of foresight, and moral hazard.

It's always good to remind people of the basics.

Arch0wl 01-6-2011 02:18 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Labeling people 'retarded' can be a powerful device when done properly because it is a negative example. It does nothing to persuade the person you're debating with, this is true. But unless this is an issue on which many people will have already made up their minds (abortion, for example) it's likely that not everyone reading you has, in fact, made up their minds. They're looking for a "side" to join. And if they see someone being called retarded, they have to face the strong possibility that if they join that side they, too, will be called retarded.

On the internet though, the dynamic is a bit different. Forums put most people on equal footing, so it usually doesn't work very well. It only works if the authority of the "retard" label is greater than any authority which might oppose it. So usually, you either need a chorus of people calling someone retarded or an extremely authoritative voice (a professor among students, for example) to deliver the "don't be like this retard" blow.

foilman8805 01-6-2011 02:55 AM

Re: A world without money.
 
Thanks for breaking that down dude.


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