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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). |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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tradeoffs
the entire premise of this is uhhh brainless (quite literally) |
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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.
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Wow holy **** massive misunderstanding of how money/economics work ITT
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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. |
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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? |
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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. |
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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. |
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? |
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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. |
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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
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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. |
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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? |
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dossar never become an economist
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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. |
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i'll contribute something that's more than one line. if you missed the key point earlier then here it is again:
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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. |
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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.
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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) |
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".
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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. |
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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.
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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. |
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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 |
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:
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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. |
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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? |
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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. |
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. |
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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.
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You didn't pay attention. Your system doesn't solve anything. What do you think credit *is* to begin with? |
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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? |
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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. |
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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? |
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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. |
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. |
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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. |
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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.
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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:
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:
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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:
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:
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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. |
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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:
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"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:
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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:
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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:
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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Only that last paragraph was actually useful.
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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:
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. |
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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. |
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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:
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. |
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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:
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"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. |
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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:
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:
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. |
Re: A world without money.
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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:
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. |
Re: A world without money.
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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. |
Re: A world without money.
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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:
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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.
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Re: A world without money.
not when you're right
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Re: A world without money.
Nope, even then. Winning at the special olympics and whatnot.
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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. |
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. |
Re: A world without money.
Thanks for breaking that down dude.
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