A world without money.

[mhss1992]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

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:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

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.

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

"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.

"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.

"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!

"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.

"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.