Please think a minute about the differences between coincidence, correlation and causality. That are three very different things.

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Money is no tool of the devil to lead man on a wrong path. It is a ordinary commodity, it gets traded on the - hopefully free - market liek any other commodity. As an ordinary commocity like any other, it has a value, a price that market participants negotiate over. Money is bought by you when you sell stuff of your own, money is sold by you when you buy stuff you want. It is in the end nothing else but bartering. Money allows you to store "bartering value" that you possess, you must not barter the milk for something you do not want immediately after you have milked the cow, you must no barter the fish immediately for something that you do not need, else it starts to smell. You barter your milk and fish for money - and barter your money later for somethign different, once the situation is in your favour. With money you can sell your stuff even if during this deal you do not get from the other what you want. You take what the others gives you (money), go to somebody else who has what you want (but who did not want the stuff you wanted to barter), and then buy stuff you indeed want from him. Without this simple possibility, complex production chains would be impossible. Imagine what that would mean for building a civilization if nio complex trade chains and production would be possible!

Paper/FIAT money is no such commodity, and that is where the real problems come from, and that's why I say we do not even have a real money anymore - we have many people with illusions, that is the only reason why they give you material stuff and material value for your snippets of paper whose "value" get arbitrarily inflated and devalued by governments as they want it - to handle the immense debts they have managed to pile up high into the sky.

Once people understand this, you will see a massive bank rush, and collapse, and nobody will give you something of material value for your banknotes anymore. Banknotes without material securities backing them (every single one of them!) - are no money. They are fraud.

See Venezuela. Maduro too thought that money just can be printed and must not have material securities backing it - another brilliant smarthead in a long line of socialist brilliant smartheads all making the same mistakes over and over and over again. A money that is no commodity, has no material inherent value, and thus banknotes wihtout a material security backing every single one, are just notes of debt - again, without any securities backing them. Worthless gimcrack once the illusions have been busted. We have been there. Oh yeah, we have been there. Repeatedly. Globally, there have been 50 hyperinflations in the past 100 years, roughly. FIFTY HYPERINFLATIONS. Hyperinflation usually it is called when the MONTHLY inflation rate is above 50%.

So again: money is and needs to be an ordinary commodity, like any other. And it must be subject to market interactions, without interference by the state cartel. This is not understood, governments want to "control" it. And that is where all financial-economic evil of the present is coming from. A planned economy is similar to a planned economy - it just does not work. Prime example for a - failed again - planned money is the Euro, but this truith holds for ecery single paper money there ever has been since the Chinese tried it first in the 12th century: 30 years later that Chinese kingdom had a collapsed economy, and was almost destroyed by civil war and famine.

Read "Voyage From Yesteryear" by James P. Hogan, if you can find it. It is science fiction but it shows what can happen when a 'money' society runs into a 'moneyless' society. You can't 'buy' anything. Entertaining if you care for science fiction, a waste of your precious time if you don't.:hmmm:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
-James Madison, Federalist #51.


Except the murderer. Except the rapist. Except the liar. People justify their evil by calling it good. Anything is acceptable if it promotes a further good. At least that is the justification.

All men are inherently selfish. It comes from having to live inside our own heads. Those who recognize that others are the same as themselves are able to work together, recognizing that what benefits others benefits ourselves. The sociopath, the person who cannot recognize that others are the same as himself, is incapable of seeing the benefit of helping others, so he acts as if only he matters. Unfortunately, all of us suffer from this to some degree or another, and so we work for our own benefit. If the way to that end is to help others, then we do so.

Evil is harming other people unnecessarily. We can try to avoid that, but to one degree or another it is a part of all of us. We don't do good automatically, but because we recognize the benefit to ourselves in doing so.

It was stated in the post above mine that if we remove money from society, the result would be a society that required an iron fisted and so on goverment. I question whether or not it is required, as it was stated. Money have been around for less than 20,000 years. Societies have been around for 100s of 1000s of years. The Hadza people are very much alive today. Do they live in an oppressive society? What I am questioning is precisely correlation vs causation but also if the statement I referred to isn't rooted in the application of rules of one game to a fundamentally different game.

No money, no honey. End of discussion. :D

Fiat currency will collapse someday though, Fiat's were never any good. :03:

Just like all utopians, you are blind. Blind to the fact that moneyless societies are stone age societies. What gave us quality of life, medical care, houses not of mud and straw, where people live beyond the age of 25, where the weak are protected and the innocent are not defenseless, where people meet the needs of others because it is worth their while and improves their own lives. The "enlightened" philosophers of the moneyless society would create a society where their useless ilk would be cast aside and allowed to die. And I would not argue with that decision.

Personally, I like being in a non-stone age society. I like being over 60 and feeling young. I like electricity and automobiles, planes, restaurants, grocery stores, the ability to give to the charity of my choice and the freedom to be responsible for my own prosperity of failure.

You mention there is tyranny in monied societies. The cruelty and oppression of a moneyless society makes that look like a trip to the county fair. A moneyless society sentences its most productive people to an early grave and no chance to improve the status of their fellow man.

Your moneyless society is a cruel lie--just waiting to be adopted by people too foolish to know what it entails. It spells death for billions and the loss of every gain in lifestyle over the past thousand years. And the utopians wouldn't feel responsible for the inevitable universal tragedy of their malevolent fantasies. Some of them think living in grass and mud huts would be fun. Until they die at the age of 25.

First: If you read my first post, I make it very clear that I have no illusions of a global moneyless society. Quite the opposite, in fact but I do question the arguements for money being absolutely neccessary for humans as a species coming out of evolution. I also question whether it is valid to use, as you certainly do, our society as some form of base society all other modern society must be based on. I question things, it is healthy to question things. Religious-like fanatics don't need to be religious, all it takes is a hostility towards the question "is this the best we can do or can we do better?".

I have the feeling by reading the comments here and in other places on the Internet

Something we have been taught through our life-A money free world is not going to work and therefor impossible to imply to a future society.

Maybe these people/economist who have claimed these things are right or maybe they are talking out from a theoretical thoughts

Markus

In other words, faced with the truth, you back off everything you said and now pose it in a purely theoretical, fun/experimental manner. And you recast my position into "this is the best of all possible worlds." Both sides of your new stance are vacuous. People are practical beings who do what works. If thuggery works then we tend to do that. And we love to pretend to be a higher being than what we are and benevolently prescribe cyanide for mankind as some kind of kindness. Philosophers often do that. It's one of the tricks of the trade: never be responsible for the consequences of what you contend.

In your model society you'd be the first one off the island.

This is just silly. Backing off? Care to show how that is?

Rule #1 The fatties are always the first to go. :03:
https://moderncombatandsurvival.com/...al_fitness.jpg
...or he guy that bought silver and is dragging it with him. lol

It's your perception that tells you I'm being defensive. I was merely stating an opinion that I was likely to be thought of as a fool and were crazy.
The reason being we are really the products of our age and money is a big part of our second industrial revolution. So, expectedly, most people will defend money.
But I will only be derided as a fool and being crazy or a communist ONLY if the idea has begun to gain a traction or a foothold in society. In the absence of traction, the idea will simply be ignored.

If you really observe the world today, most of our problems can be attributed to money, directly and indirectly. Money makes us discriminate people. It takes away power from many groups of people and hands it to a few small groups of other people. Democracies are failing because money takes over genuine concern for people's interests.

For economical reason (money), we justify polluting our world to the brink of our own extinction with climate change. Even money works against the effort of mitigating our folly in ruining our planet, one which we can't escape from, yet.

Today, just 6 persons own half of the world's entire wealth. 62 persons probably own as much as 80-90% of the world's entire wealth (money).
This means our world is pandering to just so few people. The rest of us have been made irrelevant and are forced to scrape a living off the marginal 5-10% of the world's wealth. This is the perfect recipe for enslavement in one form or another, for injustice, persecution, and oppression.



We did small barters only because we didn't have the technological capacity for mass production. It had nothing to do with money.
A moneyless society is termed a resource-based society that would enable us to produce what we CAN produce instead of what is affordable.
There can be no hunger in such a world because foods will be produced according to the needs of all people instead of affordability or prices. Foods would also be produced in the highest level of quality now that cost is out of the picture.
We would be able to mine deep sea on a massive scale now that cost is out of the picture, according to our need since we wouldn't need to destroy the planet just to hoard money. Likewise with mining the moon on a massive scale, even other planets. There isn't even enough money in the entire world to mine our moon on a massive scale. Even if we had we would still not do it on a massive scale since the profit and cost consideration would not appeal to entrepreneurs even when there's demand for it. People would still form enterprises but out of a common passion and purpose rather than chasing after profits. It would be a world based on value and purpose rather than profit.


It sounds like a sales pitch to you because it appeals to you. I'm merely stating an idea which I believe will work and will work for the betterment of us all by us dreaming a better dream than this nightmare somewhat of being controlled by money (or moneyed groups/people).

Obviously, there needs to be a council to allocate resources according to our needs as a collective species but even those in the council don't get paid anything.


Mainly through the above but in such a system, everything is free including us (our work). In the absence of toiling for money, with time, men grow ambitious and can focus on improving himself according to his passion and on improving his environment and society, all without for money.

The technical details need to be worked on but it's basically producing what WE CAN produce according to our needs without the need to destroy the planet just to accumulate money for influence and power (thus, security)

Your opinion is based on your own perceptions. It's still defensive. If I say you're going to tell me I'm greedy and stuck in a rut, I'm being defensive, because you have done neither of those. I do believe you're looking toward an end that you believe will save mankind, but not seeing any way to make it happen that's not worse. I believe the same thing about the men in the videos.

It's easy chide someone negatively while not seeing the same thing in yourself. Dreams are fine, but practicality demands a workable solution, not just saying it's so.

I'm not calling you anything but a believer. I don't know what will work and what will not. "Communist?" I happen to think Communism and Democracy are two sides of the same coin, and I believe both could be made to work...on a very small level. Both require absolutely willing participation from everyone involved, and both require that everyone involved be perfect. That's a problem.

The Bible doesn't say "Money is the root of all evil," it says "The love of money is the root of all evil." It's not money that does those things, it's greed, and greed isn't necessarily just for money. Most dictators, starting the first Pharaohs, weren't after money, they were after power. Not the same thing. Controlling the money can be a part of that, but controlling other people is what it's really about.

And how do you propose to change that? One of the videos shows people living in mansions and the people living on the streets. If all money disappeared tomorrow Bill Gates would still live in a mansion and I would still live in a one-bedroom apartment and consider myself lucky to do so, considering how a great portion of mankind lives. How would you change that?

Talk is cheap.

"There can be no hunger in such a world because foods will be produced according to the needs of all people instead of affordability or prices. Foods would also be produced in the highest level of quality now that cost is out of the picture.[/quote]
Produced by whom? Farmers would still have to lead the cows to the milking machines and I saw one clip in the video of several threshing machines driving side-by-side across a field. Will some drive those machines for free while others of us live off of their labors, for free?

And who would do this mining? And how? By magic? Somebody has to do the work, and if they choose not to do it because somebody else tells them to, how do you make them?

So without money we would just willing devote our entire lives to building the technology do accomplish this without any motivation other than the purity of our hearts? The work has to come from someone, and you have to convince them that it is to their benefit to give their entire lives over to making this happen. We're not talking about the designers and engineers, who tend to be dreamers anyway, but about the laborers and workers, who have nothing to gain themselves and will likely never see the fruits of their labors.

No, it sounds like a sales pitch because you didn't look at both sides, positive and negative, but you pitched it at us to convince us of its correctness. That's what a pitch is, trying to convince people to believe what you believe.

Put another way: There needs to be a group of people to tell us all what to do, and to tell us they're doing it for our own good. Now we have an unpaid dictatorship trying to make us do what they deem best. Still a dictatorship.

A noble sentiment, but it still depends on men being perfect, or at least mostly so. You may convince the artist or musician to embrace a world like that, but how do you convince the common worker? Someone has to build your big-screen TV an your car, and he needs to believe there is a reason for him to work hard all day to produce things. Someone has to haul away your garbage and build your roads. How do you convince them?

Money may aid influence, but it is not equal to power. Rulers control societies by force. They make people obey, not pay them to. Strong men have always ruled weak men. Money is the system we use to allow us to have food, clothing and shelter, and then to have better things. Many of the people in the world are starving, and we won't stop that simply by declaring money to be a non-entity.

The modern world has enabled its citizens to have greater luxury than ever dreamed possible by past generations. We've shortened the hours we work and allowed ourselves to obtain things formerly only dreamed of by kings. You're right, money wasn't absolutely necessary to accomplish that, but it has been a means to an end. That said, the West has attempted to feed some our less advanced neighbors, and often those attempts have been blocked; not by people who see money in it, but by rulers who see that withholding that food subjugates their people and increases their power.

Some people seek wealth, others seek power. Removing money from the equation may or may not change that, but looking at the way the world operates indicates that the answer is "not." The first objection you need to answer, though, is "how?"

True.

By getting rid of money altogether.
Do you expect me to figure out all this on my own and sell the idea to the world? That is is my sole responsibility? I'm throwing this idea to make people rethink the world we live in. It's our world, we can change whatever rules we have, including money.

A resource-based world isn't a work-free world. People still work. They don't do it for money, that's the difference.

Like I said, we are the products of our age.
Laborers and workers in today's world has no place in society. Their jobs being taken over by robots. The majority of them are laborers and workers simply because they couldn't afford higher education. So, basically they are not living up to their full potential.

And how in the world authoritarian government rule by force? Through money. If the police don't obey they lose their paychecks. If a judge wouldn't comply, he or she would lose his livelihood. Dissidents are known to be impoverished by the state. They can't find employment. No one will accept them.

Money had worked but in the long run it has become a mere transfer of wealth from all the people to just dozens of people. Money is setting us up for a tyranny-based world. Money disempowers most people and empowers so few of us.

I think in a resource-based economy the question we should ask ourselves is 'if we had everything we needed or if we had all the money in the world, what would we do?'

Perhaps our minds picture traveling the world, others may picture playing games all day, other perhaps sailing the world's oceans in a big yacht
but then what will we do...

Keep asking then what will we do and you will find that in each man there's a natural drive to improve himself, to make a better world.

How?

No, I don't expect you to have answers that I don't have myself. The problem I see is that none of these preachers seem to have an answer for that either. The dream is fine. The reality seems to be much different.

Why would anyone work when there's nothing in it for them? People used to farm so they could eat. They also made their own clothes. That was about the limit of the technology. The man who could make a plow or a wagon could barter it for a pig or a cow, but how many pigs and cows can one man deal with, especially if he'd rather be making plows. Or clothes. A medium of exchange is needed, hence money.

Who builds the robots? Other robots? That technology can only take us so far. Mining and farming can be greatly aided by machines, but machines can't do it all.

And what will they do when they don't have to do anything? Some will thrive, but others will not. Can we build a society structured to support us all? Again, a nice dream, but nobody is telling us how it can be done. So far it's all talk.

Not really. A strong man who can convince other strong men to follow him doesn't need money. Ancient armies were supplied by force - they took what they wanted. They would follow the man who could guarantee them what they wanted. They didn't pillage, rape and kill because they wanted money (though that was a part of it), they did it because it was fun. Exercising power is an end in itself. Taking away the means of exchange won't change that. Gold didn't become a precious commodity because of the money it represented, but because of its rarity. The man strong enough to take it will try to do so, whether you say it's worth anything or not.

And if there are no paychecks? Why will people become policemen at all? Why judges? Because they have decent hearts? Or because they like to have power over others? Probably a bit of both, but money doesn't make men bad. The bad ones are already that way.

Most of the world is already tyranny-based. Some of the tyrants want money. Others want power for its own sake. Still others believe they are doing what is best, even as they slaughter whole populations.

Money isn't the problem. People are.

None of the examples you mentioned involve improving the world, or ourselves. They all involve self-gratification. When you can convince the world that none of those things are necessary, or important, then maybe you can convince them that money isn't either.

I'd venture to say that the technology for mass production, indeed the whole industrial revolution itself would have never existed without money. There is just no way to gather the many resources, equipment and trained personnel required by any factory by barter alone. Therefore human society without money is limited to small agrarian and hunter gatherer groups where life is both difficult and short.

I think trying to explain this is a moot point when people don't want to think and keep asking the same thing. Plus, there's so much hostility when none is needed. The unwillingness to really think through this and repeating the same questions made it obvious that men have been so perverse that they believe money is a goal unto itself. We work for money so if there's no money we won't work....it's pathetic...the conditioning has been thought of being natural. The tyranny of money.

So let this thread be read and be reflected upon.

Money is what leading to self-gratification.

How? again by getting rid of money altogether and making everything free so we can produce what we can not what's affordable.

There's no such thing as reality in space-time. This is a dream. An interactive movie of sort. Don't ask. If you have to, you just won't get it. If you can't get a moneyless society you won't get that you're not real and that this is a merely interactive movie (or a dream, both the same thing) where nothing real can be imparted by us or to us.