The Future of Money: None

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Von Due

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?".

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.

[Von Due]

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

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Von Due

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

I quoth:

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.

When you've been spotted lay a smoke screen. You have no illusions your idea would work. Quite the opposite. You do question whether money is necessary for humans to evolve (and I'm going to insert "from stone age hunter-gatherers). And you wonder if our society is some kind of base society.

All meaningless psychobabble. Our society is what it is. Moneyless societies are what they are. Money is how we cooperate and support other people indirectly when we have no direct need for their services. Money is the concrete evidence of the cooperation of person with person. Voluntary, not required.

Let's look at your lofty example of how people should live, the Hazda in Africa:

Hadza men usually forage individually, and during the course of day usually feed themselves while foraging, and also bring home some honey, fruit, or wild game when available. Women forage in larger parties, and usually bring home berries, baobab fruit [1], and tubers, depending on availability. Men and women also forage cooperatively for honey and fruit, and at least one adult male will usually accompany a group of foraging women. During the wet season, the diet is composed mostly of honey, some fruit, tubers, and occasional meat.

That's your example of utopia. No thanks, bub. I enjoy living longer than 25 years.

[Von Due]

Originally Posted by Von Due

Humans are not sophisticated but we are what we are, superstitious, simple minded and stubborn, come hell or high water. We also make the calls so I don't see the moneyless society happening before we are all gone.

Originally Posted by Von Due

What I was saying was, the moneyless global society will never ever happen again. It was moneyless but that's more than at least 6000 years ago, before the first city states, probably much longer.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

I quoth:

When you've been spotted lay a smoke screen. You have no illusions your idea would work. Quite the opposite. You do question whether money is necessary for humans to evolve (and I'm going to insert "from stone age hunter-gatherers). And you wonder if our society is some kind of base society.

[...]
That's your example of utopia. No thanks, bub. I enjoy living longer than 25 years.

How you pieced together that this was some kind of utopia of mine, that I thought this would ever happen, is truly a puzzle if I assume you read the posts you respond to. Again, for the last time: No, it is not a utopia of mine nor do I think it could happen again.

However, I do say that all this babbling about how invention of money is "human nature" is verifiably wrong. Human nature is not something we choose or get used to. Money came out of culture, not genetics. Humans 100,000 years ago were practically genetically identical to us. We are not a new species. We have in us the same "nature" as they did way back. That was and still is my point with the Hadza. One more thing: Your, or my culture, is not global or universal. Same species, different cultures. You seem to ignore that completely.

[August]

Well whatever it is society cannot exist without money except in the most primitive manner. To survive without it a community needs to be small enough that everyone knows each other personally and their actual contributions to the group are significant enough for the rest of the community to tolerate their presence.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Von Due

How you pieced together that this was some kind of utopia of mine, that I thought this would ever happen, is truly a puzzle if I assume you read the posts you respond to. Again, for the last time: No, it is not a utopia of mine nor do I think it could happen again.

However, I do say that all this babbling about how invention of money is "human nature" is verifiably wrong. Human nature is not something we choose or get used to. Money came out of culture, not genetics. Humans 100,000 years ago were practically genetically identical to us. We are not a new species. We have in us the same "nature" as they did way back. That was and still is my point with the Hadza. One more thing: Your, or my culture, is not global or universal. Same species, different cultures. You seem to ignore that completely.

"What has government done to our money?", part 2: Money in a free society

1. The Value of Exchange

How did money begin? Clearly, Robinson Crusoe had no need for money. He could not have eaten gold coins. Neither would Crusoe and Friday, perhaps exchanging fish for lumber, need to bother about money. But when society expands beyond a few families, the stage is already set for the emergence of money.
To explain the role of money, we must go even further back, and ask: why do men exchange at all? Exchange is the prime basis of our economic life. Without exchanges, there would be no real economy and, practically, no society. Clearly, a voluntary exchange occurs because both parties expect to benefit. An exchange is an agreement between A and B to transfer the goods or services of one man for the goods and services of the other. Obviously, both benefit because each values what he receives in exchange more than what he gives up. When Crusoe, say, exchanges some fish for lumber, he values the lumber he "buys" more than the fish he "sells," while Friday, on the contrary, values the fish more than the lumber. From Aristotle to Marx, men have mistakenly believed that an exchange records some sort of equality of value—that if one barrel of fish is exchanged for ten logs, there is some sort of underlying equality between them. Actually, the exchange was made only because each party valued the two products in different order.
Why should exchange be so universal among mankind? Fundamentally, because of the great variety in nature: the variety in man, and the diversity of location of natural resources. Every man has a different set of skills and aptitudes, and every plot of ground has its own unique features, its own distinctive resources. From this external natural fact of variety come exchanges; wheat in Kansas for iron in Minnesota; one man's medical services for another's playing of the violin. Specialization permits each man to develop his best skill, and allows each region to develop its own particular resources. If no one could exchange, if every man were forced to be completely self-sufficient, it is obvious that most of us would starve to death, and the rest would barely remain alive. Exchange is the lifeblood, not only of our economy, but of civilization itself.


2. Barter

Yet, direct exchange of useful goods and services would barely suffice to keep an economy going above the primitive level. Such direct exchange—or barter—is hardly better than pure self-sufficiency. Why is this? For one thing, it is clear that very little production could be carried on. If Jones hires some laborers to build a house, with what will he pay them? With parts of the house, or with building materials they could not use? The two basic problems are "indivisibility" and "lack of coincidence of wants." Thus, if Smith has a plow, which he would like to exchange for several different things—say, eggs, bread, and a suit of clothes—how can he do so? How can he break up the plow and give part of it to a farmer and another part to a tailor? Even where the goods are divisible, it is generally impossible for two exchangers to find each other at the same time. If A has a supply of eggs for sale, and B has a pair of shoes, how can they get together if A wants a suit? And think of the plight of an economics teacher who has to find an egg-producer who wants to purchase a few economics lessons in return for his eggs! Clearly, any sort of civilized economy is impossible under direct exchange.


3. Indirect Exchange

But man discovered, in the process of trial and error, the route that permits a greatly-expanding economy: indirect exchange. Under indirect exchange, you sell your product not for a good which you need directly, but for another good which you then, in turn, sell for the good you want. At first glance, this seems like a clumsy and round-about operation. But it is actually the marvelous instrument that permits civilization to develop.
Consider the case of A, the farmer, who wants to buy the shoes made by B. Since B doesn't want his eggs, he finds what B does want—let's say butter. A then exchanges his eggs for C's butter, and sells the butter to B for shoes. He first buys the butter no: because he wants it directly, but because it will permit him to get his shoes. Similarly, Smith, a plow-owner, will sell his plow for one commodity which he can more readily divide and sell—say, butter—and will then exchange parts of the butter for eggs, bread, clothes, etc. In both cases, the superiority of butter—the reason there is extra demand for it beyond simple consumption—is its greater marketability. If one good is more marketable than another—if everyone is confident that it will be more readily sold—then it will come into greater demand because it will be used as a medium of exchange. It will be the medium through which one specialist can exchange his product for the goods of other specialists.
Now just as in nature there is a great variety of skills and resources, so there is a variety in the marketability of goods. Some goods are more widely demanded than others, some are more divisible into smaller units without loss of value, some more durable over long periods of time, some more transportable over large distances. All of these advantages make for greater marketability. It is clear that in every society, the most marketable goods will be gradually selected as the media for exchange. As they are more and more selected as media, the demand for them increases because of this use, and so they become even more marketable. The result is a reinforcing spiral: more marketability causes wider use as a medium which causes more marketability, etc. Eventually, one or two commodities are used as general media--in almost all exchanges—and these are called money.
Historically, many different goods have been used as media: tobacco in colonial Virginia, sugar in the West Indies, salt in Abyssinia, cattle in ancient Greece, nails in Scotland, copper in ancient Egypt, and grain, beads, tea, cowrie shells, and fishhooks. Through the centuries, two commodities, gold and silver, have emerged as money in the free competition of the market, and have displaced the other commodities. Both are uniquely marketable, are in great demand as ornaments, and excel in the other necessary qualities. In recent times, silver, being relatively more abundant than gold, has been found more useful for smaller exchanges, while gold is more useful for larger transactions. At any rate, the important thing is that whatever the reason, the free market has found gold and silver to be the most efficient moneys.
This process: the cumulative development of a medium of exchange on the free market—is the only way money can become established. Money cannot originate in any other way, neither by everyone suddenly deciding to create money out of useless material, nor by government calling bits of paper "money." For embedded in the demand for money is knowledge of the money-prices of the immediate past; in contrast to directly-used consumers' or producers' goods, money must have pre-existing prices on which to ground a demand. But the only way this can happen is by beginning with a useful commodity under barter, and then adding demand for a medium for exchange to the previous demand for direct use (e.g., for ornaments, in the case of gold1). Thus, government is powerless to create money for the economy; it can only be developed by the processes of the free market.
A most important truth about money now emerges from our discussion: money is a commodity. Learning this simple lesson is one of the world's most important tasks. So often have people talked about money as something much more or less than this. Money is not an abstract unit of account, divorceable from a concrete good; it is not a useless token only good for exchanging; it is not a "claim on society"; it is not a guarantee of a fixed price level. It is simply a commodity. It differs from other commodities in being demanded mainly as a medium of exchange. But aside from this, it is a commodity—and, like all commodities, it has an existing stock, it faces demands by people to buy and hold it, etc. Like all commodities, its "price"—in terms of other goods—is determined by the interaction of its total supply, or stock, and the total demand by people to buy and hold it. (People "buy" money by selling their goods and services for it, just as they "sell" money when they buy goods and services.).





4. Benefits of Money

The emergence of money was a great boon to the human race. Without money—without a general medium of exchange—there could be no real specialization, no advancement of the economy above a bare, primitive level. With money, the problems of indivisibility and "coincidence of wants" that plagued the barter society all vanish. Now, Jones can hire laborers and pay them in... money. Smith can sell his plow in exchange for units of... money. The money-commodity is divisible into small units, and it is generally acceptable by all. And so all goods and services are sold for money, and then money is used to buy other goods and services that people desire. Because of money, an elaborate "structure of production" can be formed, with land, labor services, and capital goods cooperating to advance production at each stage and receiving payment in money.
The establishment of money conveys another great benefit. Since all exchanges are made in money, all the exchange-ratios are expressed in money, and so people can now compare the market worth of each good to that of every other good. If a TV set exchanges for three ounces of gold, and an automobile exchanges for sixty ounces of gold, then everyone can see that one automobile is "worth" twenty TV sets on the market. These exchange-ratios are prices, and the money-commodity serves as a common denominator for all prices. Only the establishment of money-prices on the market allows the development of a civilized economy, for only they permit businessmen to calculate economically. Businessmen can now judge how well they are satisfying consumer demands by seeing how the selling-prices of their products compare with the prices they have to pay productive factors (their "costs"). Since all these prices are expressed in terms of money, the businessmen can determine whether they are making profits or losses. Such calculations guide businessmen, laborers, and landowners in their search for monetary income on the market. Only such calculations can allocate resources to their most productive uses—to those uses that will most satisfy the demands of consumers.
Many textbooks say that money has several functions: a medium of exchange, unit of account, or "measure of values," a "store of value," etc. But it should be clear that all of these functions are simply corollaries of the one great function: the medium of exchange. Because gold is a general medium, it is most marketable, it can be stored to serve as a medium in the future as well as the present, and all prices are expressed in its terms.2 Because gold is a commodity medium for all exchanges, it can serve as a unit of account for present, and expected future, prices. It is important to realize that money cannot be an abstract unit of account or claim, except insofar as it serves as a medium of exchange.

Those who have eyes may see, those who have ears may hear. It cannot be much easier explained than like this ^.

P.S.
A GERMAN essay on the future of forged money and a fraudulent banking system (no future there).

https://frankjordanblog.wordpress.co...ller-probleme/

If Castout would have at least made this difference between real (commodity) money and fraudulent (FIAT) money, this thread maybe would not be what it is, and the tone probably would have stayed calmer.

[Castout]

@Skybird. I'm not trying to convince others of how transcended I'm. I can demonstrate that on daily basis to people closest to me (the potentiality of omnipresence and omniscience). I'm merely stating that transcendence CAN be demonstrated and thus, proven.

By demonstrating transcendence on daily basis I'm inviting others to rethink their individuality, their egoic identities. That's all.

Thank you for all your suggestions but frankly, I do not need them, not at this stage, maybe 10 years ago. I have my own way and it involves no meditation at all. I still need help but I can get that from others who have gone beyond my own stage. I know where to look for that guidance.

It's one thing to know transcendence or write a thesis about it, it's another thing to experience it on a continual basis. Transcendence is NOT an altered state of consciousness. It is THE NATURAL state of consciousness.

[Castout]

@Skybird, the ego cannot be wholly annihilated. If someone told you that was possible he was lying or didn't know better.

The ego can be weakened though, to the point where a person no longer identifies with his ego. So, the person becomes merely a witnessing consciousness.

But the ego is still there, the personal identification is still there but it no longer controls the person meaning his intentions, desires, and anger are no longer caused by personal egoic reasons but they stem from the collective well-being of the whole.

An egoic person may become angry at a jerk who's harassing him. A more enlightened person may become angry to a jerk who's harassing another or he may get angry at a person who's also harassing him but only because that person is going to repeat that behavior to others. The anger isn't personal though so it doesn't linger and there's no thought of 'revenge'. To the eyes of the ignorant, they may seem the same.
That's all the difference.

The only way for the ego to be truly annihilated is in a deep meditation or dreamless sleep where there's no recollection of being. There's awareness without objects. Time passes unnoticed since there is nothing but the Self. One forgets his egoic existence (himself) in that state. There's awareness but not being. But this is temporary as the ego resurfaces in waking state. Well, unless one dies.

A fuller enlightenment is signified by a state of fearlessness and peace. They stem from the weakening of the ego and from knowing one's true nature. That this is all just an interactive movie. A dream of sort where nothing real can be imparted by us and to us. It's only real in being a flow of experience. The experience is real but everything else isn't. Just like in a dream.

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

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

Rule #1 The fatties are always the first to go.

...or he guy that bought silver and is dragging it with him. lol