The Future of Money: None

Originally Posted by Skybird

Too much surreal idealism there, and no sense of realism.

This, exactly.

Originally Posted by Castout

I see that the roots of money are very deeply entrenched that people lose their objectivity and critical thinking when it comes to discussing that money is holding us back. That it is obsolete.

People are encouraged to be bad and not to prove himself in a money-based world.

Naturally, human beings are inclined to do good.

Haha, no...

Skybird is right, surreal idealism describes what you said perfectly.

Originally Posted by Skybird

I hinted at the technical function that money has. Just demonising it on grounds of troubled emotions, or declaring people as psychologically inhibited, will not get you around certain factual needs and tehcnical chgallenges in the real world that you cannot avoid.

Well said!

[Jimbuna]

Any future changes will be a long way off should they ever even come about, so in the meantime I'm happy with what money I have and will continue to enjoy until my dying day.

Selfish rant over.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Castout

I know this will terrify people whose mindsets are so entrenched with the accumulation of possessions and money. I will be called names and derided as a fool and crazy. Just sharing a thought.

This is an interesting topic, and I'm glad to see it. I'm curious, though, as to why you chose to start it with an argumentative and defensive attitude. Claiming that you will be called names and derided seems to me to be begging for a fight. That said...

Money has been the primary problem for our species and in order to help free our society from a fear-based living, money has to go.

Is it the primary problem? Does it have to go? I don't have an answer to that, but the first question that comes to my mind is "How?" How did money come about in the first place? Skybird's link offers a good explanation. It seems to me that we have money as a common means of exchange because the old system of barter only works on a small, local level. If I can only produce one thing, and no-one wants that one thing, how am I to survive?

A lot of people will fear and oppose this change though.

Maybe. Maybe not. When you word it that way it sounds like more defensiveness, rather than an honest argument. It also sounds like a sales pitch. Note that the term "sales pitch" doesn't necessarily mean "selling something for money". It also means selling ideas, such as religious or political.

The alternative to a moneyless society is a world rife with enslavement, discrimination, and persecution. Any authoritarian government is only a manifestation of the fear-based world we are co-creating that stems from an unequal and unfair distribution of money and thus, influence and power.

People need things. People have things. If you have something I want, how do I get it (not yours, but one of my own)? Is everyone to produce whatever they can for no reason? Whether it's greed, lust, or an honest desire to have stuff, whether it's cool stuff or just the basic essentials needed to survive. how exactly do we get that stuff?

Don’t mistake this with a lazy unproductive society. On the contrary, in the absence of hoarding money, humanity can strive to pursue what really matters and to strive to live their lives to the fullest of their potential. If people could get anything they wanted, completely free, there would be no reason to hoard anything at all and to destroy the planet just to hoard money.

A nice idea, but how do you propose to make it happen? What would you change?

This is not extremism. This is not a crazy, unrealistic idea. This is no propaganda. If you think this through, it is very workable.

Possibly. I'm still curious as to how.

[Rockin Robbins]

Man is infinite consciousness manifested as flesh and blood. The nature of man is divinity. The natural mode of being is non-duality.

Not only is this meaningless psychobabble, holy cow, we have a new religion here, not dealing with man, but with some mythical, idealized creature that man has never been, is not now, and never will be. Money is freedom: the only true measure of societal likes and dislikes, the only honest vote, the only opinion poll that matters.

Remove money from mankind and you require ironfisted, completely oppressive and totalitarian government. Honeybees don't need money because they live in such a society. People, thank God, will never do so.

Money is a terrible thing. Like republican government, it is worse than anything except for all the alternatives. Money is freedom.

[Von Due]

The devil's advocate is on the phone, asking if someone can give a technical description of the mechanisms that force a society to have, exclusively, iron fisted, oppressive and totallitarian goverments, like we have today in parts the world where they do have money?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Von Due

The devil's advocate is on the phone, asking if someone can give a technical description of the mechanisms that force a society to have, exclusively, iron fisted, oppressive and totallitarian goverments, like we have today in parts the world where they do have money?

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

----

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.

[Peter Cremer]

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.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Castout

If men were inclined to do evil then our laws and constitutions would reflect that.

“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.

Everyone finds murder unacceptable. Everyone finds rape unacceptable. Everyone finds lying unacceptable.

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.

We have evolved to do good and to be good simply because we are social creatures. A selfish man has no place in a natural society. A natural society takes care of its weak and impoverished.

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 not a terminology. It is a philosophy of life that puts the self over all other things. It's a philosophy of the fearful.

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.

[Von Due]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Please think a minute about the differences between coincidence, correlation and causality.

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.

[em2nought]

No money, no honey. End of discussion.

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

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Von Due

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.

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.

[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?".

[mapuc]

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

[ikalugin]

[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.