Money - a blessing or a curse?

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LuckyR
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by LuckyR »

Elder wrote:
LuckyR wrote:No the problems predated money.
I know that, LuckyR. However, you did not take into consideration that we have already evolved, potentially, beyond that.

As I said, just above:
You see: when humanity reaches a scientific and technological level where no scarcity is realistic to expect for all the goods and services necessary for healthy survival (and we have reached that point by now) , then regulating consumption by the monetary system is totally unnecessary, and it would mean an up to 90% waste of humanity’s resources, as I explained in my blog I linked to in the OP

I see your point, I was thrown off by your world war reference since those are past events, yet you want to speak of future events. Okay.

Your idea makes complete and total sense... on paper. Unfortunately, psychologically people's ability to tolerate a certain level of resources goes away when they observe their neighbor having a certain level above their own. So it doesn't take very many greedy people to take advantage of the community to upset the whole structure. That's why the commune idea, has never worked and likely never will.

This is setting aside the economic issues like credit, deficit spending etc that depend on "keeping score".
"As usual... it depends."
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Elder
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by Elder »

LuckyR wrote:I see your point, I was thrown off by your world war reference since those are past events, yet you want to speak of future events. Okay.

Your idea makes complete and total sense... on paper. Unfortunately, psychologically people's ability to tolerate a certain level of resources goes away when they observe their neighbor having a certain level above their own. So it doesn't take very many greedy people to take advantage of the community to upset the whole structure. That's why the commune idea, has never worked and likely never will.
Unfortunately, you are correct, LuckyR.

The local solar panel dealer, whom I bought my system from, spends all his winters down in Mexico.

He told me that if anyone in the small village where he stays in during winter tries to install solar panels on his property, his neighbours, who can't afford the same, destroy it overnight.

I am talking about a possible future that can only be reached by a painstakingly gradual approach, one step at a time.

However, we still need a compass to determine our direction and the outline of our destination, and that is what this thread is about.
I don't debate with the evaders, the hopelessly 'confused' or the too lazy to think -- life is too short!
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by Londoner »

Elder wrote:OK, Londoner, have it your way. :wink:

If you think there is no effort involved in trying to think outside the box-- you should try it some day.

You may be surprised.

Now that you have had your fun, and managed to be a pedantic and boring 'philosopher', let's wait to see if others have anything interesting to say on the subject. :)
'Think outside the box' is a meaningless cliche.
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Elder
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by Elder »

LuckyR wrote:This is setting aside the economic issues like credit, deficit spending etc that depend on "keeping score".
My underline.

And that is where the problems come in.

The tragedy of the human species comes from a basic contradiction that developed during humanity's evolutionary path.

Competition and cooperation are two fundamentally antagonistic ideas:

The first is against each other and the second is for each other.

When you try to do both, at the same time, you go crazy.

Thus, our human history and our current civilization.

We have to resolve this crazy-making contradiction if we want to make progress toward something sustainable.

If we stop keeping score, and live like a functional, cooperative, healthy family, then we can survive the self-destructive power of our technology.

The only way to accomplish this is by eliminating money from the economy and focus on production, distribution and consumption for real needs.

That is for the long term.

For the short term, transitional solution, think about something like the "Proposal for a new Social Contract" thread.
I don't debate with the evaders, the hopelessly 'confused' or the too lazy to think -- life is too short!
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PartisaNZ_1
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by PartisaNZ_1 »

Money is a blessing AND a curse I reckon. The problem is OR.

Example: Competition and cooperation are two fundamentally antagonistic ideas, yes. They are two fundamentally opposing notions and therefore words to which we have attached two opposite connotations. But do the words describe two fundamentally antagonistic things? Do they even describe two completely contrasting things?

Personally I don't think so. I think many words do not adequately describe the things they attempt to describe. The result is seeming dichotomies like "blessing" and "curse" or "competition" and "cooperation", when the things themselves may be much less severely delineated. They may be things "by degrees". Shades of grey rather than black or white?

This is where words fail me. I cannot describe it exactly because there aren't words for it. It doesn't have names. Try "compoperation". Next I resort to analogy. It is "like this". It is like a team sport. Football. Our Rugby, your NFL, their Soccer, whatever. Members of the team cooperate so their team can compete with the other team. Both teams cooperate to create "entertainment" for the audience. It's a mixture. It's "Yes, And" rather than "No, But".

Money is like this too. A means of exchange, a beneficial technical aid but also an abstraction which, through centuries of habituation, has lost much of its relation to human life. The things we value with it are nowadays the things it is least able to value, it should perhaps be least allowed to value; our labour, our homes, 'our' land (the irrational notion of property in the soil)? Money exists independent of the cause of its issue and its utilization thereafter; it can circulate and be stored without limit.

Even in the very long term I find it difficult to imagine a world without money or some other symbolic form of exchange, though this may simply be my own habituation and consequent short-sightedness. Perhaps someday people will do everything currently considered "work" simply from the goodness of their hearts, their spirit of cooperation or their sense of social responsibility. Education will play a big part then, as it does now.

Certainly I believe one primary element of an improved society is the complete separation of labour and wage. In the short-short-term, a two-tier type economy would suffice for this, with something like a Universal Basic Income underpinning something akin to the current private enterprise system with its taxation and redistribution.

In my humble opinion, long-term solutions will be "AND" solutions, not "either/or" solutions.
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by LuckyR »

To me although we can tax our intelect to construct a moneyless future, it is wasted effort since I don't believe money is an evil that we should seek to eliminate. Rather as I have stated before, money is just a system for tabulation or "for keeping score". It does not represent the game itself or even the rules of the game, it is just the scorecard for the game.
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by Littleendian »

LuckyR wrote:To me although we can tax our intelect to construct a moneyless future, it is wasted effort since I don't believe money is an evil that we should seek to eliminate. Rather as I have stated before, money is just a system for tabulation or "for keeping score". It does not represent the game itself or even the rules of the game, it is just the scorecard for the game.
Yes, and I would add this score-card holds an immense amount of information about the needs of individuals and the priorities with which these individuals fulfill those needs. If people are willing to pay 120 EUR for a nice pair of Adidas sneakers rather than spending 20 EUR on cheaper sneakers, then there is a flow of information in this fact, this information flows from the consumer to the furthest reaches of the system, all the way down to the oil producing company that drills the oil that the sneakers are eventually made out of.

Information flows through the system in the form of money. Take money away and your sorry Politburo (or whoever then makes decisions about what to produce) is flying blind.
People see clear enough the barbarities of all ages -- but their own.
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by Vijaydevani »

Money is a necessity. So having money is a blessing. Obsessing over money is a curse. If viewed objectively and dispassionately and utilized intelligently, money is an asset. Otherwise it is the biggest liability and burden.
A little knowledge is a religious thing.
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TSBU
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by TSBU »

This thread is very long, and it's full of things that I think are mistakes, for example, there isn't any problem between compete and cooperate at the same time (usually it's the oposite way, when people try to demonstrate they are the best, they work very hard), there isn't a "system (software)" out of our minds, we don't have the same minds, and there aren't really any "world problems", there are your problems, that's all.). But I can't answer to everything :c. I'll go to the main point.

Money is sometimes a piece of metal, often a piece of paper and nearly always bits in computers (not only bitcoins), but we use it like hardware. It's clearly NOT a necesity for survival or hapiness. It has a lot of problems and we have technology to make something better than money for human relationships.

The important thing is how we use that hardware, our software.

Money is not a blessing, money is not a curse. The same about guns. People using them can be a curse. People are always the problem.

Using money is something nobody think a lot, that's true, you started using money probably before learning to do any kind of math (give money to the boy, let him be the one who pays). And, like many habits, it's full of mistakes, but greed is not about money. If you have money, then you have more power to make other people accept your offers... but that's not because of money, that's because of nature. It would be the same with bread.

How do we use money? we all know that story, even though none of us decided to use money because of it. I have tomatoes, you have grapes, he has apples... And I don't want grapes, but I want apples, so you and me money. What's money then? it's something to measure your production in terms simplified enough to be "understood" (well, not really, but...) by everyone.

For me, one of the biggest problems in money is: I can't know where did you get it. The problem isn't really not knowing, it is not being able to know. Perfect for thieves.

Nowadays, we can use a lot of algorithms and databases for that, and you can be sure there are a lot of people using it, for taxation and that things. They can, but I can't. Perfect for thieves.

If we know we can put in a computer your production etc... everyone can use his own algorithms, based of course, also in what do other people think, and stop using money. Sometimes, is good the old story about tomatoes, grapes, and apples, I don't want your apples... but I may not pay you if you sell drug, if you are a publicist, etc. It should be my choice. Of course, that won't happen, there aren't enough people who want that, and there are lot of people who would fight to stop that.

Other big problem about our software is difficult to explain for me... the problem is not that there are very rich people and very poor people, the problem is how can you easily get rich using stupid people. A lot of people are stupid enough to literally buy money at a bigger price. That won't change, there will be always people like that. But they can be productive, and so, they get money, and they spend it in making rich a guy who don't need to be very smart. A lot of people get obssesed with having more, look at gold and diamonds, it's far more expensive than it should be: why would I want a yellow stone? If I'm going to throw that stone to the bin and someone appears and he want it... at the end, we spend a lot of work in things that nobody really wants, we look at "market" before acting, because we all use the same money. The same product here is more expensive if we walk to the other side of the road, just because people have more money in this side, and they pay looking at percentages, not absolutes. "What would I pay for a coffe? 0,5 % of my salary", and so on... but that's out of... coins, numbers in papers, bits in computers. It's just people software.

People won't stop their habits, not a big number of them, even if you offer a better methodology, they've been thousands of years doing ridiculous things and there have been always people saying to them that they are wrong, if you don't like to use money for your relatonships, then don't use it if you find people who want to do that. That's all you can do. Even if you change people habits, that won't change the fact that people move in habits and they can be easily manipulated. Maybe this things are solved improving human hardware. Making... cof cof... ciborgs XD.
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by Present awareness »

Money is based on a system of faith. I have faith that if I take a piece of paper to a store with a $20 written on it, they will give me food in return. So far, my faith has been justified. However, once that faith has been broken, like after the war in Germany or the civil war in the USA, a wheelbarrow full of $20's is just a wheelbarrow full of paper.
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LuckyR
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by LuckyR »

Present awareness wrote:Money is based on a system of faith. I have faith that if I take a piece of paper to a store with a $20 written on it, they will give me food in return. So far, my faith has been justified. However, once that faith has been broken, like after the war in Germany or the civil war in the USA, a wheelbarrow full of $20's is just a wheelbarrow full of paper.
Very true. Money becomes money (and not just a piece of paper) because of the "promise" that this particular piece of paper which represented something of value on the front end, will get that same value out of the back end.
"As usual... it depends."
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by Venividivici »

What is money but the cusp between goods/services and our volition? It does not think for us, we think for it. Perhaps currency is integrated within our being, and money is just the instrument.
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Re: Money - a blessing or a curse?

Post by Ranvier »

That was only true when the actual money had somewhat a tangible real value (coins made of Gold). In today's monetary system, "money" (checks, credit, bonds, stock, loans) is an abstract virtual concept of "renting" the use of that virtual concept at interest, as means to "sell or purchase" labor (physical or intellectual). The house (Banks) will always "win" at the expense of the players (general population).

-- Updated March 12th, 2017, 4:08 pm to add the following --

I never enjoyed gambling because of the odds and people must realize that that's what we are doing. Locked in a windowless reality with free drinks to keep playing, like rats in the spinning wheel.
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