this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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Nah, I'll do you one better. Abolish money, an economy based on mutual aid.
I'm sorry but a system of currency of some sort is kind of a must in the modern world.
I can't reasonably know enough people who I could help do something so that I could get a phone, an e-bike, all the foods that I enjoy, etc etc etc.
"Abolish money" is a sort of naive thing to say, really. Even in Star Trek, they don't really explain it, because people can't even imagine a society really working truly without any currency, because of the problems it eventually leads to. Like even in Star Trek, Picard owns a huge vineyard and has people working there. Why? I'm sure most of the goods are going to be shared without making profit off of them or anything, but still, it just doesn't really make sense. And they've owned that vineyard for centuries.
Honestly just the systems we have, if we take basically the best of all the systems around the world and take the good and leave the bad and assume very little corruption of non-significant levels and we assume that we actually tax the wealthy properly, I think we could have the world looking radically different in a matter of few decades. I don't think it's easy for any humans (including me) to even fathom the effect it would have if people honestly didn't take as much as they wanted, but as much as they needed, and perhaps a little on top.
I know of a couple of very fair bosses here in the Nordics who actually pay their employees very well and while they make a bit more as the owner of the company, not really significantly more. I don't believe even double, let alone triple, whereas usually tens or hundreds of times more than the average worker. Although these aren't large companies I'm talking about.
I'm just saying there's no need to "abolish money". Money is fine, it's just being hoarded away from everyone who actually need it and would actually use it.
How about if we start with "Abolish billionaires" first, we'll see about how realistic it is about the whole "abolish money entirely" later on, yeah?
Tangentially related video:
Putting Dole Up To £1K A Week | Kevin Bridges: A Whole Different Story
I study the history of money and pre-money economies as a hobby (oh god I'm such a fucking nerd) and you're 100% spot on. Before coins were invented, societies used ingots of metal. Before that, they used shells and beads. The first currency was used about ten thousand years ago (iirc).
And yeah, in the times and places throughout history where there wasn't an available currency, people practiced what was called a "gift economy." It works great on the small scale, and it still pops up in some communities even today. But on the large scale? Moving between cities, regions, and countries? Some form of currency is an absolute must.
The problem is that for anything to be used as currency, whether it's shells or coins, there has to be a critical mass that's the minimum to sustain an economy. That's where the hoarders (aka billionaires) are such a problem. As billionaires suck up currency, governments risk having the available currency fall below the critical mass. So, they make more. Which causes inflation.
So the billionaires really REALLY are the problem.
There was accounting, before there was money, so I've learned.
Please explain why a "gift economy" or mutual aid wouldn't work on large scale? If anything it would work better as when connections are made with other communities to share resources it increases the varity and abundance of goods and services in your own community. To me, this would be a major incentive to share resources with other communities. The more that is shared, the more you as an individual get to benefit. Where is money needed in this interaction?
Dunno who downvoted you because this is a valid question.
Now I'm just a hobbiest and my interest is more about the form money takes than the economics. That said I'll do my best to answer.
Imagine each community as a bucket, and the economic strength of that community as water in the bucket. As long as the water in the bucket is moving, it will stay fresh and healthy, but if it stops moving it becomes stagnate and unhealthy. Movement represents economic activity.
Taking water from one bucket to another increases water movement, which is good. However, taking too much water from a bucket to another bucket, without putting enough water back in from elsewhere, creates the risk of that one bucket will get too low on water. Not enough water and the water can't move, and it begins to stagnate. So, each bucket has an incentive to keep a certain amount of water in it. When we're not moving water between buckets, it's simply not a concern. But when we are, we have to be careful. Now, if all the buckets are small then it gets real easy to see when a bucket is getting low and to do something about it. However, as the buckets get bigger it gets harder and harder to judge if there's enough water and if it's moving enough. Smart people start saying things like "we should keep track of how much water we need, how much we giving to other buckets, and how much we receive from other buckets."
If water in our metaphor is economic strength, each drop of water has a certain about of economic value. This is where currency becomes helpful. If I come from City A and I have some shells that are acting as a storage if economic value, then I can trade those shells at City B for something of theirs with economic value, say, a cow hide. I've just taken "water" from "bucket" City B, but using the shells I've simultaneously given them "water" from "bucket" City A. This (assuming equal and fair) trade keeps the water level in any particular bucket from getting too low or too stagnant. It also makes it easier for people to monitor the water and take action to fix any problems.
So, a small secluded village practicing a gift economy all by itself has little to worry about. But whole nations practicing non-stop trade between each other risk the possibility of deficit trading, and they have an obligation to their people to keep their economy strong and moving. Money makes this A LOT easier.
That said, gift economy is still practiced today from time to time all around the world. You'll even encounter it in the poorer parts of America where people have the "neighbors help neighbors" attitude. It's just unfortunate and ironic that people in those places are usually the type to be all in on capitalism, and would get upset if you told them they weren't practicing capitalism amongst themselves. But that's an education issue.
I downvoted him, because it's a naive take I'm bored of trying to argue against, as I know the passion that guy probably has, and that he'll change his mind once he understands it better. (I really don't want to write "gets a few years older", but essentially...)
He says:
If you're willing to settle for an amish-level of technology and diversity of product, sure, it's not literally impossible. Me on the other hand, I like my electronics and being able to buy a wide variety of foodstuffs and other products from all over the world.
I'd say it's not literally impossible regardless, but it would certainly be really REALLY fucking difficult. Like, "only" figuratively impossible. That's just how useful money is; it's profoundly useful.
Anyway, it's all good, no worries. Some people just struggle to wrap their minds around this stuff, what can ya do?
An advanced society without currency does not work.
If you're satisfied with amish level of tech and diversity of product, then sure, currency isn't needed.
Anything more and it just is.
Respectfully, read about history of currency or something. Currency isn't exactly synonymous with money. In everyday use yeah, but not 100% the same.
Preaching to the choir, man. It's ok.
Oh right it was the one were I replied to you. Very low sleep and brain is fogged up. Mb. I thought that was like a fairly generous admittance from him of how foolish he had been, lol.
I get it. Actually kinda nice to see somebody else making a point about the difference between money and currency, usually I'm the one doing that! Almost refreshing lol
I still don't see how this makes an economy based on mutual aid impossible at a large scale. Value is arbitrary anyways. For example, wood in somewhere like New England is easy to come by and therefore wouldnt have the same value that it would in somewhere like Nevada. Which is why I think trying tk track value is an inefficient way to track economics anyways. In a super simple way, mutual aid operates off of need. One community needs wood, so a community with an abundance of wood would give to the community that needs it. Mutual aid operates entirely off of need, as it is in overly simplistic terms charity that goes both ways. You give without expecting something in return and others do the same.
In other words, at a small scale a transaction using mutual aid is basically this. Person A needs salt to make a meal, Person B has salt to spare and so they share with Person A. Maybe at some point down the line Person B ends up needing something, and if Person A can provide they will, or maybe Person C will help. On a large scale you'd simply be replacing Person A with Community A, same with B and C. Trade shouldn't be about moving value, but about meeting needs. So I do not see why money is needed to facilitate that, as even currently we need to keep track of the specific resources that move, but also the value and money that moves with it. Mutual aid would remove the extra record keeping that comes with needing to also track value and money, as well as remove the unbalanced relationship tracking value brings.
By unbalanced relationship I mean that when value is what you are concerned about you don't care about meeting needs, you care about matching or profitting off of value. Rather than building your economy to meet peoples needs, you build to distribute something of the highest value and profit, which results in those that struggle financially being ignored. Look at tourist economies. Rather than producing a good, they produce a service, that service only really benefits people from away who have the money to spend on being a tourist. The people who live in these areas then struggle to find housing food, entertainment, etc because the communities money and resources are directed to what is profitable, like tourism.
I would like to also say thank you for not being agressive or rude, I am genuinely trying to understand your point of view and simply sharing mine so you can understand where I am coming from. Correct me if I am misunderstanding anything you said.
Edit: sorry I feel like I didn't address your points here well. With mutual aid I don't feel like the water bucket analogy works as it is about meeting need, not moving value. If a bucket stagnates then that means they are self reliant, but don't produce enough to help others. A sweet spot where they don't need to take anything in, but aren't doing well enough to help others. And in the case of making sure you aren't exporting more than you can handle (Holodomor moment), money doesn't make handling that easier. Money doesnt distinguish between wheat, wood, and cotton. It lumps the value of it all together. To prevent giving too much it would be simpler without money as you would just track the goods themselves, how much you need compared to how much you produce.
Speaking of wood, it can be a store of value as well
Neat little factoid. Thank you for that.
Let's establish a few things.
All forms of economics operate off of needs. Modern economists use the term "demand" but it's the same thing. You seem to be drawing a distinction between "need" as a necessity (high demand) versus "not need" as a luxury (low demand).
I assure you, the bucket analogy works exactly the same with mutual aide aka gift economies as it does with any other form of economics. The fact remains that a geographic area contains a finite amount of resources, representing the total potential economic strength of the region. Some of these resources are renewable, which can help keep that local economy strong, but if the system becomes over stressed by too much being taken out too quickly then that economy is going to be in trouble.
One thing I think you're missing is that a lot of the issues you're highlighting in our discussion aren't the result of a specific form of market activity, but failure of government to properly regulate their economy. Places that rely on tourism, for example, are poor because their governments are captured by capitalists (ie the people who provide the capital to build businesses) who then extract value from said community (taking water from the bucket) without putting enough back in. Governments could prevent that by using their regulatory powers to keep that money in their local economy through a variety of means, such as taxation, welfare programs, controlling what businesses they allow, creating incentives for locally own businesses or businesses of certain types, etc. That they don't do this is a failure of government, not of economics.
I also want to reiterate that the use of money isn't mutually exclusive to gift economies (or mutual aide as you seem to insist on calling it). Money is a facilitator of trade, a storage of value. Economies are the means by which value is moved and used. If you give me a sandwich today because I'm hungry, and I give you $5 tomorrow so you can buy a soda, we've both participated in gift economy market activity. I do this all the time with my friends; I refuse to keep track of who gives who what, because we all help each other as needed and I trust them to help me in return. At work, I sometimes bring snacks for everyone, and one of my coworkers sometimes gives me a $20 too help pay for those snacks. That's gift economy activity, but with money.
The money just makes things easier. So much so that non-money currency was invented several thousand years before money was invented. Even when people only practicing gift economy, they still found benefit in having a highly mobile, durable storage of value.
An issue though is governments will inevitably get corrupted, there is no way to ensure positions of power don't fall into the wrong hands. So to combat this, I feel the only decent solution is anarchist means of organization. The issue now is that because the economy is still controlled by money, there is inentive and thus risk of hoarding money which would create hierarchy and thus bring us back to systems of unconsentual government. And as I said, abolition of money would remove that. I ain't suggesting we just go ham with unregulated production and thus create scarcities, like you say. But the solution is to have people solve that themselves, not relying on money and government to regulate it. Kroptkin talks about much of this in Conquest of Bread. If you're interested, I would encourage a read, but I ain't gonna just say "read theory" and drop it cause I know that accomplishes nothing in reaching understandings. Its in the end, to me, an issue of money will always create inequality, and governments will always become corrupt. So what do you do?
Corruption happens because of consolidation of power. The abolition of money wouldn't prevent that, not even a little. Similarly, anarchy also doesn't prevent corruption, as anarchy doesn't prevent a consolidation of power.
The issue of hoarding money doesn't go away if we abolish money, either. Remember, money is nothing more than a storage of value. If there's no money, a person seeking power can hoard other things of value to create leverage and power over others. This hoarding of value, whether it's in the form of money or not, is what's detrimental to the economy.
And economies are not controlled by money, they're controlled by people as a group.
But you just suggested anarchy, so yes you are.
Yes yes, by forming committees to gather data, debate solutions, pick a solution, and then enforce their decision. Exactly.
That's government.
Again, because money is just a storage of value, things like inequality will be possible with our without it. Abolishing money wouldn't get rid of inequality.
You're giving me "money is the source of all evil" vibes because a lot of your arguments seem to be coming from ideology as opposed to an actual understanding of what money is. If I may, let me share something seemingly unrelated with you.
A reporter by the name of G.M. Gilbert sat through the Nuremberg trials, and wrote a book called the Nuremberg Diary in which he discusses his experience watching the most heinous Nazis attempt to justify their actions. After making such a study of human kind, he had this to say: “In my work with the defendants I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
Money is an economic tool. It is a thing. It has no inherent power; without people to use it, money just sits still the same as a book or a shoe. As a tool, it enables certain behaviors, but it doesn't create them.
This conversation started as a mere discussion of how an economy would work, but you're taking it in the direction of right and wrong, good and evil. Well, those are human things that existed before money and will exist after money. Money is not the source of evil, and getting rid of it would do more harm to the average human than it would do good.
I'm not saying money is the source of evil, but it is a tool used by it. It heavily centralizes value making it easier to hoard. The other part of that being positions of power. Without money someone would have to hoard a valued resource like foods. What would allow someone to hoard enough food to affect others is authority. Anarchy tries to address both these issues. Some versions like Mutualism do keep money, and even anarcho-communists have used money through an anarchist market socialism to transition to a moneyless society. Anarchy does not mean no rules and no organization. It means consentual and horizontal organization. Rules that the community consent to, not forced upon them. And I think it is naive of you to think your position isn't idealogically influenced. We both want an ethical way to run an economy and there are ethical and unethical ways of doing that. The difference between us is what we view as an ethical and possible economic system. If you are interested in reaching an understanding of each others views I do not mind continuing this conversation. But if you are just trying to win a fight, I am not interested in continuing this.
My point about the presence of ideology in this discussion is that it started without ideology being a factor, that I was discussing economics the same way one might discuss physics out biology. You brought ideology into it, and I answered those points as best as I could given the blatant misunderstandings that I perceived regarding the economic aspects of your ideology. As an avowed socialist myself, I won't try to claim that I don't have views impacted by ideology but that doesn't mean ideology can't be set aside when discussing sciences like economics. Indeed, seeing ideology aside is imperative to understanding the real nature of the observable world, and these observations must inform one's ideology least one start saying things like "2+2=5". Which is precisely what I feel you've been doing. You're rejecting explanations of how economies work because it doesn't fit your ideological views. That is folly.
Given that your original question has been answered repeatedly, and you've rejected those answers, I can only conclude that the questions were asked in bad faith. I don't think further conversation will be productive. The only "fight" to be "won" is one that you started, and I'm tired of playing chess with pigeons. If you feel that means you "won" the discussion, then more power to you. Feel free to hit me up again when you want to actually understand things as they are, instead of how you think they ought to be.
I was never disagreeing with you out of ideological difference. I simply disagreed with the logic. Granted this discussion is over text and there are a lot of different ways for both of us to misunderstand the other. I did not go into this trying to win a fight, and never intended it to go in that direction. I feel it is best to end it with "agree to disagree" as I feel one or both of us is misunderstanding each other because of the communication barrier that comes with text.
Your answers made me think of this video: WKUK - Anarchy.
No offense but I don't think you really understand logistics too well. How many people do you know who make smartphones? What about GPU's? Fridges? Airfryers? Ebikes? How many people do you know who maintain the connections we have in the Atlantic so the internet works? Some of those guys practically live on subs and in several ports around the world as they travel. How are they supposed to manage to produce "help" to have to be able to trade with in the ports they visit if they need something?
Almost as if they needed a medium of exchange, otherwise known as currency.
Moneyless societies aren't impossible, per se, they're just inherently primitive.
I found the Orville interesting as a thought experiment since their currency was reputation. Not sure how feasible that is, but nice to try to speculate how you'd have any kind of economy post-scarcity.
Ever read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?
No, but I really should. I like Doctorow.
It features a similar reputation-based economy.
That's probably the inspiration for The Orville. That show is full of references.
Upvotes and lemmy awards?
Money will always lead to a desire to hoard it. Money creates that greed and is something that should be abolished. Money simply acts as an unnecessary middle man to the distribution of goods. Money has to be abolished alongside the concept of property. Communal ownership is what would allow money to be done away with. And people would work and contribute because they would get to reap the benefits just as much as anyone else. Thats what mutual aid is. The sharing of resources mutually. I give my goods/services to the community which helps the community, and I get to also reap the benefits of what everyone else puts towards the community. And we have the means to meet everyone's needs now with the technology and productivity we have now.
Harvest party with a hero of Earth seems pretty rad.
Not gonna happen until we have Star Trek tech like matter replicators, and have killed all the bastards who first got their hands on them and try to keep them secret to exploit them for 0 cost high profit.
We have the means to meet everyone's needs rn. We don't need some scifi replicator. The only things holding us back is the exploiting class, and people who think a middle man like money is needed. You are holding yourself back. Money is simply a middle-man to the distribution of goods. Through communal ownership of capital and what it produces, you do not need money as people can just take what they need. And people will work and produce because 1. What happens when people don't do the work? It doesnt get done and you don't get the goods, so if you want the goods you better ensure its made. If people refuse to do the work then I guess the good isn't worth making to begin with. And 2. People desire purpose and to be a part of communities, part of that is work. It just might not be the work they are doing currently.
And that is totally going to end up with how it is now.
A subclass of unwanted, uncared about workers that no one gives a single shit about until the tomato is unavilable/too expensive/etc.
Which is not meeting everyones needs.
Its meeting you and yours needs.
Genuinely how? If everyone owns things communally without the use of money as a middleman, how does that result in what we have now?
because labor becomes currency, and currency will always be horded
That is genuinely the stupidest argument I have ever seen. "Yes a society where property, money, and class is abolished will become slavery." The reason why slavery in the US was a thing is because of money, property, and class. What you just argued is like those stupid fucking boomer facebook memes where it shows "this is what communism looks like" while showing a picture of like a tent city in the US. How would slavery happen if property is abolished, money is abolished, and class is abolish? There is no structures to force labor, that is the whole point. There would be nothing for someone to hold over anyone as everything they have, everyone else already has. You are literally just making shit up.
God I wish I was this ignorant. Probably be a lot happier.
Can't help but agree with you.
In English they say "ignorance is bliss" but in Finnish our idiom is from the same origin in Greek (through ages) and IIRC, we're closer to the original translation; "tieto lisää tuskaa", "knowledge increases agony".
My knowledge of how naive he's being is increasing my agony at the moment. I wish I could just live in whatever world he lives in where he can homestead some potatoes and chickens and still utilise products like smartphones and high-speed internet and "just take what he wants".
Hes also completely willfully blind to human nature.
As if greed and a desire for power is gonna magically disappear because money disappears. You'll just end up with people hording access to resources, and the creation of a underclass of people who will be forced to work the hoarders resources under threat of beatings, deaths, or maiming of their loved ones.
and we know this, because we have documented history of this already being done, in the past, multiple times.
but it doesnt matter, as long as they get to live their carefree hippy commune fantasy.
I genuinely can't help but to hear these guys in this WKUK skit when I read his messages.
https://youtu.be/fibDNwF8bjs?si=MvzwzoS7fk7-eLN1
Hahahaha
Okay. I need a thing that's only available in limited amounts and other people are of the mind they need it too.
What now?
Increase production to meet demand. Build more infrastucture to increase capacity. If demand isn't being met, do what you have to do to meet demand. If its something urgent, people should discuss how to temporarily ration (in the case of stuff like food) or share (in the case of something reusable like a computer) till they are able to supply enough to meet demand.
It's so simple for you, isn't it, not having to consider reality?
"Just increase production until you make enough, lol what's the issue???"
Let's say there's a natural disaster, or a disease wipes out a crop. Not enough to go around for your avocado salad. "Just increase production."
Honestly this is exactly why I didn't reply in the first place. There's no point in this, you have zero understanding of logistics or basic economy. All you have is a very naive hippie dream.
This would happen very quickly as soon as someone figures out how to bypass security on them (you just know they'll require some sort of janky app) and remotely orders a cocktail of bleach and ammonia.