Right but what point is it trying to make by pointing it out?
Yes, money is a social construct, but it’s a construct that represents something real, i.e. trade. Without money we’d replace it with something else, but it ultimately comes down to the same thing.
Like, I can understand the perfect world without landlords or billionaires and so on, but what’s this perfect world look like that has no currency?
Typically societies without money historically operated in what’s called a gift economy. Basically most goods were shared amongst the community. However there are very few remaining today.
Money is fiat currency. Literally a stand in for something with actual value. Money holds no intrinsic value. You can’t eat it, you can’t breathe it or use it in anyway except to trade for things that do have actual intrinsic value. The only thing money allows humans to do is go into debt. That debt has created a society with insane leaps and bounds in innovation, but the cost is that it’s a ponzi scheme that will collapse spectacularly.
Only if you treat debt as something absolute that has to be repaid no matter what.
In reality in many cases debt is written off as impossible to claw back and sold off to unscrupulous debt enforcement companies at a fraction of the nominal value. Who in turn also rarely manage to get the money.
We as society could simply decide to forget certain types of debt and basically that is what states do via inflation and which historically many societies have done via debt jubilees.
The book “Debt the first 5000 years” gives good overview on this matter and fiat currencies in general.
The barter system is a myth, it never existed. Not in the 'I want bricks but only have a sheep and you don't want a sheep so we both get nothing' way that it's taught in highschool econ class.
Before cash, trade could use items of high constant demand - salt, cacao beans, dried tea, etc. - as a medium of exchange. Maybe you're fine for salt, but someone will always want more salt. It was also much more common to just rely on debt. Sure, take my extra bricks and when you have something of equivalent value that I want, you discharge your debt.
The barter economy is a myth, based on absolutely nothing other than a guy just deciding he was right with no evidence. Indigenous peoples had all sorts of complex, non market, moneyless economies. One of them is known as a gift economy, where there is competition between communities and individuals to give gifts larger than the gift they received before. A modern moneyless economic concept is a library economy: think of libraries, but for everything non-consumable.
I wouldn’t like the library system because it requires you to treat things a certain way.
If we think of it from the perspective of a book (since we’re talking about libraries here), if I borrow a book from a library, I have to treat it well and return it in a condition that somebody else can read it.
If I own a book, I can do whatever I want with it, I can burn it as firewood, I can cut out the words that I don’t like from all of the pages, or I can just scribble all over it with a permanent marker, it’s my book after all.
If you don't value the thing for it's intended function why are you bothering to take one?
Also, if you destroy or misplace the thing, there's no reason to give you different things. If you want another thing, you are going to be made to work for it.
If you don’t value the thing for it’s intended function why are you bothering to take one?
That’s beside the point, the point is that I don’t borrow things because I like to have the ability to use them however I want and according to my current needs.
I have a paint can that I can’t get open, but I own a flathead screwdriver. It’s not the intended purpose of a flathead screwdriver, but I can use it as a prybar to open the paint can, if the screwdriver breaks, now I have 2 pieces of metal to use for something else.
I don’t mind working, but I would like to work for a currency that I can use to buy things that I will own and see to use however I see fit for it to be used.
Define “right” in this context please. If you mean legal right, we’re talking about an entirely different system that would have different laws. The rights you have now may not apply. If you mean moral right, what gives you the moral right to consume resources that need not be consumed that could serve others also? Those seem like some pretty horrible morals if that’s what you believe.
This just shows a total failing of your creativity or critical thinking skills if you can’t even put aside your current ideas to consider what other things can happen. You can’t consider another idea if you aren’t willing to put aside preconceived notions. You aren’t even saying the other system is bad or wouldn’t work or anything. You’re only saying you can’t even consider anything that isn’t exactly what you have now. It may improve your life or it may not, but you can’t even consider it because it’s different.
Without considering how your free use however you want effects others?
Define the others, I’m not out here throwing trash on the streets or smashing windows, I don’t mind helping the people in my community or lending the things that I own to them.
If there’s one copy of a book in a town and its your cherished thing, that’s fine.
If you’re the only person in town with a copy of a library’s worth of books and you aren’t willing to share any with your community to borrow, you’re allowed to do that, but you sound like someone who doesn’t really want to be a member of a community.
Live together or die alone. We can be a civilization one day, or we can keep being monkeys throwing sticks at each other in the dirt, but with smartphones and smog.
If there’s one copy of a book in a town and its your cherished thing, that’s fine.
If you’re the only person in town with a copy of a library’s worth of books and you aren’t willing to share any with your community to borrow, you’re allowed to do that, but you sound like someone who doesn’t really want to be a member of a community.
In that case, it’s all on a case-by-case basis.
There are some books that I would just give away since they would be taking up space, there are some books that I wouldn’t mind lending to anyone at any time, and there are some books that I would only lend to someone that I know personally.
Live together or die alone. We can be a civilization one day, or we can keep being monkeys throwing sticks at each other in the dirt, but with smartphones and smog.
Sure, but we were never meant to be a global one, I’m perfectly fine with being a part of a certain tribe of monkeys that is ready to throw sticks at another tribe for our way of life.
A library economy doesn’t mean you can’t own anything. If you want to own something you can make it or check it out indefinitely. For an example of this, let’s think of checking out a phone.
You’d check it out indefinitely, and you can consider it yours. Since there’s no money or profit incentive, the phones are designed to be durable, easily repairable, and have interoperable parts. Because the library is the means by which we manage the commons, parts are readily available and you can return the broken part (or entire phone) to be recycled and get the replacement.
From competitions, individual interests, passion, necessity, etc. We don’t need money or markets for people to seek innovation. A library steward should also be responsible for automating means of production as best as possible, which would also drive scientific advancement.
The problem then is that all of those, besides nececities aren’t really good at encouraging any innovation.
Yes, inventing something like a heater so people don’t freeze to death or a plow to make tending to a field easier could come out of necessity.
But the dangerous part is that it creates a risk of people just going “yeah, we are comfortable enough already” and the technological development just stopping. If you go back 40 years and 99% of the people would have said that they are perfectly fine living with a CRT TV and a landline phone. There would be no reason for doing any research into any further technology
Part of it is my personal feelings about the current technology. I’m using a phone that is around 4 years old now and sure some of the new foldable phones do sound interesting, but I really have no need to upgrade mine, it makes calls, I can watch YouTube videos, look up where I want to go, and play some games. I don’t really see a need for anything to change for something new and if someone asked me to pitch in for research in phones I would ask why?
As for what drives innovation, I won’t deny that any of the examples that you listed drive innovation, but I guess it’s more about the pace of it.
Right now the companies pour resources into creating a product that meets requirements and that the customers will pick over the competition and give money to the company that created a product that they wanted
I feel you with existing tech, my phone will probably last me quite a while even though folding phones are pretty cool. I might have some software suggestions for contributing to phone development, but I’m not particularly interested in that either.
If we had a library economy, I’d seek out other areas I’m passionate about and contribute my piece there instead. I feel like I have a lot to contribute to computer science, and would love to drive innovation in that area. I also like my current job. I’d continue to do what I do now, even without the coercive force of money; though I’d probably scale back my working hours. Instead of asking yourself “why would I contribute to that”, ask yourself “what do I want to contribute to”. That’s the idea behind a library economy in a moneyless society.
My problem in that regard would be that there is nothing that I’m passionate about.
Sure, I have 100s of different interests that I have dabbled with, but for all of them, I have stopped at some point, before forgetting about them entirely or picking them up again sometimes years later.
That’s ok too! You shouldn’t be compelled to work on something you don’t want to, and you shouldn’t face homelessness for wanting to take extensive breaks from performing labor. You should also be able to freely contribute to whatever has your attention at that moment. Library economies are highly adaptive to the needs of people, and there’s always room for more help.
What rockslayer said isn’t wrong but I want to add a little.
On the side of having no specific passions, you can absolutely choose to contribute with your labor on whatever needs the most help. We’ll still need janitors and bus drivers and construction workers and countless other tasks that have value to society that don’t have to include innovation. But if you do have an idea when you’re on the job you have the opportunity to suggest that without a boss ignoring you or someone stealing it to profit themselves. Because bosses and profit wouldn’t exist.
And if you do develop a random interest, it would be much easier to talk with experts in that field which might stir a passion that was previously stifled under capitalist cost of entry or its need to to turn it into a profitable endeavor. And you could easier step back from whatever job you were previously doing without fear of losing your livelihood, and it would even be easier to go back to said job if the passion didn’t stick.
Using your example is the perfect illustration that capitalism isn’t good at creating innovation. The market for phones has settled and the market leaders have no reason to use resources to create something new that might even be better. That would risk their money and it’d also risk their dominant position in the market. It’s more efficient (if profit is your measure of efficiency) to hinder competition.
If profit isn’t the incentive and experimentation is, people will play around with new ideas and create new things, much of which will suck but some won’t. Just look at makers online. They invent new things just for the fun of creation. Sure, some profit from viewership online (we’ve all got to survive and we live in capitalism), but not by focusing on the profit of a product. Occasionally something groundbreaking comes out of those spaces, and frequently they create small innovations that improve things.
The same stuff applies to open source software. Reddit became horrible because it was chasing profit, but now we have Lemmy, Mastodon, and the rest of the Fediverse entirely independent of profit motives.
My problem with my example is with the individuals in our society.
I honestly have no idea why people still want to buy the newest models of phones since they don’t really bring anything new to the table.
But, in my opinion, it’s a failing of the individuals rather than a failing of an economic model. There really is no negative for a company to release new models with minor updates if there are enough dumbasses that will give them money for it
But the model creates incentive to not do something new, which you had an issue with. There’s incentive to not shake things up too much. They just produce the same crap each year with a larger number in front, because that’s the most profitable thing they can do. It isn’t to see what they can change to improve it or create something entirely different.
Dude. Capitalism kills innovation. I hate that myth so much. Capitalism is more likely to stifle innovation than create it. The goal of capitalism is profit and nothing else. Innovation requires risk, which could cause a loss of profit, so it’s a last resort. It’s more profitable to hinder your opponents than to create something innovative.
For example, much of our innovation in our society comes from research universities. These are, generally, outside of capitalism. They do research and make discoveries for the benefit they bring to society, or sometimes just to improve our knowledge. They don’t do it for profit.
Humans like to improve things and to learn things. There’s no need for it to be profitable. Creating a system that prioritizes this is possible, but it isn’t capitalism.
Honestly currency is fine, but not bastardized by the real villain: capital markets. It has made our currency representative of backwards, antisocial values, and in great quantities, proof of how good one is at extracting value from their fellow humans.
Capital markets have gone from supposedly a means for seed funding for businesses to the final word, despite contributing NO LABOR to the products or services they take almost all the produced profit from. And in our terminal state market capitalism, they’re eating one another and playing economic tricks for short term cash grabs they enforce on companies through threats of lawsuit, breaking entire economic sector’s ability to make the products/services they literally existed to provide in the process. LABOR makes the world run, grows the food, makes the discoveries, capital investment just takes all the fruits and leaves a few crumbs.
We’re going to collapse, but if we cared, we’d remake our economy that rewards cooperatives and punishes corporations, and capital investment would receive a small fraction of what labor produces instead of the opposite as it is today.
And yes, going back to a barter system would be better than this. We might even still be able to breathe above ground in 50 years.
I know this is going to be necessary, but I’m selfish enough to hope it happens after I get old and die. I really don’t want to have to live through the violent revolution it will take for that to actually get done.
A least you’re more honest than the relatively small class of benefactors of this corrupted economy who don’t even acknowledge that, being supported by skilled laborers at every level of profit and life, but truly self-deluding themselves and others into believing they earned and should have society/politics/media warping levels of wealth. Reward good ideas and harder work yes, but within reason.
That’s a function of power, not money. Even if you magically made the concept of money disappear, there will still be people who find a way to gather power over other people.
But money is much easier to amass in larger amounts for all time than say cacao beans. A perfect world is not possible, but a better world is very possible.
You can disagree with giraffes too, to the same effect.
You’re going to hate something because of the way governments distribute the thing it represents? How is that not like hating all water because you had a flood? Hating air because it’s too windy?
You think social constructs are akin to animals and biological imperatives?
By that strange logic, humans, Manifest Destiny (aka the kill all the natives cause we’re white and want their shit social construct of colonizing Americans), and thirst are all comparable concepts.
I hate to tell you, but almost every economy that has ever existed has at some point collapsed, just as ours will one day. We can always kill all the giraffes, and we’re sure as shit the type, but I promise you, being thirsty will exist long after our currency and nation are nothing but a dull history lesson or forgotten all together.
The owners of this system would have you believe it’s invulnerable, absolute, and forever, just like the Roman Emperors of old did.
Yes. We have all agreed to exchange tokens (which have little to no inherent value) for goods and services, in lieu of trading other goods and services directly.
All other mechanics surrounding money are up for debate, but for any society more advanced than the hunter-gatherer stage, some form of “money” is required to facilitate trade.
Just like in the existing capitalist economy, case managers decide who receives disability payments and insurance analysts decide who gets medical treatment. Who knew society means being at the whims of other people 🤡
Is a social economy, you can directly appeal to people with resources you want, as in "socialize".
I’m asking you because you’re in here arguing for this moneyless, library society! I feel like if we can’t answer super basic questions about how getting rid of something as universally important as currency would actually work, then maybe we haven’t really thought it through.
Very interested to hear more though, particularly as someone who studied things like this and is now an economist who works in inflation.
There’s a significant difference between recognizing the irredeemable, systemic corruption of this economy, and believing no society or economy should exist ever.
The former wants a just, equitable society, and recognizes this is the opposite of that, and the latter just openly wishes they could shoot their way through life with impunity.
When you say “I never agreed to it” as a retort to a comment that boils down to “I think that money is real”, you are either using the same logic and talking points of a Sovcit.
Maybe you are just wording things poorly, but you sound like a Sovcit.
Sovcits are gullible fools that think that saying incantations to police about moving vs travelling will somehow make them immune to the law. They generally have nothing to say about the application of money as they still attend jobs and bring home incomes.
Careful with that thinking there, mister. Soon enough you’ll be rederiving civilisation and suggesting things like power structures and statutory social order.
Problem is the majority of money is tied up overseas and in shit like the stock exchange, the insurance market, crazy real estate speculation and various other investments. If any decent portion of that gets leveraged back into material goods everyone trying to simply live is suddenly poor as fuck and starving to death. The value of money is based on so many assumptions it's unsound.
Not that you're wrong in practice, but there's nothing at guaranteeing that practice is stable and people's lives depend on that very stability.
the origin of the idea is that since you can no longer simply go exchange your money for its equivalence in actually valuable metals, you can’t expect prices to be based on the value of their material components and labour any more. Money is no longer a promisory note for gold. Admittedly, that logic is a little iffy, and yet the threat has come true:
the more updated version of that is to simply go to any big store and look at the prices - say, $65 for a DVI to HDMI signal converter - and see that price has been divorced from the real value of products in favor of capitalist bullshit like artificial scarcity and the total enshittification of society, which i daresay has already been achieved.
I've watched so many police bodycam videos by now to say that anyone who gets caught red-handed for their criminal bullshit, are the ones who'd be screaming about how all cops are bastards.
I'll trade all cops are bastards for religion is a business.
Give it some time. He’s helping people at the moment with his current business model. But his model really seems like he’s just moving to corner the market. Once he has cornered enough of that market, his true colors will show.
You don’t amass that kind of wealth by being altruistic.
I’m convinced most people still don’t understand what “all cops are bastards” actually means.
“bUt My UnClE/dAd/BrOtHeR/fRiEnD iS a CoP” Yeah, now imagine how many situations where they had to bite their tongue and look away because interfering would lose their job.
Even the “good” cops aren’t really good because even if they try to stop other cops from being bad they’ll be punished. Being a cop is just being in a govt sanctioned gang.
Society. And more than just the police. It’s not the people in the police, it’s the society that makes them like that. ACAB makes it sound like the police exist in a vacuum where the politicians and businesses and media and vitersthat create this situation don’t exist.
“the system is shit” doesn’t really convey much meaning. it isn’t clear.
describing why the system is shit, especially to those who watched their beloved family member become “one of the good guys” in the force can be more helpful.
I called it circlejerking because we (the circle) all know what you mean by “the system is shit”, and it feels good to say because it is true. but to someone outside the circle, we look like a bunch of degenerates, criminal appologists, reverse-racists, etc…
IMO, at best, it identifies a symptom of the issue that requires change. Look, i don’t agree with you about the optics and helpfulness of ACAB but I agree with you that police are a major problem in the US and I’d welcome reform.
It’s no secret that the system is shit. We all are victims of capitalism. And it IS traumatizing. However, if half of all retail workers started engaging in corruption and race based violence, we’d say ARWAB. It’s already been established in legalese that police are “agents of the state” and that their only purpose is to protect capital and capital owners. Anyone who thinks that joining the police force is going to help them give back to their community are naive idiots. ACAB.
If retail workers started engaging in violence I wouldn’t imagine that all retail workers had suddenly become bastards, I would ask wtf is going on systemically to create that outcome.
All cops use violence to enforce unjust laws. They do it willingly. It’s not that some are violent - ACAB is a reference to bastardry being a necessary trait of someone that becomes a cop.
The only infighting is between actual Leftists and tankies who consider themselves leftists but secretly jerk off to pictures of starving Ukrainians. Most Leftists are squarely in the range of DemSoc to Marxist. Lots to agree on.
Consider that not everyone is at the same level of progress in their journey of being unplugged from the matrix. Everyone starts somewhere, and maybe this post gave someone their quote of the year. Encourage radical thinking or post better memes. Be the change, yadda yadda.
If I had any talent at all I would 100% make a fabulous looking embroidery of this to hang in my house..
E: also I love how this has gotten so many people to openly declare both their ignorance and determination to maintain it, in their refusal to look up a topic that has been written about extensively for centuries and actually educate themselves, instead of confidently and incorrectly declaring something they know nothing about wrong or impossible or whatever capitalism has indoctrinated them to believe about its alternatives..
I think the vast majority of landlords are parasites, but definitely not all.
You think every single person should be entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of property on loan? Some grown ass adults out there struggle to tie their shoelaces because they’re still holding their crack pipe. Landlords are the vehicle by which the needy gain access to housing in capitalism, they’re a symptom and not a disease. Fix capitalism (with socialism) and the symptom will disappear.
You’re getting torn apart - I think partially because of your phrasing - but you make a valid point. There are a lot of people without the knowledge, ability, resources, or even desire to own a house. “Just give everyone a house” is a childish sentiment that fails to acknowledge the complexities of the real world.
I’m not feeling “torn apart” in the slightest, most reasonable responses have been very much in agreement with me while dissenting views have been mostly ad hominem or baseless accusation.
You’re framing the issue all wrong. Money is fake. Housing is necessary to live. Maybe everyone should just have a house and we shouldn’t commodify a necessity to living. Same with food and water. Anyone who profiteers off of a life necessity is a parasite.
Who’s going to gather the lumber, pour the foundation, frame the house, mine the copper, install the electrical wiring, and all that shit? It sounds nice to say “maybe everyone should just have a house”, but houses don’t grow out of the ground. It takes considerable manpower, knowledge, skill, and resources to build a house. The people involved in that process deserve & require compensation. You can debate if it’s best to receive that compensation through a socialist system where they receive other goods and services in exchange, a communist system where everyone labors and receives according to state distribution, or through our current capitalist system, but it’s naive to say “just give everyone a house”.
It’s supplemental, and meant to be funny. Besides, only three Google searches. I mostly just wanted to give context to our European friends out there!
But, I still think there’s an original religious sign the 2016 one was based on. I’m not sure if the wiki mentions it, mostly remember “in this house we believe in (insert religion here)” signs from years ago. Obviously not rainbow colored though, lol
Would be useless. Guillotine blades were thick, heavy, and had that ironic angled shape for the specific purpose of lobbing off heads efficiently. Razor blade would be terrible at that, no matter how big.
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