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Post by Qwerty on Jul 24, 2011 6:15:16 GMT
Fine, then what alternative would you suggest? Straight bargaining? What motivation for work? What motivation for inventors, etc, to innovate? You say we'd still have computers if there was no money, but if there was no money in it for someone to make a computer, why would they bother? Regardless of large corporations? Without money, not even small businesses can exist. Specialization is one of the more important aspects of humanity and standard of living and specialization can't get very far at all without money. Voluntary systems don't work, nor does "everyone is equal". Go ask the USSR how it worked out for them.
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Post by ShiningSilver on Jul 24, 2011 14:17:57 GMT
Fine, then what alternative would you suggest? Straight bargaining? What motivation for work? What motivation for inventors, etc, to innovate? You say we'd still have computers if there was no money, but if there was no money in it for someone to make a computer, why would they bother? Regardless of large corporations? Without money, not even small businesses can exist. Specialization is one of the more important aspects of humanity and standard of living and specialization can't get very far at all without money. Voluntary systems don't work, nor does "everyone is equal". Go ask the USSR how it worked out for them. And anyway, if you told all those people that their life savings were worthless, because money no longer existed, that would not end well... The thing is, that I don't think it's possible to change this world, but that doesn't necessarily mean the money should exist. Just becuase we can't think of a way of how the world could function does not necessarily mean it should exist. And ultimately, we are biased towards thinking that way, we have grown and been raised into a civilization/society that has currency, money, things with numerical value. But another thing to think about is that, what if there was a planet, a world, a civilization, whatever you want to call it, that had no money, and they were completely separate from us (no communication of any kind, they are even on a different planet), and they had no concept of money. The people there grew up in that type of world, and to them the concept of money would just be absurd and plain wrong. It would be catastrophic to them if they converted their world into a world with money. What if it was the same with us, because we grew up into a world with money. It would be absurb for us to think how a world without money would exist. It would even catastrophic if we eliminated money from our civilization. But that does not nessicarly mean that money should exist, it just means that our system for our civilization will not work without money. It's intertwined into the fabric of our civlization.
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Post by Qwerty on Jul 24, 2011 15:22:10 GMT
Sure, if there was such a magical planet I'm sure it'd work fine. Except that planet would either exist without greed (no pesky necessity to own things) and without laziness (of course everyone works, the alternative is unthought of) or some kind of massive complicated bargaining system that would produce all the problems we see with money, but with something else easily tradeable and easily transportable, like, say, silk.
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 24, 2011 16:07:09 GMT
Studies have shown that passion is a greater motivator than money.
It would be entirely possible for a civilization to set up a system to punish the greedy and the lazy without using money. Money, if anything, rewards the lazy and the greedy.
Money has made you guys so narrow minded.
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 24, 2011 16:26:21 GMT
If people want clean streets than someone's going to clean them because they abhor dirty streets, and their work will be appriceated. This isnt likely with the mentality of our current society, it's all hypothetical.
And the pay for street cleaning sucks, so the only reason money could be a motivator in are current society is just for money in order to eat.
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Post by Qwerty on Jul 24, 2011 16:57:36 GMT
Yet for some strange reason I don't see anyone going out of their way to volunteer as a street cleaner. What about farming? Restaurant work? The kind of jobs that have high demand but very few that would take them? Your system works in a perfect world, but this world isn't a perfect one.
Passion may be a greater motivator than money, but it sure isn't a well-balanced one. We can't all be cops and astronauts.
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 24, 2011 17:18:12 GMT
Well I have gone out of my way to volunteer to clean public property.
Farmers get more food than everyone else, as they make the food. Then everyone would want to be a farmer, as people like eating.
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Post by Qwerty on Jul 24, 2011 20:08:39 GMT
You have? Good for you. The majority of people, on the other hand, would not.
People like eating, but not enough to be a farmer. Do you realize what being a farmer entails? The kind of work involved? This is the reason we have specialization: You're assuming everyone would farm their own food and clean the streets and everything else, when there's no way people would do that. They specialize, and they do it because there's incentive for it.
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 24, 2011 20:26:07 GMT
I'm not assuming that people would farm for themselves, but rather a few people would volunteer to farm for a community. Again the problem with this is just that are civilization is geared towards money, so a money free society won't work with today's people. It's the whole parasite thing.
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Post by GGoodie on Jul 25, 2011 3:50:41 GMT
Currency is simply a way to make trading more consistent. It also allows for easier trading, as you don't necessarily need to have goods with you as long as you have currency of equal value. Currency doesn't work unless people want it to. If no one wanted to use dollars then no one would accept them in trade and they would be worthless paper. Money doesn't corrupt people or reward greed. Capitalism does that. (Not that capitalism is bad)
As long as there is trade there would be the same thing, only without the ease and simplicity that currency provides. So yes, there should be currency (if there is trade).
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Post by Qwerty on Jul 25, 2011 4:17:51 GMT
Okay, a few people volunteer to farm for a community. And because farmwork is so tedious and so grueling so few people do it that the community dies of starvation.
You're forgetting something fundamental about human nature. People will almost always assume that if someone else can do it someone else will do it. Sure, when they started to die of starvation they'd demand more farmers, but for what? They already hate farmwork as many people do, so they simply wait for someone else to do it. Eventually everyone has to farm or die, and good-bye specialization. Good-bye all scientific pursuits, all hope of progress, all hope period.
The problem is not with the money. Money is just the middleman. The problem is with the distribution of said money. In this community of which you speak where everyone that does anything has to volunteer to do it, there will be quite a lot of people that simply assume that everyone else is taking care of things, when of course everyone else is thinking the exact same thing, with the exception of the few that actually happen to enjoy work.
It might work short-term on a primitive civilization or some people stranded on an island, but not long-term for an advanced civilization.
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Post by GloveParty on Jul 25, 2011 5:24:07 GMT
I had been hoping for someone to run up and dash themselves on my page1 post but all have seemd to ignor eit Q.Q So I'll do a bit of a summary. First, of all, there are two ways you could get around wihtout money. A barter system. Money was invented because it is an immense help in this situation. Say johnny and jim have apples and cherries. Johnny wants oranges but he can't trades those with Jim because Jim only has cherries. So he takes a while to find an orange merchant. the merchant doesn't want apples. He wants grapes. Finally, Johnny finds a secone merchant who gives him the oranges for the apples. Sure Johnny gets his oranges, but ti was inconvienient, and Jim and the first merchant will have to wait to get osmething. With money, Jim can give Johnny money for the apples, Johnny can use that oney to buy from the first merchant. This is good for all parties (the second merchant gets involved in other trades) Johnny gets his oranges. Jim gets apples. The first merchant goes and buys grapes with the money.
Now for what Satar is talking about, everything free, which is very implausible. First of all, a few people might be driven enough to do certain things, but remember: careers are a way of life, and it's not a light choie to dedicate one's life to the hard labor of woodcutting, farming or other essential needs. It would, as Qwerty and others have said, not be very many people, and it would be sub-par for the group of people, resulting in starvation, and lack of supplies. Say you DO have a magical world where everyone decides to invest their life for no reward in a grueling task requires for survival .It would indeed work perhaps with a few peoplem, but beyond that, the good old thing known as supply and demand proceeds to kick the shins of the free-everything system. So, Jim gets some apples from Johnny, who, this being the utopian society this is, proceeds to hand a few apples over to his neighbor. Now, Johnny eventually runs out due to his eating and being a nice guy (supply overtaking demand). So, alogn with other people he goes to the apple merchant and gets some apples for free. Now the apple man too runs out, but it takes him a while to get apples shipped from the apple farms. So after this, it takes longer for the people like Johnny and Jim to get the apples. Eventually the farmer runs out. This is a big problem, as he must wait fror the crops to regrow, and will be sending otu a sub-par amount of apples, at a large delay. Johnny can no logner get apples. This is a problem, as this is happening with other food and suplies simultaneously, resultign in at best a tenous supply of what is needed, and at worst, starvation.
This is what happens in a magic world with complete motivation. Without the aforemention motivation, imagine how bad it would be.
You may say tha tmoney has made me unable to think of an alternative, but I'll track the history or barter very roughly for you. Originally, sure, small hunter-gatherer tribes would go around hunt gather and share, with everyoen doign their part, like what you seem to want. However, they were small ,primitive groups that made no progress for thousands and thousands of years. When humans finally DID learn to grow plants and farm animals, barter popped up as people became more independent upon themselves and their crops- not everyone was making everything now, and so people had to trade.
Also, Satar, I'd like links to those studies. Links or it didn't happen.
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 25, 2011 19:29:03 GMT
www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.htmlwww.recognitionrewards.com/non_monetary_programs.htmNeither of those are the source I had orignally, I'm not quite sure what it was, it was some sort of video presentation thing. Who ever said that "progress" was a good thing? By saying that primitive peoples used my system shows that it can work. If there is a shortage of food, the government can force more people to grow food, and it can rotate people so add sometime every could do what they want. Yes, I think I'm starting to sound communist.
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Post by Qwerty on Jul 26, 2011 5:23:53 GMT
The definition of progress says that it's a good thing. The lowest homeless person living in the deepest slums lives better than primitive people would have by essentially any measurement necessary. If you'd rather live in a small tribe ridden with disease where your only source of food is from hunting and gathering for the 40 years that would be your life, go ahead.
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 26, 2011 13:25:09 GMT
Thats just an opinion given by civilized people. Primitive tribes probably aren't nearly as diseased ridden or starving as people in slums. First, disease wouldn't have been very prevalent as human populations would have been too small to sustain a disease and contact between tribes would have been minimal, so diseases wouldn't have a chance to spread. High population densities, like in slums, are what cause diseases to be prevalent. Also, you can't hunt and gather in a slum, due to the urban environment. The tribal people actually have things a lot better off than people think. Sure, they can only collect enough food to sustain their small tribe, but they don't spend every single freakin' hour working. They still have time to sing and dance and do stuff.
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Post by GloveParty on Jul 26, 2011 16:45:27 GMT
Satar, it would be prevalent due to th lakof vaccinations, disease preventation, animal corpses everywhere, lack of sanitation, lack of cures, etc. And they aren't really starving though, akthough they have to risk their lives to get foo, whih is most definitely NOT preferable. Satar, let me put it this way. Quality of life has skyrocketed since the invention of agriculture and barter. Trying to argue otherwise is going to require some good points. For example, to get food these days we need to work in usually non life-threatening work for a limited number of hours a day, for not all of the days in a week, for enough money to give us comfortable lives, and good medical protection and treatment. In a hunter-gatherer tribe, you would have to risk your life hunting an animal every time you needed a meal, every day of every week, of every month, of every year until you became too old to hunt. You got no modern comforts at all, you were lucky if you got even decently big meals, and there was almost no medicine at all. If you got sick, you were probably dead. Your life depended on the lives of the animals in the region. IF the animals, say died due to sickness, you would be dead.
I really don't know how you could say hunter-gatherer life is better.
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 26, 2011 21:05:54 GMT
www.theecologist.org/investigations/food_and_farming/268902/humanitys_worst_invention_agriculture.htmlPoof, though this isn't the original article I saw that shows how much agriculture screwed. The first thing I saw was a Nation Geographic article about Bushmen, some of the last people who live as hunter-gathers. The author of that article personally lived the hunter-gather life style for sometime and said the agriculture was the single worse thing the ever happened to humanity. Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, also shares this view point.
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Post by GloveParty on Jul 26, 2011 23:50:50 GMT
Citing two people who believe agriculture is bad doesn't automatically make it bad. I saw no real poitns in that, maybe because as a non-paying subscriber... IT doesn't show how agriculture screwed at all. IF agriulture didn't exist, most likely a significant population of the earth would not be able to survive, and as I've stated and you have not Anyway, you've backed up into trying to argue from that money makes people greedier to that progress in general is bad and that we should all go back to being hunter-gatherer tribe. Let me ask you right now: Is that what you truly believe? Do you really believe that we should all be huntr-gatherer tribes, or are the articles you're citing on this an the viewpoitn in general you being backed up against a wall?
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 27, 2011 14:47:43 GMT
Yes and no. I'm saying the hunter-gather tribes are more fair than today's society, and I'm proving that people can live without money and perfectly happy.
In order for no money to work on a larger scale so sort of global socialist state needs to be created, but it could work.
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Post by GloveParty on Jul 27, 2011 15:21:43 GMT
Satar, I refer you to my supply and demand post earlier. And this is a GLOBAL state you're talking about.
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 27, 2011 15:40:57 GMT
Thats why you most aid in taking over the world so that I create a perfect world! MUHAHAHAHAH!!!!
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Post by Qwerty on Jul 27, 2011 22:28:17 GMT
Just like the perfect world Lenin was going for, no doubt. If he can't do it, what makes you think you can?
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 28, 2011 0:01:12 GMT
We have the Internet now.
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Post by Qwerty on Jul 28, 2011 3:24:26 GMT
How will that make a difference? People can tweet about living, starving and overworked, in poverty?
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 28, 2011 20:13:41 GMT
The internet has changed the way people think, and it connects people in a way that world government is now possible. They aren't going to be starving, overworked, and in poverty because I'm going to run things differently than Lenin.
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Post by Qwerty on Jul 29, 2011 4:14:12 GMT
Just like Lenin said about the Czar, yet look how that worked out. You have no way of knowing how global communism would work with the general public.
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 29, 2011 14:04:04 GMT
Neither do you.
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Post by Qwerty on Jul 29, 2011 21:43:41 GMT
I have Soviet Russia to base my conclusions on, you have nothing. All attempts at the kind of system you're talking about have failed miserably. NONE of the soviet rulers successfully established a global communist state, yet you claim to somehow be better than them?
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Post by ganondorfchampin on Jul 29, 2011 21:57:22 GMT
I will go about a different approach that gives more freedom.
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Post by Qwerty on Jul 29, 2011 22:03:14 GMT
More freedom means more people can take advantage of the system. If you want a global communist society, go post it in the "Rule a nation" thread, cause this debate is off-topic.
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