A world without money.

[Without A Contraceptive]

Re: A world without money.

this thread doesnt work right


like foil said; people wont work without compensation. what incentive do i have to go to college if there is no money for me to earn to enable me to buy all the cars houses hoes drugs etc?

[Reincarnate]

Re: A world without money.

dossar never become an economist

[Arch0wl]

Re: A world without money.

Most people have covered what I was going to say ("if there wasn't money, something would take its place") but there's one other thing I'd like to add:

People do not always do things for strict monetary compensation. Sometimes the 'compensation' is more indirect. On the internet, for example, recognition goes a long way. In fact, the entire open source community runs on recognition. Community service runs on the feeling that you've accomplished something good and made someone's life better. Though, calling this 'compensation' is really stretching the term.

[justaguy]

Re: A world without money.

i'll contribute something that's more than one line. if you missed the key point earlier then here it is again:

tradeoffs

elaborated eloquently:

Money is a standardization. It's a way we can judge the relative worth and value of things in a form that everyone can exchange on.

essentially all individuals have their own preference (modeled by utility for you economics wizards, as rubix also explained) for anything. i prefer that, you prefer this, etc. it's a fundamental behavioral concept. the goal any individual is to attain their preference by whatever means they choose, with employment being the most common means. by attaining a preference, the implication is that you are trying to make yourself better off relative to your current state. if money ceases to exist you're suddenly faced with fewer means of attaining your preference, making it more difficult to seek out. in other words, if one man grows apples and another oranges, how would the man with oranges get apples if the man with apples did not prefer oranges? he would need to trade his oranges for another good that the apple grower preferred. the apple grower's preference is inconvenient for orange grower because it adds an extra step in trade. would trade not be more efficient if all steps were condensed to one? which brings us back to:

Money is a standardization. It's a way we can judge the relative worth and value of things in a form that everyone can exchange on.

and further:

tradeoffs

you're maximizing the efficiency of tradeoffs by developing a medium that everyone prefers. aka doing the rational thing.

and:

This is where I think money fails though, personally. If someone needs money as an incentive to do something, then they shouldn't be doing that thing anyways.

are you kidding me? if unknown student left their steaming feces in the middle of a high school bathroom, you're telling me the simple satisfaction of cleaning it up is enough of an incentive?

If this means that most people won't work, then so be it. Most people won't sit on their beds the rest of their lives either though.

and uh, what gives you that impression? you're implying that satisfaction of performing work should be an individual's only incentive and suddenly they'll be shifted into gear once they've realized their "drive." why are you presupposing something like drive within the context of work? they are not coupled entities.

Unfortunately you can't really know someone's true drive to do one thing versus another in a society centered around money.

really, you're implying those driven by money are less productive than those driven by their "true drive"?

Like, if we were to switch over to a money-free society, some sort of communism or something, initially, people would be lazy. I think that over a few years, and definitely over a generation, people would adjust their values, their ideals, and place more weight on things like honor, friendship, duty, doing the right thing, and what they like to do, in order to do things.

i think your short run analysis is incredibly naive. place more weight on honor? and why would they do that? why would they place any more weight on friendship than they had already? at what point does removing money from the societal equation suddenly motivate people to "do the right thing" (i won't even start the right vs. wrong debate)? i think you're under the impression that underneath the evil that is money there exists the bunnies and rainbows of passion and community.

Like I said earlier, people aren't just going to lie around and do nothing. Some people see this as ridiculous and not probable, but I disagree. For example, most people on this cite don't get paid much to run it, but they still do. I'll stay late at work, when they need someone, not because I need the money, but because I feel bad for the people who have to work short-staffed, and for those people who have to wait in line a long time. Sure, money's nice, but is only one of the reasons I'll stay.

you're using FFR as an example to rationalize your reasoning...? here's a sizable anecdote that maybe makes sense to you: for example, most people that work late do it because they need the money. this may come as a surprise to you, but golly gee, why is overtime sometimes pay and a half? is it because employers have modeled human behavior and realized employees need a greater incentive to work more hours than they originally preferred? or because they really feel like people should be rewarded for staying around late and helping the short staffed?

Your supply demand thing, although outwardly making sense, falls apart because without money, or without another motivating factor to cause people to supply more to someone other than themselves, there's no guarantee supply will rise to meet demand. I mean, the hope would be that we'd sort everything out so that it would work, but I have no statements that it would necessarily just have to work because of supply and demand.

woah woah pump the brakes, i thought you were riding the satisfaction wave? suddenly everyone is doing things for themselves and not for the good of other people? supply and demand falls apart without money? lol.

Reincarnate: Money shouldn't be 'sufficient' incentive because its outward incentive. Its shallow. To be cliche-(ay), it doesn't make people happy, especially when it overpowers one's own inner incentives.

uh, how is money shallow? money appeals to my emotions because it relieves my stress and permits a comfortable lifestyle, does this make me shallow? money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. for the few that consider money an end, shouldn't they be more passionate and productive than anyone else? they aren't confined to any specific means of employment, they just simply want money, so would they be diligent in any context?

I would just love to see more people doing things because they're internally motivated to rather than externally motivated to.

ah, here we go, it's that darn projecting thing. stop projecting this promising image you have of humanity on realistic situations.

"If you want a money-free society where people "change their values" and do what they want, that doesn't mean they're going to provide value."

woop woop. in other words, even if people do what they want that doesn't necessarily mean they're contributing anything worthwhile to society.

Without values, people have no reason to live. Of course this doesn't mean that people will necessarily adopt them, but seeing as we've evolved into who we are, it seems pretty fail of evolution to create such beings that intellectually want reasons for doing things, and then have the species NOT try and find reasons to live.

regardless of how poorly you interpreted the previous quote, your analysis of your own interpretation is still bad. people can rationalize reasons within the context of humanity but cannot rationalize their existence within the context of the universe, though they will try. people have been pondering their own existence since they were cognizant enough to ask why. it seems pretty fail of evolution to produce stupid people. why'd evolution do a thing like that?

Religion is the biggest one. People for some reason adopted religion, and to me its just people giving themselves something to value. And its a reason/value still in use today!

lol

A specific subset of people who have been known to have nothing, or not a whole lot, would be poor black teenagers. I'm specifically thinking about LA gangs (I recently watched a thing on TV about it, so its on my mind), or any other type of 'street group' or whatever. These people, these teenagers, people growing and becoming adults, have **** to live for. Drug addicted parents, no money. Gangs specifically give someone something to live for. Sure they morals of the group are in question with societal norms and perhaps an even 'higher' morality (like just don't kill anyone), but to the people in those groups, they have a 'family' now, they have expectations to meet, and they belong. I really think that people join these groups is so that there's something to live for. People who already have something to live for generally avoid joining a group like that, but its the people who value nothing who find that something, even something that involves killing, is better than valuing nothing.

i don't even know the relevance of this at all. this doesn't have anything to do with the social impact of removing money it just kind of says that youth with no direction are impressionable. thanks though.

Something like pride. Pride doesn't really seem to be valued very much in our society these days, so it makes it something easy to see as really not being much of anything

what is even the significance of this?

Why? I dunno, we just made it something that people do and that's valued.

right, that's it, you got it dogg. where the hell did pride come from? we just made that **** up. nobody knew how to be proud of themselves before i made it glaringly obvious to everyone that it was something they could feel.

Family? I guess there's claer biological incentive for this one, but to value something like having a mother and father and eating around the dinner table each night, that's just a made-up value we've adopted.

i think you just keep writing random words in your posts completely unaware of how little sense they make and how irrelevant they are.

And finally, to address qqwref's stuff about there being more mundane jobs now than ever before, oh I soooo disagree. It feels like society 'creates' jobs so that people can work. Beaurocracy feels like that, that's why its like a dirty word to some people. But beyond that, most growth in the north american job market is for things that require thinking and brains, which I think at least, are going to be more interesting jobs. Sure factory jobs are on the rise globally, but if a factory is run well, its still better than plowing your fields by hand or some other such archaic job. Besides which, there are A LOT of factories which will opt to have jobs that machines can easily do, actually be done by people, just so that they support the economy, because we DO lose unskilled labor jobs as technology takes over.

you soooo disagree? you're saying that the majority of jobs could be worked without a reward? uhhhh? you wrote a wall of text about one line of his post that didn't even showcase the point being made (that i made earlier also) which was that people aren't going to work without a valid incentive. and... they aren't.

and for future ref: if you're going to PM me about my (surprisingly relevant) two line post in a thread and then request a ban about at least be able to "critically think" so you don't **** out walls of useless text.

[Arch0wl]

Re: A world without money.

also, I had some Fridge Logic a second ago: even if you got rid of all money and went back to the tribal level where of Maslow's basic needs were satisfied, people would still compete over other people. As in, romantically. I'm not even saying this in the pop-evolutionary-psychology "lol alpha males" nonsense that you read on PUA websites--just look at any circle of friends with a surplus of men and deficit of women. Humans have a rapacious inner dickwad and until our technology is sufficient enough to make "better" humans (i.e. transhumanism) we're stuck with all of our evolutionary baggage.

[justaguy]

Re: A world without money.

Most people have covered what I was going to say ("if there wasn't money, something would take its place") but there's one other thing I'd like to add:

People do not always do things for strict monetary compensation. Sometimes the 'compensation' is more indirect. On the internet, for example, recognition goes a long way. In fact, the entire open source community runs on recognition. Community service runs on the feeling that you've accomplished something good and made someone's life better. Though, calling this 'compensation' is really stretching the term.

sure, yeah. it's an implicit benefit of working or performing any task free of charge. ie making stepfiles and graphics gets you KNOWN in this community. but it is implicit, so there's no way of quantifying the benefits across multiple individuals... which is why having explicit benefits quantifiable to everyone works well.

also hey arch0wl how u been

edit: chances of me ever making a post that long again on this site = Slim2None Because The Implicit Benefit Reaped From Spending However Long Typing Posts Of That Length Ceased To Exist Years Ago.

[McLaReN212]

Re: A world without money.

To the OP, this is a ridiculous notion. People have pretty much covered it already; people need resources, and without interacting with other people, it will be impossible to attain all of the resources you need. People will resort to some sort of barter system in the end; it only makes sense to institute a standard medium in order to increase efficiency.

I do want to point out one thing that Hayden and various people have said that I don't agree with though; that being the "incentive" argument. Of course, I agree that incentive is an important aspect of work. However, I think you all are really overstating things... are you really telling me without compensational incentive people won't work at all? No... what will happen is that they'll institute an incentive. However, if there was no such way to do this, you can't tell me that human would let everything go to **** because there was no compensational incentive to fix things... that contradicts the very evolutionary imperatives that drive us.

[Reincarnate]

Re: A world without money.

I do want to point out one thing that Hayden and various people have said that I don't agree with though; that being the "incentive" argument. Of course, I agree that incentive is an important aspect of work. However, I think you all are really overstating things... are you really telling me without compensational incentive people won't work at all? No... what will happen is that they'll institute an incentive. However, if there was no such way to do this, you can't tell me that human would let everything go to **** because there was no compensational incentive to fix things... that contradicts the very evolutionary imperatives that drive us.

Of course people work towards some sort of incentive. You brought up evolutionary imperatives, so we'll work from that framework.

You have an incentive to live, right? To live, you need resources. To acquire those resources, you need to earn money. To earn money, you need to work. Therefore money is usually a pretty damn good incentive to do things.

People work because they have to -- it's the fundamental thrust of economics: scarcity. We have seemingly unlimited human desires but only so many resources to go around. We wouldn't NEED an economy with money if we could just walk outside and get everything we wanted/needed without any skill or effort.

But our life doesn't work that way. We aren't able to provide everything we want for ourselves -- we don't want to design our own shoes, invent our own technology, make our own movies, grow our own food, make our own living residences, generate our own electricity, gather our own information, etc. We have services that specialize in these various functions and we pay for them. We can pay for them through money, which we acquire in exchange for our OWN specializations.

In an ideal world, everyone is compensated by fair value. If I am able to provide a service that generates more value, I get more money for it. If I work longer or smarter or give up more of something, I am compensated for it. That's why money is perfectly fine as an incentive -- it represents the ability to acquire more resources and services.

The problem is that you have no way to standardize anything without money. It's not that people wouldn't work -- it's that people wouldn't have incentive to bust their asses for no return. If money is somehow forbidden in my society, I'm not going to work hard if my services are going to be free. I'm going to sit on my ass and do what I want all day. But so will everyone else. It's not a very stable sort of society. At some point, everyone needs each other's skills and resources to perpetuate. So people WILL work -- but luckily, we have something called intelligence. This intelligence lets us know that it's better to create money as a compensation metric, because it's no fun living in a society where you aren't rewarded much for your labor. It all ultimately comes down to what is fair. It's an unsolvable problem that is always swinging in equilibrium.

[Reincarnate]

Re: A world without money.

Most people have covered what I was going to say ("if there wasn't money, something would take its place") but there's one other thing I'd like to add:

People do not always do things for strict monetary compensation. Sometimes the 'compensation' is more indirect. On the internet, for example, recognition goes a long way. In fact, the entire open source community runs on recognition. Community service runs on the feeling that you've accomplished something good and made someone's life better. Though, calling this 'compensation' is really stretching the term.

All compensation is ultimately utility (happiness). Whether it's for recognition or food on the table, we contribute skills because they ultimately net us something we want or need. Those things can be valued in terms of money -- which is what market forces are all about.

[Reincarnate]

Re: A world without money.

If money is abolished, demand for nearly everything would skyrocket. As the demand goes up, there would be a near frantic need to increase supply to keep up with the ever-rising demand. In order to increase supplies, every industry would have to drastically increase their workforce, which is not a problem since it costs nothing to do so. With all the unemployed people out there, they can be trained and they can all be employed.

I seriously can't tell if you're trolling or just woefully misinformed about how finance and economics work.

Yeah, if you set p=0, demand is nuts. Nobody's going to pass up free utility. Setting something to no price means more supply will be needed to sustain the demand. But this means more resources are required. That is a real cost. You can't just say "it'll cost nothing" by removing money. You're still using resources. If every single supply curve got shocked to maximum value, we'd be short all-around. We don't have enough resources to provide every single person access to everything. If we could do this, we wouldn't need an economy.

[dragonmegaXX]

Re: A world without money.

This is something I've been thinking about for some time now. What would happen if money didn't exist? If the absence of money caused problems, what do you think could be done to rectify the situation (without bringing money back)? Do you think the world would be better without money?

A few things I can see about having no money is that insurance won't be needed, surgery would be free, nobody needs funding for medical research, and everyone has a chance at attending a higher level of education (college). To prevent the laziness, there could be some law passed that makes it so every person is required to have some type of job. And there would be limit to what you can have too - even though things would be free, you can't and don't need 500 cars unless you wanted to loan out or sell them (which isn't really necessary since you're not selling for currency).

Kind of sounds like Anthem.

Without money, people would just start bartering and it wouldnt really do anything major. People would just start trading their stuff for other peoples stuff.
If you took away everyone's stuff and had them start from scratch, society would probably collapse because people wouldn't be motivated to try to learn important skills like medicine or surgery. That is unless you assign everyone jobs.(Again, Anthem, which didnt turn out well for that civilization)

[WaterMan90]

Re: A world without money.

Why do people make money? They put their heart and effort in the hopes that they will achieve some form of return. It's like conversation, really. Money is just one of many ways to concretize this sort of return. Of course, some may do jobs because they desire to help others, they wish to fulfill a "duty", or they think it's "fun" - but the act is never selfless . There is no selfless act, or one would never perform the act at all. Now, we know that if people work toward a common purpose, they feel more unified. A strong currency strengthens an economy, and thus a nation and culture can be strengthened. Money is such a grand thing that almost every human being is involved in, and in a way it brings us together - unless there are those who try to take advantage of it, criminals and misers who hoard/manipulate with it. Without money, people really won't be as motivated to strive for goals or desires - the key idea people have mentioned here - thus collapsing society into more or less chaos. I should make a point here, though: First society, then money, not the other way around. Technically, you can't have a world without money or there would be no "world".

Without money, people would just start bartering and it wouldnt really do anything major. People would just start trading their stuff for other peoples stuff.

Bartering is fine, but you're right, it won't do "major" things. Back in the day when people were not so unified as today with its technology and Internet culture, bartering was an efficient way of fulfilling your needs and those of others as well. But to have a set standard for the grand abstract idea we call "value" ( ), money makes such trading more convenient in the fast-paced society.

[Cavernio]

Re: A world without money.

are you kidding me? if unknown student left their steaming feces in the middle of a high school bathroom, you're telling me the simple satisfaction of cleaning it up is enough of an incentive?

I clean because I don't like things dirty, same goes for **** as for anything else. I never said that work was its own reward. (Although hard-work can be valued for itself.) People do work so that something good happens because of it, like not having **** of the floor. I don't know why you'd WANT to have **** on the floor. On another note, perhaps you'd be more inclined to find the perpetrator and make sure they wouldn't do it again if you weren't paid to clean the **** up. Besides which, if you got paid to be a ****-scooper your entire life, you might in fact get upset if people started to become more decent and stopped ****ting everywhere, because you'd then have no work. Such situations DO happen in real life. They're called luddites. They're largely a by-product of money.

and uh, what gives you that impression? you're implying that satisfaction of performing work should be an individual's only incentive and suddenly they'll be shifted into gear once they've realized their "drive." why are you presupposing something like drive within the context of work? they are not coupled entities.

Driven people do things, most of the things people do is work. We could get into a discussion about what defines work, but I'd rather not do that. I'm not saying anyone will suddenly be shifted into doing anything, either. I'm saying that doing nothing is boring, and that to assume that everyone would stop doing their job because they suddenly stopped getting paid for it is as equally assanine as saying rainbows and bunnies are what exists when money is removed.

really, you're implying those driven by money are less productive than those driven by their "true drive"?

No. I specifically tried to NOT imply that. I'm trying to say that I don't give a **** if society's productive if society isn't happy. I am also saying that I believe we have enough 'product', to live comfortably, (thanks to technology) even if people produce a lot less.

i think your short run analysis is incredibly naive. place more weight on honor? and why would they do that? why would they place any more weight on friendship than they had already? at what point does removing money from the societal equation suddenly motivate people to "do the right thing" (i won't even start the right vs. wrong debate)? i think you're under the impression that underneath the evil that is money there exists the bunnies and rainbows of passion and community.

People would place more weight on non-monetary incentives because we'd all start to become like disillusioned teenagers. If you take away someone's prime reason for doing things, they'll become lost for a short period of time before other things fill that void. That is my theory. You've already said that you agree in part with it, but you apparently don't agree that it would also work in non-critical (ie: nothing to live for) situations. Perhaps that is valid, but you've got to give me more than 'I don't see that working'. You say that most of my previous post doesn't address the right thing at all, but yet you obviously do understand how relevant it is, judging from your your response here.

you're using FFR as an example to rationalize your reasoning...? here's a sizable anecdote that maybe makes sense to you: for example, most people that work late do it because they need the money. this may come as a surprise to you, but golly gee, why is overtime sometimes pay and a half? is it because employers have modeled human behavior and realized employees need a greater incentive to work more hours than they originally preferred? or because they really feel like people should be rewarded for staying around late and helping the short staffed?

But why should we add extra incentive for working more hours at all? I've already said, I don't care about being more productive, I care about being happy.

woah woah pump the brakes, i thought you were riding the satisfaction wave? suddenly everyone is doing things for themselves and not for the good of other people? supply and demand falls apart without money? lol.

Supply and demand have been studied under a society that revolves around money, and which uses money as an integral measure of them. If you remove the money, the validity of the models of supply and demand would at the very least be questionable. I also never said people would be doing things for the good of other people. In fact, some would say that if we produced less stuff means we'd by definition be doing worse as a society.

uh, how is money shallow? money appeals to my emotions because it relieves my stress and permits a comfortable lifestyle, does this make me shallow? money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. for the few that consider money an end, shouldn't they be more passionate and productive than anyone else? they aren't confined to any specific means of employment, they just simply want money, so would they be diligent in any context?

If we have enough products and goods such that your stress would largely be non-existant for things like food and shelter and other comforts, money IS shallow. Besides which, if you want to bandy words and meanings, money DOESN'T make you comfortable. A soft bed does. (Furthermore, if money is not shallow, then please tell me what is...its like your saying shallowness doesn't exist really.) People who do consider money an end ARE more productive. They choose to run giant corporations which they choose to be tax exempt, and which often pay workers minimum wage, or who use slave labor, and who will do all types of not nice things in order just to get more money. I dunno if they'd work as hard in any other context, it would depend on the person and if they could find something else to take over what money gave them.

ah, here we go, it's that darn projecting thing. stop projecting this promising image you have of humanity on realistic situations.

Religious fanatical gangs is promising? I'm under no pretense that all non-monetary values are good. I just have a very negative image of humanity right now, and a lot of it seems to stem from capitalism.

woop woop. in other words, even if people do what they want that doesn't necessarily mean they're contributing anything worthwhile to society.

Now you're on the trolly. Except that people are social, and they will overwhelmingly contribute to other people regardless. Whether or not you consider helping your kids or spouse or friends helps society; or whether people would adopt a strong sense of wanting to help society as a whole; that's in question. Keep in mind that if any sort of social reform were to happen, everything that's in place right now won't magically disappear. It might fall away, but we will still have organization.

i don't even know the relevance of this at all. this doesn't have anything to do with the social impact of removing money it just kind of says that youth with no direction are impressionable. thanks though.

right, that's it, you got it dogg. where the hell did pride come from? we just made that **** up. nobody knew how to be proud of themselves before i made it glaringly obvious to everyone that it was something they could feel.

Pride is made up because of society. I strongly disagree that pride is an innate feeling. Most feelings we have are a result of being socialized. That we innately possess the biology to get these emotions I will agree with, but the interpretation of what all these mean are most definitely not innate. No one has to make something glaringly obvious for something to be 'made up'. Most people going into gangs don't think to themselves 'I need something to live for' before they join.

you soooo disagree? you're saying that the majority of jobs could be worked without a reward? uhhhh? you wrote a wall of text about one line of his post that didn't even showcase the point being made (that i made earlier also) which was that people aren't going to work without a valid incentive. and... they aren't.

And if you don't see the connection between adopting incentive and most of my previous post, you're dumber than you seem, because most of your post strongly implied that you did. Just because you didn't agree with what I was saying or you didn't understand it for whatever reason, doesn't mean I wasn't addressing it.

and for future ref: if you're going to PM me about my (surprisingly relevant) two line post in a thread and then request a ban about at least be able to "critically think" so you don't **** out walls of useless text.

I'm sorry if I'm verbose and use paragraphs properly. Not all ideas can properly be expressed in a sentence. Also, I PMd you after bitching about you publicly, not before. Also, I requested a ban for more reasons than just 1 post. Your siggy was representative of that. Although I do hope your ban isn't forever, because you've finally started talking.

[Stewie7Griffin]

Re: A world without money.

Maybe instead of implementing the idea of abolishing money completely, we should find a solution to prevent people from using the system to their advantage. For instance, I see this A LOT, people get WIC, Food Stamps, TANF, and Medicaid, not because they can't afford the stuff they need, but only because they can't afford the stuff they want.

I find it kind of dumb that the top paid CEO of a company makes as much money as the 7th top paid NBA player. What is the NBA player getting paid to do really? Entertain? People loot and steal because they don't have the money. If they only stepped back and actually thought, if they don't loot or steal, they wouldn't have to loot or steal in the first place. People don't think this way, it's called ignorance and stupidity.

*EDIT*
The only way to change this is by an evolutionary change to the human mind.

[devonin]

Re: A world without money.

I'm amused by the idea that if you abolished currency you'd be "left" with the barter system. You do realise that money -is- the barter system still, we've just allowed a way for two people who don't actually have something the other one wants to deal by providing a universal intermediate step they can trade to anybody.