Well there needs to be a measuring agent for how valuable items are. Thus currency is used not only to trade with itself but to give items their value.
Why does the Human race use curency?
- Thread starter Kiyotaki
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In Capitalism there's a little thing we like to call incentive. If you have no incentive to work, nothing to work for, nobody will a good job and the system will fall apart sooner than I can say 'Communism'.
I always thought it never worked because of this:Jestertrance said:
Although Communism looks good on paper (everybody gets free food, lodging, health care). Instead of bringing everyone up to the same level, like its supposed to. It beats everyone down to the same level.
It's the easiest way to evaluate the worth of someone to society. It's not perfect, but it's functional.
Totally true. I think I just meant neo-hippies and college kids talking about why communism is awesome without understanding why it doesn't work. There's nothing wrong with real philosophizing, especially when it helps us understand things better.Jestertrance said:
Because currency is a lot easier to carry around that livestock or anything else you could use to barter.Kiyotaki said:
As for why people don't everything for free, there's two reasons:
1) People act in their own best interests, almost always. If they can get something for nothing, they will. Thus, if they won't do any work unless it benefits them, and the most direct way to benefit is to be paid. Therefore, we can safely conclude that if everyone worked for free, nothing would get done.
2) That's not particularly fair is it? When people use a good or service, they are consuming something, usually time and resources but occasionally just time. It's not particularly fair to the guy who gave up their time to make it if they don't get any kind of recompense.
Without any formal organisation, things cease to work so well. On a smaller scale, what if everyone decides they want to be a tailor and no one wants to farm? People need to eat, so everyone ends up having to farm on their own to provide themselves with food and continue tailoring. But this becomes wildly inefficient because centralising production of food would allow considerably more time to be devoted to other things.
And it's not true that communism doesn't work, that's just historically inaccurate. Look at the Israeli kibbutz system, which lead the world in agricultural development while it existed. Anarchist communes in Spain were likewise wildly successful. People like to act as though they were good but "couldn't last", but each was brought down largely by external problems or internal problems having absolutely nothing to do with their political or economic systems. It's simply untrue that no work gets done with tangible individual rewards in such situations. Even if you don't believe that humans can contribute for individualistic moral reasons (despite a probably genetic disposition toward such reasoning), you have to completely ignore the enormous social pressure generated in such situations and the social rewards that come with contribution.
You can organise societies without money that function extremely well, but they still need to be ORGANISED. Even if everyone is willing to be nice to each other and help out, you need to figure out what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and how best to divide up the labour. The key difference between anarchism (which is really what you're describing moreso than communism) is that people aren't FORCED to do things, but do them because they need to be done and the people recognise the utility of their labour. But the people still need to know what needs to be done in the first place.
And yes, people are greedy. People are also lying, cheating, murderous rapists. We (mostly) don't just say "well, that's how people are, so we shouldn't try to change that", we use our understanding to try to modify behaviour in a way that would benefit us as a group. If you think that anarchism and communism are a bad idea, I strongly disagree, but that's something approaching a rational view. Simply saying "it's just how people are" is a moronic justification.
And it's not true that communism doesn't work, that's just historically inaccurate. Look at the Israeli kibbutz system, which lead the world in agricultural development while it existed. Anarchist communes in Spain were likewise wildly successful. People like to act as though they were good but "couldn't last", but each was brought down largely by external problems or internal problems having absolutely nothing to do with their political or economic systems. It's simply untrue that no work gets done with tangible individual rewards in such situations. Even if you don't believe that humans can contribute for individualistic moral reasons (despite a probably genetic disposition toward such reasoning), you have to completely ignore the enormous social pressure generated in such situations and the social rewards that come with contribution.
You can organise societies without money that function extremely well, but they still need to be ORGANISED. Even if everyone is willing to be nice to each other and help out, you need to figure out what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and how best to divide up the labour. The key difference between anarchism (which is really what you're describing moreso than communism) is that people aren't FORCED to do things, but do them because they need to be done and the people recognise the utility of their labour. But the people still need to know what needs to be done in the first place.
And yes, people are greedy. People are also lying, cheating, murderous rapists. We (mostly) don't just say "well, that's how people are, so we shouldn't try to change that", we use our understanding to try to modify behaviour in a way that would benefit us as a group. If you think that anarchism and communism are a bad idea, I strongly disagree, but that's something approaching a rational view. Simply saying "it's just how people are" is a moronic justification.
Depends upon which side of that level you're on. Half the world lives on under $2 a day. Another 30% under $10.gamerguy473 said:
We're on the internet. Chances are we're in the top 20%. So yes, we would probably suffer a drop in our current comfort level. I think we could still live happy and fulfilling lives afterward.
Working for free is my ideal world. If everyone just worked for the betterment of everyone else the world would be so much nicer. Sadly, I doubt everyone would go for that and it would be quite hard to maintain of only half the population did it.
The scarcity argument only makes sense if there's actual scarcity. In reality, it's not as though we need people to starve in order to eat, they're simply starving because they lack the infrastructure required for food. It's not as though there isn't room to grow food in most places given modern techniques (you can grow food essentially anywhere assuming you have some sort of access to water, which is also readily available with modern technology), it's just that no one wants to contribute the initial resources to allow for rapid development.DJROC said:
You don't have to give your food to someone to feed them, you have to give them some of your enormous surplus of seeds ONCE and from then on you can keep your enormous surplus of seeds and they can continue making their OWN food. It's trite, but the fisherman teaching the man to fish rather than handing him food is apt here. In the real world, it's not even technically feasible to transport our food everywhere to feed everyone. But notice that nowhere in the story was it said that the fisherman had to split his dinner every night. He lost a few days teaching someone (arguably not even lost, since he could be fishing at the same time) and that was it.
That was very interesting and enlightening. I thank you and your avatar is awesome.Progressive_Stupidity said:
Humanity is a species, not a race. Humanity is not the only species that uses currency. In all likelihood, humans have been using currency since before we developed agriculture or written language. Currency is intuitive and simple. Dicking around with the barter system is complex, unfair, and unintuitive. Animals tend to behave in one of 3 ways: Communal/Hive-mind, where it is all for one and one for all, such as with ants. Self reliance, where everyone fends for themselves, such as with squirrels. The third form is small social groups that work together, but have a great deal more intelligence, and by proxy free will. this results in greater teamwork, but is motivated by each individual's desire to exploit the group. animals using this system end up with specialized jobs which come with set rewards. in the wild, if a chimp is being "payed" less than another chimp doing the same job, he will stop working. if a chimp is taught a special skill (lets say by a human), assuming the skill is useful to the group, the chimp will exploit its monopoly and get "payed" very well.
the currency chimps use is grooming and mite removal. they will perform this in exchange for other things. sex on the other hand is seen as a commodity. females will "trade" sex for grooming, but do not treat it as its own currency. other commodities include babysitting, luxuries (like grapes), and other kinds of help. since chimps place so much emphasis on fairness, they only trade grooming for a commodity, not one commodity for another.
the more we study other animals, the more we find in common between them. you'll often find an article here and there saying "only this type of animal" can do this or that. later we learn that that statement was based on nothing but the fact that the experiment was only done on that animal. as time goes on, the research gets done, and the information gets updated. its exciting to live in a time where so much research in so many areas is finally starting to produce the information we started investing in decades ago. which specific animals get tested is up to who-knows, but cognitive and reasoning abilities that we thought previously only applied to chimps, apply to other animals including birds, and octopuses.
the currency chimps use is grooming and mite removal. they will perform this in exchange for other things. sex on the other hand is seen as a commodity. females will "trade" sex for grooming, but do not treat it as its own currency. other commodities include babysitting, luxuries (like grapes), and other kinds of help. since chimps place so much emphasis on fairness, they only trade grooming for a commodity, not one commodity for another.
the more we study other animals, the more we find in common between them. you'll often find an article here and there saying "only this type of animal" can do this or that. later we learn that that statement was based on nothing but the fact that the experiment was only done on that animal. as time goes on, the research gets done, and the information gets updated. its exciting to live in a time where so much research in so many areas is finally starting to produce the information we started investing in decades ago. which specific animals get tested is up to who-knows, but cognitive and reasoning abilities that we thought previously only applied to chimps, apply to other animals including birds, and octopuses.
Well, its here because humans can't do anything out of the goodness of their heart and so giving them something that allows them to profit from doing something laborious helps them along..
Its here to stay unfortunately until robots that can do all human jobs are invented and then the human race can relax into various pleasure cults and then bring about their eventual downfall as they create some monstrous entity which consumes our greed.. but thats another story..
Its here to stay unfortunately until robots that can do all human jobs are invented and then the human race can relax into various pleasure cults and then bring about their eventual downfall as they create some monstrous entity which consumes our greed.. but thats another story..
Having a place holder is infinitely convenient and the idea of things actual being free just silliness. Items and services ?cost? something, even if it?s somebody?s time, which can be a hell lot of time depending.