Why does the Human race use curency?

[Cheesus333]

I think it's kind of like why the more people are witness to an incident, the less likely anyone is to intervene. The Bystander Effect - or Spectator Syndrome, as I like to call it cause it alliterates nicely - applies to this too. 'Why should I help when all these guys can do it?' becomes 'Why should I work when there are other people to do it instead?' and eventually (there are, after all, close to 7 billion human beings) no-one does jack shit because they think everyone else will do it for them.

Now, if we had a hive mind...

 

[Woodsey]

Because it gets too complicated, and people are selfish and lazy.

Currency provides something clear to work towards and a universally trade able item.

 

[Gigano]

It's incredibly practical to use for trade, as nothing which could remotely be described as "human" would perform limitless charity work.

 

[SpaceGhost2K]

I think the OP wants it to be like Star Trek. Everybody has a job, everybody has their basic needs met. Problem is what if you have someone who doesn't want to do his/her job? Do you imprison them? Or do you meet their needs anyway? When Picard and offers played poker, what did they use to bet with? Isolinear Chips?

 

[Firehound]

So people have a way of trading and thus a reason to work.

However, I believe the current system of currency is flawed, as it is based on the value of gold instead of the value of labour.

This is one of the things I would change if I ever were to become dictator of the world.

Most modern countries do not utilize a gold standard, so that they can simply create more bills. However, gold standard -is- a fairly rigid system. You get very little inflation since the price of gold usually increases as it is used up faster then can be replensished from the limited sources of it. This means you can only create so many bills.

Labor is defined via the GDP IIRC, which is in currency

 

[Paksenarrion]

Charity would not be as charitable if it was a necessity.

 

[crudus]

How come we use currency, what if everything was free and done by charity workers?

It isn't just humans. Other primates have an economy system as well. The reason we do it is because we are selfish creatures in a society. Sure it benefits us to be in a group, but we still try to get ahead.

Charity would not be as charitable if it was a necessity.

I don't think he means charity. I think he means pure communism or socialism.

 

[Communist partisan]

How come we use currency, what if everything was free and done by charity workers?

Why we don't do it like you say? it's called capitalism that offers you nearly totall freedom for a really unfair price and peapole still salute it and cheer while they work to surive and get all their money stolen by a gorverment more selfish than.... golum


Also... totall charity wouldn't really work but if everything vere a lot cheaper fair paychecks and lower taxes we would totally shitting peaches and not bricks than the next bundle of bills come

 

[lasherman]

How come we use currency, what if everything was free and done by charity workers?

Who would those charity workers be? Nobody would go through all of the education and training required to become astrophysicists or brain surgeons without the promise of at least some reward. Even relatively simple things like farming would be impossible to sustain. Do you really think anyone would bother toiling in enormous fields all day to feed the world for no benefit for themselves?

 

[Sparcrypt]

How come we use currency, what if everything was free and done by charity workers?

Would you work for free to support the lazy people who can't be bothered?

Anyone with a job ALREADY pays to support people who can't be bothered to work, you want to do that and also get nothing for it?

Even in a perfect world, people have different needs. Therefore some people would require more of less of some things then others. So to counter this, you would need to either have some huge governing body that managed all this, or you could instead give all the workers some kind of tokens for their work, then they could exchange these tokens for the items they want. The people with those items would use THOSE tokens in exchange for the things they need to make their product and also take some profit so they could in turn trade for the things they need.

Naturally there would have to be more tokens given to those who do the more skillful or stressful work, otherwise noone would want to do it - and you would have to have a 'minimum token level' or somesuch for everyone that is based off the costs of living, that way everyone who works gets enough tokens so they can live.

Oh now look.. you have a currency system. We use if because it is the single most efficient way to trade in goods with zero disadvantage...

 

[Knusper]

Because in an ideal world, everyone would trade their surplus produce for the surplus goods made by someone else, and then that way, everyone could contribute to the economy and still have stuff. However, say someone breeds buffalo and wants a few apples for his children's lunch, would he have to cut a bit off on of his buffalo to get the apples? He can't just trade one entire buffalo for a few apples, and so we have currency to act as a substitute.

However, of course, money IS the root of all evil.

 

[DarkRyter]

How come we use currency, what if everything was free and done by charity workers?

Currency is a measure of value. We all attribute an equal value to it, making it much more standardized than, say, a barter system.

"I'll give you five chickens for your cow."
"I don't want chickens. I want pigs."
"But all I have is chickens!"
"Oh fucking well."

Behold the world without currency above. Where chicken man will never be able to enjoy a steak or a glass of milk. Now, say we add currency in the form of gold coins to the world. The cow man won't exchange his cow for chickens, but he will sell the cow for 15 gold coins. The chicken man sells his five chickens for 15 gold coins and then buys the cow. Everyone is happy.

Simpler metaphor: 10,000 cans of soda and a car have about to same value. But you can't just buy a car with 10,000 cans of soda. You can, however, sell the soda, and buy the car with the money from the soda sales, because both the seller of the car, and the buyers of the soda, attribute value to the money.

Now, on why the world can't just live charitably. Because exchange allows for a higher standard of living due to the interdependency it creates between people. Say, there's a doctor. He treats people, cares for the sick, heals injuries, etc, all for free. But, how does he get water to drink? Or food to eat? He can't farm food or mine for water himself, because he only has the skills to be a doctor.

Instead, he exchanges his services as a doctor to attain the things he needs. Now, not everyone in the world needs a doctor, and not everyone who does need a doctor is able to give him the things he needs or wants. Here comes standardized currency to the rescue. The doctor sells his services for coins and then uses those coins to buy the things he needs. Currency acts as a middleman for the exchange of goods and services.

 

[russkiimperial]

Charity workers eh? Here's an idea. Who are charity workers and what do they live off of? In order for a whole society to be serviced properly it would mean a significant portion of the population would have to participate. In human history, the only way this can be guaranteed on such a large scale would be slavery. Who built the pyramids or the great wall of china? Granted, even in this case the sla- ahem 'charity workers' were still compensated some way. This is is the same reason why every economically collectivist system of government like communism devolves into a dictatorship. You simply cannot force people to work for little or nothing against their natural inclinations of free will and personal self interest without the threat of force. It's counterintuitive from a purely biological standpoint.

 

[e093]

currency is a glorified iou note. governments have resources at their disposal, which are judged in value according to supply and demand. governments then issue notes, coins, or something that normally has a value of near nothing, which gives you a right to a certain portion of that particular government's resources. they do this since it is much easier then handing you say, ten pounds of gold. without currency, or with evenly distributed currency, people fall back to barter systems or lose all incentive to work since they are provided for evenly no matter what they do.

 

[Amarsir]

It's called "The Tragedy of the Commons." On the chance you're not just trolling, look it up.

 

[Arduras]

Basically, you have 8 people work on a complicated piece of technology, and they spend 12 hours a day working to do so (just a basic idea). Said item is of extreme usefulness to anyone that has one, but if there is no Currency its very hard to gauge how valuable said item is.

The value of the item is important because the time they spent working, is time they -aren't- spending getting food, doing maintainence, etc. So in turn they need to get their food from someplace else, which in turn either requires bartering (and your fucked if they don't want what you have) or a currency model, allowing you to purchase what you want without having to muck around looking for someone that wants what you got.

Same could be said if you work in, say, healthcare or Rescue services or hell, utilities, they spend upwards of 16 hours a day providing assistance that could not be bartered for, which is way currency helps give them the means to get what they need to survive.

The only way that currency could be shafted is if we all lived in tribes again, supplying each other with our own skills... but that would just lead to strife and raiding for fertile lands, goods etc.


Yeah, I've thought too much about this

 

[siddif]

It works in theory only - but this is practically Communism at its purest (as already stated above) for this to work everyone would have to do a fair share of the work and be able to reap a fair share of the reward but because not everybody is able to work as hard as each other (if at all) and as everyone does not like the same things the rewards will also be compromised.

Even before we had set currency we traded goods and services for other goods and services like a farmer trading food for building materials.

In a perfect world everything would work out this way but in many peoples opinion what we have to day is the best compromise we can achieve now (not necessarily good but workable)

Currency puts us all at the same level - 1 [insert currency here] is always worth 1 to the next person (ignoring conversions for now) sure the worth of that unit will change but 1 will always = 1 as opposed to my fertaliser being worth more to a farmer than it is to an engineer as a trade.

 

[[.redacted]]

People are 100% inherently selfish.

If you question the motives of anything you do, it will inherently boil down to "because I want to".

For example:

Giving to charity (eases conscience, makes you feel good)

Giving presents (helps social status, makes people more likely to be your friends, prevents alienation, potential good feelings)

Sacrificing yourself for someone you love (makes you feel good, eases conscience, positive ideas as to what people will think of you, you prefer them to live rather than yourself - emphasis on 'you prefer')


Ergo, if there was no currency, people would exploit it, and the world would fall apart.