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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Wait... if we replaced money, what would we replace it with?

Money is just a mutually agreed upon physical representation of labor and energy. Technically, anything that can fill such a role could replace it.

Well duh, but it would still be money. A rose by any other name buys you just as many candy bars. The point of money is as a medium of exchange. I was kinda asking that rhetorically/sarcastically because someone said we should have a non-monetary system.

For the most part, when we talk about "money", we are referring to fiat currency because of how ubiquitous it is.

On a side note; here's a message from the pope. Link

My burning passion for news sites that require registration to read grows. I am *squeezing* the *juice*.

[10ebbor10]

That wasn't there when I looked. Give me a moment, I'll get an alternate link.

The Guardian

[LordBucket]

Wait... if we replaced money, what would we replace it with? The barter system? The honor code?

That question is only valid making different assumptions than I'm making.


Think of it this way:

There's a certain amount of "job work" that is done in our society. Imagine the sum total of all work. And I mean "work" in an economic sense, not a physics sens. Every piece of mail delivered by a mailman, every plate of food delivered by a waitress, every car that is manufactured, etc. Let us call this value X.

"Work" is not something that exists for the sake of itself. Work serves a particular purpose: to deliver goods or services to somebody. For every plate of food brought to a table by a waitress, there's somebody at that table who received the food. For every car that people work to manufacture, there's somebody else who received that car. The work itself has no value, and the fact of there "being jobs" is not the point. The point of "work" is to deliver goods or services to people.

Now, imagine a "hypothetical fantasy world" in which everyone had a magic djinni who instantly granted all their material wishes. I'm not seriously suggesting this...just, bear with me for purposes of discussion. In such a hypothetical world, how much job work would need to be done?

None. The value of X from above would be zero. There would be no point in anybody "working" because, again...the real purpose of "work" is to deliver goods and services to people. If anybody could just have their djinni give them whatever they want, there'd no point having somebody else build/deliver those things to them. And...because of this, there would also be no point in having money, because money exists, basically, as means of inducing others to perform for you the work that you want to have performed.

Now...what if we reduce the amount of work required to produce the "sum total of all goods/services" required/desired by society? We might have a difficult time giving everyone a djinni, but we can very easily introduce labor-saving changes. For example, just as one arbitrary example, imagine if we switched to a flat tax rate. As a result, there would be no need for people to file long and complicated tax forms. Consequently, the "work" of preparing tax forms would be eliminated from the "sum total of all work that needs to be done by society." In this case, the value of X has been reduced. It is not made zero from this change, but it has been made closer to zero.

Now, let's imagine that we...again, just an arbitrary example...switch completely from a centralized water distribution and purification system to a system where water is generated at point of use via water condensers and houses use septic tanks rather than remote purification. This change would eliminate the "work" need for plumbing/sewage infrastructure construction and maintenance, sewage treatment plant construction and staffing and home bottled water delivery. And probably a couple other things. Yes, new work would be created because we'd have to build more condensers, but I'm confidant that the new work would be much less than the work eliminated. Once again, X is made closer to zero.

Every time you reduce the amount of work that needs/is desired to be done, you reduce X, and make the world closer to the fantasy world where everybody has a djinni.

There are lots of things that our society could do right now to reduce the value of X. Maybe we can't make it zero. We don't have djinnis. But we can make it closer to zero. And there comes a certain point where it's close enough to zero, that the need for a "work a job for money" system simply becomes pointless.

[SalmonGod]

Now just think about how many jobs there are in the world that just screw around with money.  That, if the imaginary number game we call money ceased to exist, would be completely and utterly meaningless.  Incomprehensible, even.

I work in such a job.  I think every day about how I'd like to be doing something that actually matters in real terms.  About how much more happy and productive society would be if everyone only needed to do work that matters in real terms, and could do as they pleased when there was no more such work to be done.

[Thecard]

If everyone had their wish granted, then yeah, we can do away with money.
Until then, eliminating jobs only increases unemployment and poverty.
We're gonna need to find the stash of magic lamps before we should go around eliminating work. Until that day, let's try to focus on creating jobs so that people can pay for food instead of having to rely on help.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

As I have said, the job model is in a terminal decline. Business owners aren't just going to not automate everything they can, and they're going to be able to automate a lot as our technology improves.

This is a matter of necessity, of recognizing that we are headed towards a global disaster if we keep on trying to play the same old game when the rules are radically changing. All of this economic malaise and turmoil that the world is experiencing? It isn't a coincidence. It's a symptom that we would do well to recognize. The time of traditional economic growth and industrial functionality is simply...ending.

[Thecard]

Yup. But we need a medium of exchange, and whatever it is --paper, gold, spice, children-- it's money. It just looks different.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We're (for the most part) not discussing the end of money. We're discussing the end of capitalism. The end of the job model. Possibly the end of functional scarcity.

[Thecard]

If we eliminate the job model, who's going to work? Without perpetual motion, even the most efficient systems require at least one worker. Who's gonna get stuck with that?

[kaijyuu]

Presumably the ideal is that whoever's doing the work to hold up society is getting more luxuries and/or power than those who aren't.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If we eliminate the job model, who's going to work? Without perpetual motion, even the most efficient systems require at least one worker. Who's gonna get stuck with that?

Jobs are not synonymous with work. My point is that the end of the job model is not going to be a conscious decision or a policy by the government. It is going to be a thing service providers inevitably do to not have to pay workers. We will reach the point where the economy won't run on a job model, and where the vast majority will be permanently unemployed.

The good news is that the amount of work that actually needs doing will be vastly, vastly reduced.

[Descan]

I'm quite enamored of the idea of, once we get those automated robots that are as adaptable as humans, of giving everyone at least one such robot to do with as they please. :v

Plus a basic income guarantee.

No idea what the consequences would be, but if you didn't need to work continuously to pay for food and shelter, and had a major building block to making a business (mainly, labour, and you don't need to pay a robot a living wage, so it's cheap labour at that), that would go a long way.

'Course, that's still under a capitalist system.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I'm quite enamored of the idea of, once we get those automated robots that are as adaptable as humans, of giving everyone at least one such robot to do with as they please. :v

HAVE YOU NOT SEEN I,ROBOT? you will condemn us all.

EDIT:Anyways, work is good. So is competition and challenge. Without these things what would be the primary drive for scientific advancements? Not to mention our society, what would happen to it?

[Descan]

Personal challenge. :v

Most scientific advancement, even if funded under the auspices of competition, is DONE by people wanting to actually figure it out.

If anything, getting rid of the requirement for funding would mean MOAR science.

[SalmonGod]

I think a basic income guarantee is the very least that needs to happen.  Enough to live on non-miserably.  It's a hell of a hard sell to most and a difficult transition, but it's also the only step I can imagine that the majority of people within our culture as it stands could actually comprehend in a unified enough matter to work around.