Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[TamerVirus]

Money exists so that I can become rich and laugh at poor people

[Loud Whispers]

But in reality it's mostly been a cycle.  Sumer was virtual where debts were engraved into clay tablets with money embedded into them.  Generally hard metal currency arises in times of strife (Among other things, it creates wealth that can be stolen or extracted from conquered parties) and in times of peace we go back to virtual currency.

If you think about it too, the survivalists hoarding weapons for WWIII are also hoarding gold and silver. The people who expect conflict tend to drift towards hard currency.

[Jboy2000000]

I actually found a video that mentions that book, and it turns out that the whole barter system was never proven to exist, merely theorized.

[LordBucket]

Why does money exist?

Money is a medium of control. Like air is the medium through which sound waves travel, money is the medium through which control of others passes.

For example, let's say I own an orchard. I have apples that I want picked. But I don't want to pick the myself. You don't want to pick apples either. What you want is for someone else to cook and serve you a meal. Nobody really wants to do that for you, but they can be leveraged into doing it in exchange for money. So, you do what you don't want to do: pick apples for me, in exchange for money, which you then give to somebody at a restaurant who doesn't want to cook and serve food to you, but does anyway in exchange for money that they can use to get somebody else to do something that don't want.

The primary purpose of money is to leverage other people into doing things they don't want to do to allow them to leverage other people into to doing what they don't want to do.

[Jboy2000000]

So money, in your idea at least, is just a crowbar that you can use to make people do stuff that makes them miserable.

[LordBucket]

So money, in your idea at least, is just a crowbar that you can use to make people do stuff that makes them miserable.

Making them miserable isn't the point. Manipulating them into serving you, by giving them the power to manipulate others into serving them in exchange, is the point

[Sergarr]

Weapons tend to do the same, but better. Are weapons money?

[Jboy2000000]

I never noticed it, but yeah, money does seem to be a lot like a weapon, so money is like a gun to the head, just a lot more legal.

[Loud Whispers]

Manipulating them into serving you, by giving them the power to manipulate others into serving them in exchange, is the point

That's not what money is, just one thing money can do. Money essentially as it is is debt. Family, government, religion, culture, philosophy, force and... Well a lot of things can be used to manipulate others into doing things they don't like doing, but they are separate from manipulation in and of itself.

[Cthulhu]

Like I said, violence is intrinsic to the concept of money, especially when it takes the form of debt.  This takes its most concrete form in slavery, and debt and violence and debt-violence resonates throughout our cultural consciousness (Think of Christ the Redeemer, whose sacrifice paid off the infinite debt of mankind's sins.  That comparison is made very literal in the parable of the unforgiving debtor.  Or think of Satan, whose entire MO is seducing people into unfavorable bargains)

People talk about the US's foreign debt like China owns us, but really, with something like  a third of China's GDP tied up in US debt, it's really the US who owns China.  They can't exactly take us to task on our debts, the results would be global economic havoc.

I think America is still an empire.  It has military bases all over the world and extracts tribute from its protectorates in the form of loans that no one pretends will ever be paid off. 

[Phmcw]

Money is a tangible representation of your bargaining power. Without money, how would you get peoples to  allocat ressources to things you want?

[Loud Whispers]

Like I said, violence is intrinsic to the concept of money, especially when it takes the form of debt.  This takes its most concrete form in slavery, and debt and violence and debt-violence resonates throughout our cultural consciousness (Think of Christ the Redeemer, whose sacrifice paid off the infinite debt of mankind's sins.  That comparison is made very literal in the parable of the unforgiving debtor.  Or think of Satan, whose entire MO is seducing people into unfavorable bargains)

Could you elaborate further on why violence is intrinsic to money? Where does slavery come into what money is? Serfdom shows violence is all that is needed for slavery and money need not factor into it. Lending someone money does not imply or necessitate violence without violence already being present and a currency built on debt is only worth something providing people trust in the system and offset their liabilities with the promise of future wealth. A simplified system would probably exist in a library, people borrow books (like taking a loan), if the book is not returned in time a fine or penalty accrues (mimicking interest somewhat), if the book is not returned at all (being analogous to a defaulting loan) the full cost of the book must be reimbursed with equity such as another copy of that book or money to pay back the cost of the book. Of course, if people borrow books and do not return them or provide collateral than the libronomy collapses. Where would violence factor into this analogy?

_{On a minor note Christ's sacrifice is about forgiveness not the repayment of sinful debt and debtful sin. The parable of the unforgiving debtor too is not about a debt of sin or the literal debt, but of the debtor's unwillingness to forgive his own debtee. Satan gonna Satan.}

People talk about the US's foreign debt like China owns us, but really, with something like  a third of China's GDP tied up in US debt, it's really the US who owns China.  They can't exactly take us to task on our debts, the results would be global economic havoc.
I think America is still an empire.  It has military bases all over the world and extracts tribute from its protectorates in the form of loans that no one pretends will ever be paid off. 

China has to get in line behind the Fed Reserve if it wants to own America. All else about America I'm not commenting until I can read a hell of a lot more into it.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

The bottom line is if you think money will be gone at any point you should begin to exchange all your earned dollars into silver coinage.

Atleast that's what I'm doing, and not just because I like a lockbox of dubloons.

[BlindKitty]

(Think of Christ the Redeemer, whose sacrifice paid off the infinite debt of mankind's sins.  That comparison is made very literal in the parable of the unforgiving debtor.  Or think of Satan, whose entire MO is seducing people into unfavorable bargains)

Actually, no, this is not Satan's MO. He doesn't seduce people into any bargains at all; he tries to make them step outside boundaries set by God, and no bargains are in there whatsoever. At least in the Bible, which is kinda source material for that. All the Faustian rage of power for soul is much later concept with little root in that source material.

[Angle]

While you wouldn't strictly need money, you'd need something similar. Otherwise, whats to keep people from just grabbing whatever they want and putting in no work whatsoever? There are various other solutions, though. The biggest other example would be the soviet planned economy. That one didn't work out very well for a number of reasons. For one thing, they didn't have a very good political system, so corruption and terrible decisions were endemic. This also meant they had a hard time getting accurate information about what they had and didn't have and what they could and couldn't do. They also had trouble because they're planned economy wasn't very responsive- it was just too big and unwieldy too work well, even without the Kleptocrats.

It does bring an interesting idea to mind, though- Perhaps a system of small enterprises, operating without money. Instead, they "Subscribe" to a Logistics Enterprise, that takes care of distributing goods between them. If you don't like the Logistics enterprise you've been working with, switch to a different one. The logistics can even trade amongst themselves, or an enterprise could subscribe to two different ones. In essence, a number of parallel, competing and cooperating planned economies. This system would need very thorough transparency, so that everyone involved can be sure no one else is cheating. And there would be additional challenges, particularly when it comes to paying your workers- perhaps a limited form of currency would be useful there. I'm thinking something that would be created on the spot by the people paying, and then consumed completely when a worker spends it. There would be regulations to how much a company can pay their workers, to encourage efficiency.

Anyway, it's an interesting idea. It needs a lot of work, and would be complicated and difficult to implement, but it's interesting to think about.