- Mats K
- Oslo
- Norway
This conversation is closed.
Is There a Future for Money?
In our digital age, where banks and even nations fail through reckless monetary spending and policies, it seems that our monetary system is becoming the big elephant in the room, yes even obsolete. Automation replacing humans seems to be one of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism and may be the demise of the system itself leaving the looming possibility of fascism or military dictatorship to arise and flourish if we fail to arrive at any alternatives.
While some believe taking us back to the gold standard will fix things, and others believe that debt forgiveness is the solution, we hear talks about access/resource based economies, where we simply declare all of Earth's resources as the common heritage of mankind and make goods and services available to all without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude, through technological abundance.
In fact, let's rephrase the question. At what point in the future do you think that our technology will make automated systems possible and allow us to move out of a monetary system?
gerard3161 jones
I mean that we care about eachother, sometimes words have more value then money.
Think this is possible with little effort to help eachother in life. People have to share what they feel,working together,concern about our environment,community etc.
We only need the money for basic needs to live a normal life like food, a house,healthcare etc.
At this time the world needs only love and this we cant buy,we just have to make a little effort to start with and will cost nothing.
Gail .
Mathematicians and economists are saying that our economy cannot be sustained any longer than 2030 at the outside. (less than 20 years from now) but MANY are very worried that collapse is just around the corner. But for as long as people are ignorant about what's going on, it can be sustained until there are not enough consumers. Faith is holding it up now - faith brought about by ignorance.
Now add bad farming practices to the mix - resulting in polluted & unsafe aquifers along with the loss of topsoil - all encouraged by our current economic policy. Now add global warming into the mix. Now add spiraling over-population into the mix. We're headed for a perfect storm, and again experts are saying that all will come to a head no later than 2030, when at least 28% of the earth's population will be starving/thirsting to death, and the good ol' USA will not be immune, nor will Europe.
People should be learning about economics today, because it might well be fundamental to our survival as a species. The current paradigm was created with the need for poverty built in. The poor are the worker class. Adam Smith proposed that for his model to work, that the greater number of the children of the "race of workers" would have to die (of poverty related issues).
People who are not awakened (self-aware) cannot see that we are committing suicide. No wonder the conspiracy theorists are saying that the illuminati will give us a great war or a plague to thin our numbers. Too many poor people will collapse the economy, and automation is giving us too many poor people.
$$$ is an unsustainable idea.
Mats K
AbdelRahman Siddig
Suketu Shah
This is an excellent thought and i am for it and in complete line with your thoughts and i also believe that this is the only way to create awareness in all country. now the next step would be how to set up these awareness through internet media and be a part of that movement... all over the world...
Mats K
David Felcan
I think we need to have some agreement about the purpose of money. To my mind, the purpose of money is that it allocates the products of human and machine labor to various peoples. Whether you like money or hate it, or think its fair or unfair, I think that we can generally agree that it currently does this.
You are positing that essentially technology will eventually become so productive that there will be no limits, and therefore no need to decide who gets what because everyone will be able to have everything that they want.
But there isn't a limit on human need (and there are still many fixed resources - land, water, air, energy, etc.), so I don't see money becoming obsolete in the sense of it providing a way to distribute goods and services. What an entirely automated society does obsolete is the fact that money can be earned through some sort of labor. We are positing now a future where there are thinking machines that can do creative/informational/research labor as well as producing all physical goods.
In such a society, no one can make any claims to more resources than anyone else, because everyone is equally (non) productive. At least that the reasoning for inequality in a capitalist system. One fair system is for everyone to receive the same stipend - a completely egalitarian society. Another idea is to distribute money based on some other system, like moral worth (niceness = cash?) or some amorphous concept of "need". But this really begs the question of who or what decides these other criterion.
Anyway, I feel to advance the conversation, its not so much about the death of money as it is about the death of work and the death of money from work.
Craig Patterson
Mats K
That's because the "most intelligent" people in the current socioeconomic system are the economists and they see natural resources and what naturally keeps us alive as an externality. If you cannot profit on it, it's basically an externality. The fact is that the monetary system is totally disconnected with the real world and the preservation of resources. It simply doesn't give a damn. And it's the system that perpetuate this kinda behavior. It's not people that are unsane, it's the system. It has always been.
pat gilbert
Mats K
pat gilbert
All resources become scarce.
Truong Thanh Chung
Craig Patterson
Mats K
Comment deleted
Mats K
Justin Elkin
Comment deleted
Mats K
Bob Stiglitz
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
Matthew Logie
If we start thinking about what is required for modern living the first step would be to get to a situation where electricity can be free. Some ideas on the not so distant horizon that have potential include fusion energy, the process that can power stars for billions of years. I also like the idea of vibration scavenging, it could be placed anywhere and everywhere humans are. Where the simple act of moving could provide the power to run common devices.
If electricity can become free the next step would be to be able to automate a process of creating food such as the replicator that has been mention. From there you then need free housing.
Some of these are borderline science-ficton ideas such as star trek or matrix-esque(without the machine overlords) However science fiction has a history of becoming science fact where people realise the potential of an idea and then make it reality.
If basic human needs can become free then there is scientific endeavour, luxury items and entertainment, with the actual materials required to create them being free all that is left are ideas.
The established rich and powerful are likely to try and resist such changes, however if we continue to progress and manage to avoid destroying ourselves or decending into endless conflict or war, I think that it is ultimately inevitable.
Maxwell Horne
Personally, I love the idea. Technology, as we've seen, increases exponentially with time. To answer your second question would be to imply that I see the best situation as the inevitable one; which isn't the case. People are, by nature, greedy. They hoard what they don't need, that could be given to others. Through a system of giving to others, contributing voluntarily (with no monetary incentive), helping others and being a good neighbor, we can all shift the equilibrium of the planet to a more hospitable and pleasant environment. Just as most kids would never start smoking if they never saw anyone smoke, more and more, people would begin doing good around them without selfish intentions if they saw more people doing so. I know this, because I'm a product of said phenomenon.
Justin Elkin
stuart hoffman
Imad Atwi
Luke Hobbs
Krisztián Pintér
Mats K
James Zhang
So if there is a way to make everyone happy, of course people would vouch for this solution, but as of right now, it's impossible. Until we figure out how to get to that Utopian state, money is the best solution we got so far, despite the greedy influences it has.
Kirill Rebrov
Look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. What are at the bottom? Physiological and safety needs. My money satisfy these needs. While they satisfied I don’t need money. Do you think I have no reason to live? I can create, develop(self-actualisation by Maslow), love and being loved(love, belonging by Maslow). Scarcity only creates these basic needs(physiological and safety). The real life begins when human satisfies his higher needs. So the really happy people today are those whose job satisfies both their higher and basic needs. And there are always bored people. In scarcity and post-scarcity. Who have only their basic needs.
>Until we figure out how to get to that Utopian state, money is the best solution we got so far
I agree. Post-scarcity has very high technological requirements. Firstly we must reach this technological level. I love money. In this society they help me satisfy my higher needs.
Mats K
James Zhang
Luke Hobbs
Mats K
Colleen Steen
This is a response to your comment:
"I'm hoping we keep money, but lose the hypnotic power it has over us, in making us believe it has a sacred power - one which is really just implied. No man has power over another except that which we choose to give".
I wholeheartedly agree...nothing has power over us unless we give it/them power, and that is our choice in each and every moment.
BTW,
I apparently misunderstood/misinterpreted your comment in that other discussion, and now it is closed. I was going to send you an e-mail, and you do not have that feature in your profile. So, I'll tell you here....I got it with your explanation.....thanks:>)
henrik larson
Colleen Steen
I would say empowering and building confidence in people is good, and that of course supports a lot of other good things in one's life as well. What do you think?
Luke Hobbs
Colleen Steen
That is very unfortunate, and I guess I'm not surprised. I believe governments often try to make people more dependant....easier to control....right? I believe the welfare/public assistance system here in the US keeps people poor and dependant, and that is not what it was designed to do. I generally do not believe that people are intentionally "evil". I just don't think they are thinking about the long term ramifications to the people they are disempowering or to the whole. We cannot "judge on intent", because we don't actually know what the intent is....do we?
henrik larson
In our world of accelerating change, I think it´s increasingly important that we elevate people above survival mode. The job-market will probably continue to be disrupted at exponential rates, and we need to be very altruistic to help each other adapt to this brave new world. I believe everyone is beautiful in their own way, and don´t want to see my fellows loose the race against the machine. So I believe we should just empower people financially, with money, through citizens dividends or basic incomes or something like that, divide the wealth surplus, and make the transition to a better world a little smoother, and give each other time to adapt, and the economic resources and confidence to be altruistic and friends and work together to reinvent our identities and find new niches. I wholeheartedly believe in this :)
Colleen Steen
Luke Hobbs
henrik larson
>I do not agree with empowering people with too much money in the beginning of this >process, for the simple reason that many people do not have money because they are >poor managers of money.
I think economic anxiety is a root to "their" poor management "skills", lack of "economic" freedom has forced them/us to become less then our "full potential".
Future generations will be better managers :)
Wade Crum
Money (Power) Trumps Technological Abundance. We must first unlearn our concepts of "Free". Absolute freedom can not exist. It can only be exchanged. http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/biobookener1.html. Will we ever be able to define a fair exchange? If I'm a corn farmer and I want exchange a certain amount of my corn to get my roof fixed, How much corn would it take to pay the roofers. The future of money could be based on the answer to corn for roofers. So we could base it on thermodynamics. What was the energy expenditure and time required to produce the corn VS the energy expenditure to produce the materials to fix the roof including the act of fixing the roof. Therfore, I conclude: Energy is the next currency.
Krisztián Pintér
Mats K
Wade Crum
Scott Koenraadt
Because if that occured people couldn't do what they truly wanted with their lives
Mats K
Scott Koenraadt
Mats K
Wade Crum
Valentina Biagini
Although it appears to still HAVE some value (even though almost only virtual), it IS NOT a Value.
(as far as mushrooms and so forth, I think this is NOT the place for insults...)
Jon Ho
Regarding the musroom thingy, sarcasm and insults are two faces of the same coin. One is used to convey a feeling of contempt for the incredulous ideas or situation one is subjected to, while the other is used to dehumanized and degrade the recipient. Sarcasm may be appropriate or inappropriate, though this is generally a function of one's point of view.
Yes, I was being sarcastic, in case you can't tell from my dry sense of dark humor and puns and fancy wordplay and whatnots. Far be it for me to insult him, oh no! For I DO agree he has some points in there, but the way he presented it in the jumbled up snippets of idea and phrases that rivals, nay, exceed the most extreme of schizophrenic rantings warrants a mechanism to defuse it; the mechanism I chose in this instance was sarcasm.
Which leads me to believe that English is probably not your native language, am I correct? Perhaps that is why you have misunderstood and misconstrued the fine subtleties in my sarcastic remarks. ;P
Krisztián Pintér
Mats K
Krisztián Pintér
Scott Koenraadt
agriculture is an absolute necessity, in fact it is the foundation for civilization
Krisztián Pintér
Mitch SMith
Let's say that you live in Greece or Spain, and that you perceive that the currency of the Euro contains a dynamic that syphons the value from your country.
So you need to disconnect from the flaw in the Euro - to do this, you abandon the Euro for a currency that does not recognise value balances external to your country.
Let's assume that the national government is incapable of doing this because of commitments it has made.
So a return to the pre-Euro currency is not an option - it would violate governmental treaties. So instead of top-down from government, you implement the new currency bottum up from local communities with a new label that divorces it from treaties.
So, you get a vew local producers to agree to participate. For this you would need some food producers, some buyilding supply producers, some energy producers and a team of utility procurers. The best place to implement this is in teh local distribution providers - the retailers.
The initial community of the new currency need not be large, but the first rule would be that they do value exchange between each other exclusively in the new currency.
This has the affect of divorcing the community from external inflationary/deflationary affects.
Then you promote the stability of the new currency to invite others to join.
You set up a discriminatory exchange rule that discourages echange with other economies - such that the only way to participate is to adopt the currency exclusively.
This new currency would have hard rules to prevent value syphoning via usury, so there would be strict laws about borowing/lending and speculation.
The net result is that the agregate value generated by the community remains within the community. The attendent increase in life-quality would quickly promote inclusion and eventually subsume all other currencies.
But the currency regulator becomes the absolute power.
Mats K
Mitch SMith
What we as humans have to realise (and pretty soon) is that money is an expression of farming.
What is farming? The root principle of farming is the creation of the closed system.
The farmer defines an area in which the flow of energy is prevented from interacting with flows outside the defined area.
A currency is one such closed system - all who participate in teh currency are farmed by the currency issuer/regulator.
So you can see that both currency and property arise from farming.
We have been doing this as a species for 10,000 years or more, but at this point we have run out of "property" - we need to examine the dynamic and start looking at re-opening some of our systems.
This is the root cause of the challenges facing humanity right now. If we don't open our eyes and admit that the closed model has crashed, we will fail to see the opportunity to adjust the model.
So let's begin by getting eyes opened.
Mats K
Mitch SMith
De Bono would say that critical thinking only takes you part of the way becasue it is retrospective in nature.
In that vein he observes that sequential ordering of components as they present results in a structure that cannot be sustained - a component will arrive that violates the plan. In the ideal circumstance, a new plan is made and the whole structure is dismantled and re-built according to the new plan.
Of course, the resources required to do that are prohibitive, so it continues to build in an unballanced way till the entire structure collapses.
This would suggest an endless cycle of build and collapse.
But there's another way.
Think of it as a computational challenge.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/stephen_wolfram_computing_a_theory_of_everything.html
Rather than man-handle each new circumstance into a structure according to a plan, put together a dynamic system that can adapt itself to unexpected components as they arise. A thing that determines its own plan as it evolves.
With the paradigm of farming, we had just such an adaptive system, however, it was insufficient when presented with the expiry of available "property" in which to expand - thus we now see the internet being twisted to create some desparate new "property" to expand into. It can't work of course, because you can't eat binary data.
The flaw is growth.
So we need a computational paradigm that is not dependent on growth.
We should begin by dismantiling the farming paradigm to determine its functional parts then re-assemble them to remove the growth requirement.
Unlike the "critical thinking " method, we are not dismantling the entire existing structure, we are simply re-configuring a system - small functional tweaks that do not require a massive amount of resources.
Once the new dynamic structure is assembled - you just let it loose and if it works it will consume the old model.
OK - let's get started. What are the functional parts of the farming paradigm?
Krisztián Pintér
what the heck this sentence means? in what sense automation creates paradox? how would that a contradiction and between what? and how would that affect the monetary system? how would the monetary system's collapse or reform alleviate a problem that is fundamental to capitalism or automation? what does that mean for an economy to be "monetary based"?
"alternative economies such as Bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency where goods and services are purchased without the exchange of any physical currency"
how would bitcoin be an alternative economy? how bitcoin changes available resources, production, capital stock, transportation methods, consumer habits or any other aspect of the economy? why do we need bitcoin to get rid of physical currency? isn't a bank account or credit card just as information technology as bitcoin is?
Mats K
I agree that Bitcoin isn't any valid replacement for the money system, in fact it's the same thing only digital. I am aware of this, but I kept it in there since there seems to be a consensus that a "new" way of distributing currencies is what is needed to fix the economy and a degree of attention has been given to namely Bitcoin and other digital currencies. This is the only reason I kept it in there.
Krisztián Pintér
i don't about this part, it is to be taken literally, or it is some metaphoric imagery?
"money system has to constantly circulate in order to sustain itself."
does it have a meaning? how could a system circulate? what would the implications of that be? money circulates, so? of course it does, it is the medium of exchange. its essence that it is just goes around. so what?
"There will come a time called the Gaussian curve where employment is stagnating"
curves are not times. what gaussian? do you actually know what a gaussian curve is? why would employment stagnate because of a curve? why would employment ever increase? why would it be lower than we want? unless of course some external force prevents people from finding a job. but in a free market, what would prevent people from working?
"capitalism ... didn't take into account the possibility of automation"
wow. capitalism is the result of automation. that might cause someone to question the validity of your claims.
and the final question: what money has got to do with all this? without money, there would be no automation? there would be no problem of distributing resources and goods? you are fighting with demons that don't exist. i strongly recommend you to follow up on how money works and how capitalism works. because your knowledge is lacking. badly. and i would not recommend 99% or venus project or any other such crap. i mean real knowledge and real science.
you can start with murray rothbard's the mystery of banking. also matt ridley's TED talk here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html
Kirill Rebrov
pat gilbert
Kirill
How many jobs were there at the industrial revolution? How many are there now? Nope the job demand increases because of technology and off-shoring. The problem is that us mericans is too stupid and lazy to get the jobs.
Kirill Rebrov
More can be found in my blog post http://techains.blogspot.com/2012/08/manufacturing-paradigm-shifts.html
I tried to argue post-scarcity by the example of manufacture technological evolution and how it will affect the economy. But I am going to write more thoughts about post-scarcity because the subject is both interesting and complicated.