You can tell this is a work of fiction because ancap actually realises they’re wrong in the end
Thats not what they call themselves, you know. Be respectful.
Oh, sorry. How could I forget that the proper term is “shitbag”
‘Ephebophile’. Be respectful, asshole.
I dont agree that we need money. Sure, we need money under todays machine, but the machine can be dissolved.
Money in its most basic form, is simply an IOU used to facilitate trade, instead of relying on a fractal of barter arrangements. Strip away all the systems and mechanisms we’ve surrounded it with, and I still don’t see how you are going to replace that core functionality until a star-trek style post-scarcity is actually achieved.
The role of money is to create a trustless system. I think a trustful system would better serve us. We can do this through democratic confederalism, which is a system where communities of responsibilities collaborate without the need of money.
The role of money is not about trust, it’s about simplifying exchanges. So if I’m a potato farmer in need of a chicken for dinner, I can just buy it from the chicken farmer. Without money, I would have to go to the chicken farmer, find out that he needs lumber, go to the sawmill, find out what he needs, and so-on until I find someone along the chain that actually needs my potatoes. That setup may be doable when we’re just talking about potatoes, but how are you going to scale that up and keep track of it amongst the 1000 or so people directly involved in making your car?
Without money, I would have to go to the chicken farmer, find out that he needs lumber, go to the sawmill, find out what he needs, and so-on until I find someone along the chain that actually needs my potatoes.
No, in a system of trust you’d go to the chicken farmer and say “hey can I have a chicken, I’ll get you back however I can” and he gives you a chicken. Then you try to ways to help him out until you’ve felt you repaid your “debt”. This is how exchange worked before money under tribal systems. Not every exchange has to be transactional, that’s just something capitalism tries to instill in us.
Yes but you’re saying exactly the same thing he’s saying…
Then you try to ways to help him out until you’ve felt you repaid your “debt”.
So you have your debt to the chicken farmer. You try to find ways to help him, and he says: I don’t really need anything much, maybe some lumber is the only thing I need. So now you go to the sawmill, get lumber from them, transfer the debt to them. But now you’re in debt with the sawmill, and the cycle continues…
Your debt thing changes exactly nothing, you still need to go around until you find someone who needs your potatoes. It just changes the time at which you need to do it.
People never have just one need, and you can also repay the “debt” with your labor not just other goods. He may say I need lumber, but you could say “I don’t have lumber but I can help around the farm, I can cook you some meals, I can watch your kids, take your cows to pasture, etc.”. If you are a productive member of society you or the person can find some way to repay the debt. If you are utterly useless to them then they won’t give you the chicken or may give it to you as charity, but most people aren’t useless. I can think of ten things around my house that pretty much any able bodied person could do and that would be helpful to me.
Also it doesn’t have to be immediately exchanged, again this is built off trust. Maybe the farmer doesn’t need help now but come harvest time he’ll need some extra hands. Same with the potatoes, he may not need potatoes now but he’ll probably want some eventually.
You can see this reciprocity in a lot of close relationships, especially within families. You may never exchange money with a person but you get stuff for them, make stuff for them and do stuff for them under the assumption that they’ll get you back. It may not completely even out in monetary terms but your fine with it because it simplifies a lot of things.
Yeah, but if you love growing potatoes, but you hate watching the kids, cooking meals, take cows to pasture, it’s so much nicer to just be able to pay in potatoes than needing to do so much shit you don’t like.
No it isn’t. There’s a reason the same concept of assigning value to some agreed upon thing, and then exchanging those things for goods and services has come up in just about every time a civilization gets big enough and advanced enough for bartering to get too complicated.
Everything else that surrounds that core concept is a complexity added on top that isn’t inherently necessary to the core concept of money.
It didn’t happen in Andean civilizations like the inca and they became pretty advanced and were able to move goods across vast distances. They weren’t bartering either, they lived under a sort of communism where the people of a community shared there produce while giving a bit up to the state which would warehouse some of it for hard times and give the rest to nobles.
I don’t think meso American civilization had money either.
The concept of money isn’t natural, it’s just very viral as it spreads across trade routes, so it easily spread to all old world civilizations, which people mistakenly assume is all civilization.
Meso American civilization did have money in the form of cacao beans though, and they were largely producing for exchange (there was even a merchant strata), arguably to a higher degree than even feudal societies in Europe. Money doesn’t have to be slips of paper, it can be just another commodity (for the longest time in the western world those being gold, silver, copper, etc).
It also wasn’t communistic in any way unless you subscribe to the belief that communism is when government does stuff. The “giving a bit up to the state” a tributary system that isn’t unique to Meso America, it’s purpose not being to “distribute according to the need” but crisis management and self-stabilization.
Also, while money as a whole isn’t natural, it develops naturally as a necessity for commodity production.
Regardless of what is the main role of money, it still has the trustless characteristics which means that it is playing into the hands of might and machine. The more a society revolves around money, the better the position for might and machine.
In opposition to might, I believe it is better to figure how we become as little dependent on money as possible.
Just note that I am an ancarist, I believe in a society without cars. Or for that matter, any production that would require the structure of the machine. So Id be against asphalt, fertilizers, and sement to mention a few.
I believe in a society without cars. Or for that matter, any production that would require the structure of the machine. So Id be against asphalt, fertilizers, and sement to mention a few.
Sounds like what you are describing is doing away with modernity altogether. And that’s where you lose me and probably most people on the planet. There’s no way I’m going to endorse reverting back subsistence farmers. We already know that doesn’t solve anything. Pre modern civilizations were far from peaceful utopias.
The difference is that we are now much more aware of diverse farming. Moving away from monoculture will strengthen both our ecosystems and humanity. If we cling to monoculture and oil, it will be our downfall.
The point just flew over your head in a 747. You ask the average person in any developed country if they want to give up all modern technology and go be a farmer, they’ll just laugh at you. Try to force them, and that laughing will stop real quick.
Yeah getting rid of money is tricky if we’re talking doing away with commodity production entirely, but as a point of transition to a purely production for use society with no exchange there are ideas of using labor vouchers instead.
It makes sense considering (in a Marxist economic sense) that value is socially necessary labor hours so you’re eliminating some of the general glamour that money form provides, avoids concentration given how they’re consumed on use, etc, and might be a good in-between step while things are still scarce (though it doesn’t abolish value).
given how they’re consumed on use, etc
How’s that supposed to work, really?
Suppose I’ve used some of my labor to produce widgets. You want a widget without having to make one yourself, so you give me some of your labor vouchers in exchange for it. And then the labor vouchers you gave me just … go away? Seems like from my perspective, accepting labor vouchers as payment is worthless and I don’t get anything out of it.
Nah, it’d be more akin to:
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You contribute labor to produce widgets that belong to social stock from the outset (the widget does not belong to you as private property)
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You receive labor voucher for your work which is a claim to a specific portion of consumer goods to satisfy your own needs
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Me, who has a labor voucher from different work walks into a distribution center and takes the widget, and the labor time worth of the widget gets subtracted from my voucher. That portion gets consumed permanently and doesn’t go to anyone.
What you described was essentially a scenario where goods were still produced as commodities for exchange (generalized form being capitalism) or where private property still existed. In that case yeah, money remains necessary.
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The labor vouchers are printed on delicious and expiring cheese.
what is an IOU?
Sorry, just an old-school acronym for “I owe you”. An old
Money relies on miltarized exploitative ownership. Did not exist until that. Is a military logitics tech, not civil society.
no taxation when we all work for the commen good and to provide for each other
You dropped this mate \ try using two of them to get it to work.
Thanks, I fixed it 👍
If your country is a financial sovereign -ie has a monopoly over its currency - then taxation’s only role is to create demand for that currency. If you don’t pay taxes in the currency of your sovereign, it will throw you in jail. The concept of ‘my tax dollar pays for your salary, Officer’ is nonsense on a Federal level. The government democratically decides what projects it will finance, and the central bank pays the invoices thereof, with money it creates from thin air. People/companies accept the governments money for their service because they are assured the govenment will accept their taxpayments in the same currency… That is how money enters the system, the sovereign creates it. But on a State level though ‘my tax dollar’ is very real, coz the State is not a financial sovereign! While a State can go broke a finan sovereign can never accrue real debt in its own coin unless it chooses so. To pay interest to the financial sector, or pay into pension funds. A budget deficit is actually wealth that a sovereign injects into its society not sth that needs paying back.
It’s called MMT and you should study it.
NeoClassics say : the world has infinte resources, but… there’s not enough money. We have to get the money FIRST!!!
MMT says the inverse: money is created on 12 magic computers as Elon learned, thats easy. The hard part is finding the real resources. If they’re scarce, what are our priorities as a demicracy ? That’s the better question!
The conclusion of this logic is that work is slavery, and taxation the tool to oppress it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
