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IQ of 165? Drive to understand? Analysis based on deep study? New ideas? Please. (And I do source where I have source and not merely my analysis - those have been ignored... Meh. Whatever, boncho. You're right.)
OMG! I was asked to appear on The Colbert Report! I was posting about the abundance paradigm, and the path to get there, what to expect and all – posting all that on the Colbert Nation forum, and it seems that Stephen Colbert himself became intrigued! He offered me the Colbert Bump! I will be flown to NYC – still unclear when exactly – to prepare for and appear on his show! I am so excited!
I did notice a post about S. Colbert as a character in the book is that true? If so he has been discussed here allot lately.
Amaterasu reply:
Yup. He is a character. And I DID offer him first read. (I have several connections...) I never heard from him and he lost out.
AMATERASU
STEPHEN HAS NO CLUE WHO YOU ARE. HE DOES NOT READ THE FORUMS.
holy doodles, delusional much
Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by Amaterasu
IQ of 165? Drive to understand? Analysis based on deep study? New ideas? Please. (And I do source where I have source and not merely my analysis - those have been ignored... Meh. Whatever, boncho. You're right.)
Where are the references to your "deep study"? Bibliographies, statistical analysis, something, etc...
Do you believe Youtube videos are references? Because they are not. And you plaster them all over different forums trying to support this idea.
OMG! I was asked to appear on The Colbert Report! I was posting about the abundance paradigm, and the path to get there, what to expect and all – posting all that on the Colbert Nation forum, and it seems that Stephen Colbert himself became intrigued! He offered me the Colbert Bump! I will be flown to NYC – still unclear when exactly – to prepare for and appear on his show! I am so excited!
Excerpt from your "book" ^^
Who exactly was on Colbert? Where is the clip. Post it for everyone.
I don't know how you claiming to have a high IQ has anything to do with what you are talking about. But that is your entire platform, distraction!
When confronted with reality you turn to little semantic ramblings that you think will support your stance. Actions of a grifter, through and through.
If you want to claim that the "Ethical Planetary Platform" is based on reality, than show it. If not, represent it for what it is, fiction.
Stop screwing with gullible people's heads.
Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by boncho
I did notice a post about S. Colbert as a character in the book is that true? If so he has been discussed here allot lately.
Amaterasu reply:
Yup. He is a character. And I DID offer him first read. (I have several connections...) I never heard from him and he lost out.
Open Letter to Colbert from you
Reply from someone on the Colbert forum:
AMATERASU
STEPHEN HAS NO CLUE WHO YOU ARE. HE DOES NOT READ THE FORUMS.
holy doodles, delusional much
So you tell people in one forum you have "connections" to Colbert, but you get laughed off another forum (his forum), and yet your book is supposed to be about "Ethics".
I don't understand how that one works. Is lying and making up stuff okay in your "ethical" world?
12
I still don't understand why you don't write fiction with this idea, it is great fiction and has the potential to be read by many. I seriously question your judgement.
edit on 7-4-2011 by boncho because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by Amaterasu
reply to post by boncho
I almost didn't deign to respond. You presume much. I had connections, and if they were tenuous, so what. I tried. Nothing came of it, just as I said in my post. Not all the connections One thinks One has are intact, and I presume that this was a case of that happening - connections no longer intact.
I think it's hysterical how far you reach, bonch. These nitpicks of yours. Off the wall nitpicks!
Anyway... You're right. Off you go then.
Originally posted by Amaterasu
Originally posted by Neo_Serf
*edit thought i had the quote thing down but apprarently not. appologies for my akwardness.*
Well... You can ORDER them. But I think you would not get them. You are using absurdities as if they are reasonable. You would have no need or use for all these robots - well, unless they're nanorobots... But that's not what you're saying.
Does not compute. You give me no answer to my question. You think I will not get them. You provide no insight as to how my request will be processed (and by who) and denied. You simply assert that I probably wont, and you seem quite comfortable in not providing a reason why I wont. Then you gloss it over by labeling the whole notion 'absurd', even though you provided a half answer first, thus telling me that you didnt actually find the query to be unworthy of a reasonable response, as you should have if the question truly was absurd.
If its absurd to suggest, why offer a reasonable answer? The reason I ask is the same reason I asked to begin with - because you have no reasonable solution to my problem besides the bliss wand.
Who said anything about "infinite?"
YOU DID! Remember? Scarcity does not exist!
Effectively, yes, we do have infinite gold. Back in the 1970's we transmuted lead into gold. The problem was not so much how to do it, but that, because the energy required to do it cost so much, an ounce would have cost something on the order of a million dollars. With that cost of energy removed, we can transmute most anything into gold.
So currently we cannot transmute stuff into gold because energy is relatively scarce. With neat infitnite energy, of course gold would not longer be the standard as its standard rests mostly on its relative scarcity. But infinite energy does not currently exist, as far as I know, and thus basing your *entire* platform on non existence is *pure fantasy*.
Show me free energy and Ill show you the monetary input that made it possible, Until scarcity is elimited *totally* (which you admit is not conceivably possible due to the limit of lobster in the sea) there must be a mode of exchange.
I did not, nor have I ever said "limitless," "infinite" (except effectively, as in gold), or any other descriptor meaning open-ended. I said "abundant." "Abundant" means enough to provide fully the basic needs for all, and have plenty left over - to the tune of basic needs ten times over.
By your standard of abundance, food, medicine and shelter are all abundant currently. We *could* already meet the basic needs of the destitute people you uphold as every persons personal shame. I know you will ascribe the misallocation of these vital resources to money itself, but let me cut you off at the pass, and I will assert this as fact without going into the valid reasoning and evidence - the real reason people starve, go homeless and die of malaria is not due to money, it is in fact due to the violent minority that currently control money and use it as a genocial weapon against those money should in truth be serving and uplifting. The massive poverty and starvation caused by western sunbsidies in agriculture is not due to the mechanism of value exchange which is money, but instead is inflicted by the hyper violence of the state that hugely subsidises (through involuntary taxation backed by guns) western farming and thus gives no room for 3rd world farms to compete in and thus advance. Farm subsidies in the west, a system enforced through institutional violence (using money as a captive weaponized facilitator) is likely responsible for more deaths than all wars combined in the 20th century.
Again, this is not moneys fault. The fault lies in those who support the state, and thus violence, not paper notes in ones back pocket.
The idea is not that we can accommodate absurdities, but that poverty will be vanquished - as well as taxes.
If an effect of free enegy is the elimination of poverty, then thats awesome. I think a paralelle could be drawn between first world poor, who have a relative abundance of food (and thus never starve) compared to third world poor, who starve en mass. If technology could be used to raise the bar for all in a sustainable way to a level beyond mere survival, that would of course be awesome. I just dont your demacation point between sacrcity (artificial or not) to relative abundance. (and if scarcity is largely artificial, it stands to reason that it is made this way by some entity that does not wish humanity to live in abundance, and thus relying on abundance as an inevitability would be nieve, as humanity would be actively opposed in naturally reaching abundance.)
And reasonable request will be delivered in a reasonable length of time. Any absurd request is likely to go unfulfilled. You may have to wait for lobster - depends on the availability. But you will not have to wait for food, clothing, housing. That will be yours for the asking.
Again, my question is not *if* my demands will be delivered, as we have established that some system must determine if i receive my allocation or not. My question is *by what standard, and by who* is this decision made?
Its really quite important that you answer this question clearly. If I order 10 000 lobsters from my personal robot attendant, within your abundance paradigm, where along the line of actions and while my order be declined? On what grounds, and by whom?
Whereas with money, no one would order 10 000 lobsters because such an investment would be plain stupid, all rational arguements aside. If I did posses the necessary capital to do such a thing, I would likely bankrupt immediately with 9995 rotting lobsters on my hands.
Not so in abundance, right?
that give them bliss to work on.
Could a form of virtuous bliss be measurable in dollars?
As for abundance, it surely does exist, but we are held back from it by the system of money. Money is a representation of energy expended. With an effectively infinite source of energy, the need for money (to account for it's being expended) will become moot. We have the plenum energy, and many have shown ways (and there are several) to extract it, and if we were allowed to have that technology for peaceful application, we would no longer be barred (virtually all of us) from the lifestyle of the power elite.
Could I buy one of these infinite energy motors in dollars and feed 10 starving people on its energy, and still remain virtuous?
If money is evil, are the above actions also evil?
would ever HAVE to work
A human can only rightfully be judged by what he/she takes in relation to what he/she produces. If one if a net suprlus to himself and thus others, he can be judged as moral. If he is a net drain to those around him and lives as a human parasite, he can be seen as immoral. If production is rendered irrelevant by abundance, we can move the yardstick. Until then, every person must produce at least as much as they consume if they wish to be on the nobeler side of humanity.
Yeah, baby, we have a marvelously abundant universe. We just need a paradigm of living in it.
That paradigm is called true freedom and does not require robots of any kind. (although robiods would be a great advantage to a free people)
Have you ever had both the experience of having no money and seeing all the things to want out there and wanting many of them such that it aches - and having lots of money to spend and looking at all the things to want out there and finding nothing that you really want enough to spend money on them? I have.
When I have no money I feel the sensation of helplessness in that I have nothing tangible to offer strangers in return for their good which I require. (food, shelter, ect) When I exchange my value as a worker for my bosses value as an organizer, i relish my justly earned paycheck that symbolizes all my concerntrated investment into a service that my customers value. My surplus of 'wealth' (which is minusule compared to some and lavish compared to others) gives me a sensation of personal value - i feel my skills and time invested are repaid in kind. This surplus in basic living that Im blessed to have access to (due to relative monetary freedom) allow me to do things a mere wage slave could never hope to - to take time off to enjoy the intangibles such as hiking in the wild, to invest in health products most of humanity could never dream of, living or past. Surplus allows me to tip my local servicers and thus add to the local economy. In short, surplus allows me to not only pay my own way and thus rely on no one, but it allows my independance to further the independence of other producers, who add earned value to my life and thus i return it in kind. Surplus of investment, represented in dollars and gains voluntarily, allows me both freedom of action, and freedom of virtue.
If abundance makes the above obsolete, then bring it on!
In abundance, most of Us will find that We are content - comfortable - with very few things.
Abundance and 'very few things' are not compatible terms.
And as for robots... What if we took all the money we're spending on war and instead, put it into peaceful, open-source efforts to build robots to do what We want to do on this planet? I offer ideas here. If the goal is to get rid of money, what does it matter where the money comes from?
The goal is not to get rid of money, the goal is to live virtuously. If virtue can be measured, in voluntary cases, to be a measure of virtue, getting rid of money would necessarily eliminate any virtue gained by the symbol of 'money'.
You make it sound as if every one of us has a whole lot of money to throw around. Golly gee. I'm free to throw my money in any direction I want. While technically true, the fact is that virtually all Humans on this planet are not so disencumbered. I will speak statistically here:
So you imply that money could indeed serve man, if it were just held by more people and less concentrated in the hands of the elite?
Agreed! That money is controlled currently by the elite does not invalidate the concept of money, just as the current monoploy of firepower held by the elite does not invalidate the concept of self defence secured by weaponry. A tool is a tool, by whom it is weilded and to what end is the issue, not the tool itself. (as, once invented, it will always exist. No problem is solved by monopolizing the use of dominant technology)
We all worry about paying the bills and holding what we have together, dependent on money(/power/energy), and many are losing their grip as we type. The System is doing what it was designed to do - and that is fail. I'm trying to offer a solution that does not entail a gruesome end to things - globally and into the universe.
And Im offering examples as to why your proposed system comes off as a desperate reactionary kneejerk ,seasoned with a healthy dose of marxism to satisfy your anxiety. The universe will be fine if we annialate ourself, but we wont. A gruesome end is almost assured at this point, a gruesome end to this system that is, to which we both agree. What we want is a path towards a more enlightened future, and in that we are both in total agreement, and a certain comraderie exists between those who look beyond their next couple steps.
Im simply telling you that your path out of the woods has been walked for centuries by those who found not escape, but a cliff, and until humanity can fly off that cliff, metephorically speaking, it may best best to seek the path to the spring that was always available, but never within perception. And we dont need robot boots to get there. (although it might be quicker)
Interesting comment. Ok, I apologize for my impatience. I'm intrigued.
I might wonder if you can see the drive to peaceful and loving outcome in all things as a trait to value. Humans have this trait, though it is mostly infolded in the mesh of a money(/power/energy) System, and though many of them are not extremely bright, they are not extremely lacking. Most, well, statistically ALL Humans want to keep Love going where They find it, and as long as They must rely on money(/p/e) as Their social energy flow, the love of money will produce it's evil.
The most peaceful, loving, and rewarding action I could offer to a relative stranger was (is) to offer him a raise, not based on his needs, wants or desires, but based on his own concentrated effort to add value to myself and the goal we set ourselves to accomplish. When I think about the look on his face when I rewarded him (not appeased him) for his justly earned raise, and knowing exactly how it feels to calculate the increased standard of living that he will recieve, and how i too once relished and earned that extra dollar an hour, i get goosebumps. Not because I handed out some alms for the poor, or disrespected him in any way by offering him charity, but instead had the capacity to reward his competence...well that is what i call bliss. And there is no way this could have been accomplished non materially, as I am completely indifferent to his personal life and struggle. (although i too have struggled, and continue to, so i wish him well and am gratified when he succeeds.)
Not so with the lazy, incompetent, self entitled brat. I would fire him before he could do any damage to myself, and with his own actions he shall be judged.
Again, if in scarcity the layabout can exist without burden to his fellows, then so be it. I would love to layabout somedays. My moral code forbids living off another, though.
That is why *I* care about Humanity as a whole. If you do not value that trait, then not caring - on the planetary and species levels - might be understood. But then what would become incomprehensible to me would be the lack of empathy towards peace and love.
That you see my unwillingness to relinquish that which is demanded of me as incomprehensible seems just as daft to me as your assertion that all are deserving. Peace comes through strength and independence. Love comes through virtuous action. Both are earned traits, and not given upon demand.
LOLOL! You'll do just fine in abundance!
Virtue succeeds under any paradigm, even if it fails.
Wait, wait, wait. If I'm sane I will admit I do not have all the answers? No, no, no. If I'm sane, I will admit I do not know whether I have all the answers or not. And I'll cop to that in a heartbeat. Nay! Nanosecond! Hrrm.
Excuse my response that is dripping with condecention, but that is the sanest thing youve said so far. Now only if youd apply this universally...
So far, I have felt confident that I do have the answers to the questions I have been asked. So I am giving the probability of me having "the answer" (an answer) to the next one at at least 85%. Heh. I'm much more confident, but only bank on solid expectation.
Wut probability would you ascribe to your hypotosis that money is the root of all evil?
Whoa. Had to stop you right there. That analogy is way off. Here's why: Money directly drives distribution; sex does not (in the vast majority of cases) drive marriage - though it is an important factor, the goals of the two intertwined, the children added and intertwined, these are the true drivers. The only place money does not drive distribution is in areas where people are subsistence farming and no money really flows at all.
Whoa. Gotta stop yo short on your short stop right there. That you think money is the driver (ie the CAUSE) of distribution, and not a facilitator of distribution, shows, frankly, your ignorance on the topic. Money simply arrises to fill the demand caused by distribution. Money, in effect, is a distributor, not the distributee. Money, in other words, does not create demand, it instead fills the demand for a common symbol of distribution, in your words.
The metephor holds in that sex is the currency of marrige, as bonding pairs echange value in order to reproduce. That echange is, in many ways, facilitated by the currency of sex. To claim that the mode of exchange is evil, and not the exchange itself, is to ignore the moral content of the agreed (or forced) terms.
Rape is the currency of an evil exchange just as consentual sex is the currency of volunteerism. Both are sexual modes of intercourse, but only one is moral. That both modes are reliant on penatration does not invalidate sex as a mode of exchange.
"Pricing is the *only* method we currently know of that can allocate resources efficiently..." Ok. But other models of economic structure have worked at varying levels even in this unchanging streak of scarcity paradigm. The problem is a planetary, species specific application of a scarcity of energy.
OK...so you agree the effecivity of money?
Which models do you site that ourperformed free(ish) market caplitalism? You realize that this computerized exchange was made possible only by the productive output of free(er) humans?
.
Um. We're using it right now. Freely (in a tenuous sense...). The Interweb
Why do you suppose it was the US that developed the intenet, and almost every other significant invention of the past couple hundred years? Was it in spite of money?
No... Money itself is not to blame. The LOVE OF money is. It is not highly probable (vanishingly small probability) that we can remove the LOVE OF money and keep money. By removing money, the LOVE OF money is excised. As long as money and the love of it exist, we WILL see elite and poverty. Without it, we will see equity and freedom for all.
But I DO love money, and more importantly, i love the symbol of money and what it represents. And yet, (and youll have to take my word for it) my existence occurs to the net benefit of those i engage with. I live a moral life, free of violence and fakery. And yet I use money. How can I possibly be moral, by your principals?
Oh, certainly. I'm just saying it would become unnecessary if we used the Interweb to have a central place to publcly and we set it up publicly, open source. Have a contest to see who had the best code to do that and choose the best one. Ooo. There's an idea.
This contest is already decided optimally by money. Anyone can click a box to show approval; only one who has accumulated value can truly show his deepest approval by allocating his precious resources into something he feels with add value for his hard earned input. Taking an online survey with no material cost is not the same as directing your hard earned capital into something you feel will return value.
And without money, and with the respect for Consciousness, the costs will be non-existent.
I currently respect your conciousness, and yet I pay internent fees to interact with you. This comes, ultimately, at the cost of my time.
No.... If I recall correctly, YOU suggested there might be other aspects of social energy than money, and I wholly agree. My point has never been that other energies do not exist, but that money(/p/e) is a thorn in the side of Humanity and that by excising it Our noble selves will manifest. And right NOW we can do it.
....so do it? how many $$ did you spend today? would you say those transactions were evil?
Ooo. And how many have followed this exchange of ours and considered each side? I'm hoping it is many. The more considering my ideas, the more likely Humanity will survive intact. Just to the tipping point, that's all I have to get to. Just to the tipping point.
You realize that the few half open minds you think might be reading this thread may very well see your robot utopia as the Skynet of our immediate future?
Anyway, my point is that ideas mingle and, in a chaotic emergence, match problems to solutions on a scale never before possible. That is why the Interweb and free energy and robotics and ideas capable of being spread worldwide if needed is so important.
Again, need is your highest ideal, and not production. This is pure communism. Just because someone exists and needs food does not mean I am morally bound to feed him.
Look up Polyface Farms... Here, I did it for you: www.polyfacefarms.com... This is the vision I have of comfort for the Conscious beings (small "b" to differentiate from Beings, who are ones who ask for rights...) while maintaining harmony and high yield. If Humans did this, rather than the evil out of love for money, our planet would blossom and provide as needed. We could distribute based on need. "Pricing" would be moot.
Sorry, again, learn some basic economics before you start delcaring solutions that great minds have grappled over for generations. Distribution based on 'need' (whatever that is) has been tried for a century and has been proven to be the single greatest killer of mankind of all time beyond natural death. That a homeless man needs booze does not mean I must work to provide him with such, and that a man cannot afford color TV does not necessitate (morally) that I work an extra hour per week to suite his preferences.
No, I won't call it by any name which uses scarcity paradigm terminology, because that is not what it is. And though there have been Systems that have used "communism" as their basis, no System on earth has been truly communistic - all have included power elite and a disproportionate amount of pie given to the inner party. 1984 is a prime example of the fascist overlay onto ideals of managing scarcity. In abundance, no one is above any others, and management is chaotic, emerging through the Interweb.
You dont seem to realize where that pie arrises from initially. Ill give you a hint - its not by robots or central planners.
Where people have the tools, materials and time we absolutely see problems solved, art and science emerging. If there were no such expression, there would be no overarching problems solved, there would be no art or science. With tools, materials and time available to any who want to avail themselves, we will see all the more of problems solved, art and science.
But you would at least admit that all such endevours are currently funded by money, yes?
You, as sociopath, may hunker in your domicile and ignore the world at large - in abundance you would be no drain. Have a nice life then, I guess it would be. But Humans, by and large are social, caring, Beings - many of whom would do something for the bliss of it, even for strangers.
You hurl a whole slew of intended insults at me in one short burst of veiled contempt. I have no response to this, being a 'sociopath', besides idle curiosity and mild distain. You assume that because i dont allow myself to be cowed by the invalid whip of fake aultriusm, that i dont care for anything but myself. Well, I dont, and neither do you. The difference between us is that i embrace my own self interest, while you seem to mask it behind some false pretense of caring for your fellow man. Let me shock you some - you and I only care about our fellow to the extent to which they allow us to live a preferable life. The suffering of others is only painful because their suffering effects *us*, and thus our desire to help our fellow man is just an extention of our rightful desire to help ourselves,
a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
I think you must check your assumtions, as my moral code is specifically tailored to my social concience.
Given that you say you have no connection to society as a whole - only individuals you encounter - I can see "sociopath" being used to describe who you say you are. You lack social conscience, it would seem.
You lack basic reasoning, it would seem. If I owe nothing to anyone who has not earned it, but owe every last bit of compensation to those who have, does this make me evil, in your estimation? A simple way of asking this would be to ask 'if I am in *need*, (your standard) so you owe me anything? And visa versa?
Am I evil for not giving a beggar my hard earned change?
If it is selfish to demand resiprocity in every one of my binding relationships, I suppose Ive earned your intended slur.
No intended slur. An observation based on your responses here. Nothing wrong with demanding reciprocity in your relationships. But it IS sociopathic to have no connection, no conscience, to society as a whole.
If I could emphasize one point in this whole rant it would be opposition to the above slander. There is no such thing as soceity as a whole! This is a biased construct youve weaponized in your mind.
Would you say I would be sociopathic if I has no connection to the Nazi party in Hitlers Germany? Would I be a conciousless monster if I rejected societys plans under Stalin or Mao? In these cases, I stand alone and defiant, just as I do now towards your technical hyper statism, or the current system of today. Am I evil for opposing the Nazis of my day, even if they make up 'society as a whole'?
Youre right, I have no connection and no empathy for those who follow the cult of death. They are scum and vermin and in my mind, and while I would never attack another, I hold nothing but the highest contempt towards the destroyers of freedom. In my mind, this does not make me insane, but instead hyper sane, as I refuse to forgive the unforgiveable. I refuse to sanction the evil society at large by consenting to its parasitic needs over my own.
.
If you hate, you do not understand agape. It's kinda like loving the sinner and not the sin. And I propose that it is your sociopathic nature that renders you incapable of this love, this agape
That you believe love in unconditional shows me only that you are not familiar with real love, which must be mirrored by hate of that which is loves opposite. That you allow love for the most underserving shows me you disprese your love without true disernment and value judgement that must preceed true love.
Hitler, Mao and Bernake are not *worthy* of love. If you feel they are, love truly has no meaning to you.
edit on 10-4-2011 by Neo_Serf because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by Neo_Serf
reply to post by Amaterasu
My insufficient words are like stone age tools compared to the laser beam precision of the immortal Rand. I will cede the floor to a mind neither of us could hope to rival.
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will.
Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort.
Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return.
Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more.
Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders.
Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods.
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.
The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started.
If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival.
The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.
If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards?
By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it.
Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.
When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed.
Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence.
Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money.
You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities."Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."
No, I'm pretty sure my view is far more sophisticated than that. And I don't wonder at the worsening of things. A love of money explains it all.
Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor.
Today's elite! If We cast off "producer slavery" to robots, We all can choose to live as elite.
That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries.
As if there are no slaves now? So they got rid of outright slavery and eliminated having worry about the food/clothing/shelter aspect by pumping out paychecks. And, again... Love of money = evil...
So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.
Um... Slaves, check. Traders, check. Shopkeepers, check. Individuals. Industrialists...individuals under corporate umbrella. Corporations have virtually no culpability. Corporations are the end result of the love of money.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.
Ayn manages to attribute the freeing up of money/power/energy in the free enterprise system (which is now dead) to the "virtues" of money/power/energy. However, the freer the flow, the more closely matched in power individuals are, and as long as energy flows freely, advances and Betterment take place as Our virtue emerges. This has nothing to do with the money accounting of energy expended, but of the virtuous nature of Humans when they themselves are content.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
Wealth creation, however, is disparate. Again, farm worker vs. star football player. Just because you are creating money does not follow that the wealth is aggregating to yourself. You are most likely a slave, and the top 1% are getting the wealth - and frequently by defrauding the slaves. I think, rather than create money, I would rather be creating solutions.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.
Oh, now this is just grandstanding. The "whip," by the way is not a literal one. It is one of hunger. It is one of cold. It is one of being unable to provide for your children. For these reasons do statistically all of us trudge to work that we would rather be doing something else at (at best) and loathe with a passion (at worst).
From where I stand, until any person forms a critique of money and what it represents, they must first take this eternal offering of wisdom into account, and they must either accept its validity or refute it in some reasonable way. If the critic is oblivious to the wisdom (willfully or no) contained in the above quote and wishes to have a reasonable discussion about what money really is and what its effects it has, that person to me is fooling themselves, and is a mere pretender when it comes to offering solutions to people other than themselves.
Scarcity must always exist in some form as long as human lives are finite. Thus trade, with some mode of exchange, must always exist until a time machine is mass marketed. If it is, it will only come into being through the means of voluntary exhange between voluntary partners, represented, in some way, by 'money'.
Originally posted by Neo_Serf
*edit thought i had the quote thing down but apprarently not. appologies for my akwardness.*
Well... You can ORDER them. But I think you would not get them. You are using absurdities as if they are reasonable. You would have no need or use for all these robots - well, unless they're nanorobots... But that's not what you're saying.
Does not compute. You give me no answer to my question. You think I will not get them. You provide no insight as to how my request will be processed (and by who) and denied.
You simply assert that I probably wont, and you seem quite comfortable in not providing a reason why I wont.
Then you gloss it over by labeling the whole notion 'absurd', even though you provided a half answer first, thus telling me that you didnt actually find the query to be unworthy of a reasonable response, as you should have if the question truly was absurd.
If its absurd to suggest, why offer a reasonable answer? The reason I ask is the same reason I asked to begin with - because you have no reasonable solution to my problem besides the bliss wand.
Who said anything about "infinite?"
YOU DID! Remember? Scarcity does not exist!
Effectively, yes, we do have infinite gold. Back in the 1970's we transmuted lead into gold. The problem was not so much how to do it, but that, because the energy required to do it cost so much, an ounce would have cost something on the order of a million dollars. With that cost of energy removed, we can transmute most anything into gold.
So currently we cannot transmute stuff into gold because energy is relatively scarce. With neat infitnite energy, of course gold would not longer be the standard as its standard rests mostly on its relative scarcity. But infinite energy does not currently exist, as far as I know, and thus basing your *entire* platform on non existence is *pure fantasy*.
Show me free energy and Ill show you the monetary input that made it possible, Until scarcity is elimited *totally* (which you admit is not conceivably possible due to the limit of lobster in the sea) there must be a mode of exchange.
I did not, nor have I ever said "limitless," "infinite" (except effectively, as in gold), or any other descriptor meaning open-ended. I said "abundant." "Abundant" means enough to provide fully the basic needs for all, and have plenty left over - to the tune of basic needs ten times over.
By your standard of abundance, food, medicine and shelter are all abundant currently. We *could* already meet the basic needs of the destitute people you uphold as every persons personal shame. I know you will ascribe the misallocation of these vital resources to money itself, but let me cut you off at the pass, and I will assert this as fact without going into the valid reasoning and evidence - the real reason people starve, go homeless and die of malaria is not due to money, it is in fact due to the violent minority that currently control money and use it as a genocial weapon against those money should in truth be serving and uplifting.
The massive poverty and starvation caused by western sunbsidies in agriculture is not due to the mechanism of value exchange which is money, but instead is inflicted by the hyper violence of the state that hugely subsidises (through involuntary taxation backed by guns) western farming and thus gives no room for 3rd world farms to compete in and thus advance. Farm subsidies in the west, a system enforced through institutional violence (using money as a captive weaponized facilitator) is likely responsible for more deaths than all wars combined in the 20th century.
Again, this is not moneys fault. The fault lies in those who support the state, and thus violence, not paper notes in ones back pocket.
The idea is not that we can accommodate absurdities, but that poverty will be vanquished - as well as taxes.
If an effect of free enegy is the elimination of poverty, then thats awesome. I think a paralelle could be drawn between first world poor, who have a relative abundance of food (and thus never starve) compared to third world poor, who starve en mass. If technology could be used to raise the bar for all in a sustainable way to a level beyond mere survival, that would of course be awesome. I just dont your demacation point between sacrcity (artificial or not) to relative abundance. (and if scarcity is largely artificial, it stands to reason that it is made this way by some entity that does not wish humanity to live in abundance, and thus relying on abundance as an inevitability would be nieve, as humanity would be actively opposed in naturally reaching abundance.)
And reasonable request will be delivered in a reasonable length of time. Any absurd request is likely to go unfulfilled. You may have to wait for lobster - depends on the availability. But you will not have to wait for food, clothing, housing. That will be yours for the asking.
Again, my question is not *if* my demands will be delivered, as we have established that some system must determine if i receive my allocation or not. My question is *by what standard, and by who* is this decision made?
Its really quite important that you answer this question clearly. If I order 10 000 lobsters from my personal robot attendant, within your abundance paradigm, where along the line of actions and while my order be declined? On what grounds, and by whom?
Whereas with money, no one would order 10 000 lobsters because such an investment would be plain stupid, all rational arguements aside. If I did posses the necessary capital to do such a thing, I would likely bankrupt immediately with 9995 rotting lobsters on my hands.
Not so in abundance, right?
that give them bliss to work on.
Could a form of virtuous bliss be measurable in dollars?
As for abundance, it surely does exist, but we are held back from it by the system of money. Money is a representation of energy expended. With an effectively infinite source of energy, the need for money (to account for it's being expended) will become moot. We have the plenum energy, and many have shown ways (and there are several) to extract it, and if we were allowed to have that technology for peaceful application, we would no longer be barred (virtually all of us) from the lifestyle of the power elite.
Could I buy one of these infinite energy motors in dollars and feed 10 starving people on its energy, and still remain virtuous?
If money is evil, are the above actions also evil?
would ever HAVE to work
A human can only rightfully be judged by what he/she takes in relation to what he/she produces. If one if a net suprlus to himself and thus others, he can be judged as moral. If he is a net drain to those around him and lives as a human parasite, he can be seen as immoral. If production is rendered irrelevant by abundance, we can move the yardstick. Until then, every person must produce at least as much as they consume if they wish to be on the nobeler side of humanity.
Yeah, baby, we have a marvelously abundant universe. We just need a paradigm of living in it.
That paradigm is called true freedom and does not require robots of any kind. (although robiods would be a great advantage to a free people)
Have you ever had both the experience of having no money and seeing all the things to want out there and wanting many of them such that it aches - and having lots of money to spend and looking at all the things to want out there and finding nothing that you really want enough to spend money on them? I have.
When I have no money I feel the sensation of helplessness in that I have nothing tangible to offer strangers in return for their good which I require. (food, shelter, ect) When I exchange my value as a worker for my bosses value as an organizer, i relish my justly earned paycheck that symbolizes all my concerntrated investment into a service that my customers value. My surplus of 'wealth' (which is minusule compared to some and lavish compared to others) gives me a sensation of personal value - i feel my skills and time invested are repaid in kind. This surplus in basic living that Im blessed to have access to (due to relative monetary freedom) allow me to do things a mere wage slave could never hope to - to take time off to enjoy the intangibles such as hiking in the wild, to invest in health products most of humanity could never dream of, living or past. Surplus allows me to tip my local servicers and thus add to the local economy. In short, surplus allows me to not only pay my own way and thus rely on no one, but it allows my independance to further the independence of other producers, who add earned value to my life and thus i return it in kind. Surplus of investment, represented in dollars and gains voluntarily, allows me both freedom of action, and freedom of virtue.
If abundance makes the above obsolete, then bring it on!
In abundance, most of Us will find that We are content - comfortable - with very few things.
Abundance and 'very few things' are not compatible terms.
And as for robots... What if we took all the money we're spending on war and instead, put it into peaceful, open-source efforts to build robots to do what We want to do on this planet? I offer ideas here. If the goal is to get rid of money, what does it matter where the money comes from?
The goal is not to get rid of money, the goal is to live virtuously. If virtue can be measured, in voluntary cases, to be a measure of virtue, getting rid of money would necessarily eliminate any virtue gained by the symbol of 'money'.
You make it sound as if every one of us has a whole lot of money to throw around. Golly gee. I'm free to throw my money in any direction I want. While technically true, the fact is that virtually all Humans on this planet are not so disencumbered. I will speak statistically here:
So you imply that money could indeed serve man, if it were just held by more people and less concentrated in the hands of the elite?
Agreed! That money is controlled currently by the elite does not invalidate the concept of money, just as the current monoploy of firepower held by the elite does not invalidate the concept of self defence secured by weaponry. A tool is a tool, by whom it is weilded and to what end is the issue, not the tool itself. (as, once invented, it will always exist. No problem is solved by monopolizing the use of dominant technology)
We all worry about paying the bills and holding what we have together, dependent on money(/power/energy), and many are losing their grip as we type. The System is doing what it was designed to do - and that is fail. I'm trying to offer a solution that does not entail a gruesome end to things - globally and into the universe.
And Im offering examples as to why your proposed system comes off as a desperate reactionary kneejerk ,seasoned with a healthy dose of marxism to satisfy your anxiety. The universe will be fine if we annialate ourself, but we wont. A gruesome end is almost assured at this point, a gruesome end to this system that is, to which we both agree. What we want is a path towards a more enlightened future, and in that we are both in total agreement, and a certain comraderie exists between those who look beyond their next couple steps.
Im simply telling you that your path out of the woods has been walked for centuries by those who found not escape, but a cliff, and until humanity can fly off that cliff, metephorically speaking, it may best best to seek the path to the spring that was always available, but never within perception. And we dont need robot boots to get there. (although it might be quicker)
Interesting comment. Ok, I apologize for my impatience. I'm intrigued.
I might wonder if you can see the drive to peaceful and loving outcome in all things as a trait to value. Humans have this trait, though it is mostly infolded in the mesh of a money(/power/energy) System, and though many of them are not extremely bright, they are not extremely lacking. Most, well, statistically ALL Humans want to keep Love going where They find it, and as long as They must rely on money(/p/e) as Their social energy flow, the love of money will produce it's evil.
Not so with the lazy, incompetent, self entitled brat. I would fire him before he could do any damage to myself, and with his own actions he shall be judged.
Again, if in scarcity the layabout can exist without burden to his fellows, then so be it. I would love to layabout somedays. My moral code forbids living off another, though.
That is why *I* care about Humanity as a whole. If you do not value that trait, then not caring - on the planetary and species levels - might be understood. But then what would become incomprehensible to me would be the lack of empathy towards peace and love.
That you see my unwillingness to relinquish that which is demanded of me as incomprehensible seems just as daft to me as your assertion that all are deserving. Peace comes through strength and independence. Love comes through virtuous action. Both are earned traits, and not given upon demand.
LOLOL! You'll do just fine in abundance!
Virtue succeeds under any paradigm, even if it fails.
Wait, wait, wait. If I'm sane I will admit I do not have all the answers? No, no, no. If I'm sane, I will admit I do not know whether I have all the answers or not. And I'll cop to that in a heartbeat. Nay! Nanosecond! Hrrm.
Excuse my response that is dripping with condecention, but that is the sanest thing youve said so far. Now only if youd apply this universally...
So far, I have felt confident that I do have the answers to the questions I have been asked. So I am giving the probability of me having "the answer" (an answer) to the next one at at least 85%. Heh. I'm much more confident, but only bank on solid expectation.
Wut probability would you ascribe to your hypotosis that money is the root of all evil?
Whoa. Had to stop you right there. That analogy is way off. Here's why: Money directly drives distribution; sex does not (in the vast majority of cases) drive marriage - though it is an important factor, the goals of the two intertwined, the children added and intertwined, these are the true drivers. The only place money does not drive distribution is in areas where people are subsistence farming and no money really flows at all.
Whoa. Gotta stop yo short on your short stop right there. That you think money is the driver (ie the CAUSE) of distribution, and not a facilitator of distribution, shows, frankly, your ignorance on the topic. Money simply arrises to fill the demand caused by distribution. Money, in effect, is a distributor, not the distributee. Money, in other words, does not create demand, it instead fills the demand for a common symbol of distribution, in your words.
The metephor holds in that sex is the currency of marrige, as bonding pairs echange value in order to reproduce. That echange is, in many ways, facilitated by the currency of sex. To claim that the mode of exchange is evil, and not the exchange itself, is to ignore the moral content of the agreed (or forced) terms.
Rape is the currency of an evil exchange just as consentual sex is the currency of volunteerism. Both are sexual modes of intercourse, but only one is moral. That both modes are reliant on penatration does not invalidate sex as a mode of exchange.
"Pricing is the *only* method we currently know of that can allocate resources efficiently..." Ok. But other models of economic structure have worked at varying levels even in this unchanging streak of scarcity paradigm. The problem is a planetary, species specific application of a scarcity of energy.
OK...so you agree the effecivity of money?
Which models do you site that ourperformed free(ish) market caplitalism? You realize that this computerized exchange was made possible only by the productive output of free(er) humans?
.
Um. We're using it right now. Freely (in a tenuous sense...). The Interweb
Why do you suppose it was the US that developed the intenet, and almost every other significant invention of the past couple hundred years? Was it in spite of money?
No... Money itself is not to blame. The LOVE OF money is. It is not highly probable (vanishingly small probability) that we can remove the LOVE OF money and keep money. By removing money, the LOVE OF money is excised. As long as money and the love of it exist, we WILL see elite and poverty. Without it, we will see equity and freedom for all.
But I DO love money, and more importantly, i love the symbol of money and what it represents. And yet, (and youll have to take my word for it) my existence occurs to the net benefit of those i engage with. I live a moral life, free of violence and fakery. And yet I use money. How can I possibly be moral, by your principals?
Oh, certainly. I'm just saying it would become unnecessary if we used the Interweb to have a central place to publcly and we set it up publicly, open source. Have a contest to see who had the best code to do that and choose the best one. Ooo. There's an idea.
This contest is already decided optimally by money. Anyone can click a box to show approval; only one who has accumulated value can truly show his deepest approval by allocating his precious resources into something he feels with add value for his hard earned input. Taking an online survey with no material cost is not the same as directing your hard earned capital into something you feel will return value.
And without money, and with the respect for Consciousness, the costs will be non-existent.
I currently respect your conciousness, and yet I pay internent fees to interact with you. This comes, ultimately, at the cost of my time.
No.... If I recall correctly, YOU suggested there might be other aspects of social energy than money, and I wholly agree. My point has never been that other energies do not exist, but that money(/p/e) is a thorn in the side of Humanity and that by excising it Our noble selves will manifest. And right NOW we can do it.
....so do it? how many $$ did you spend today? would you say those transactions were evil?
Ooo. And how many have followed this exchange of ours and considered each side? I'm hoping it is many. The more considering my ideas, the more likely Humanity will survive intact. Just to the tipping point, that's all I have to get to. Just to the tipping point.
You realize that the few half open minds you think might be reading this thread may very well see your robot utopia as the Skynet of our immediate future?
Anyway, my point is that ideas mingle and, in a chaotic emergence, match problems to solutions on a scale never before possible. That is why the Interweb and free energy and robotics and ideas capable of being spread worldwide if needed is so important.
Again, need is your highest ideal, and not production. This is pure communism. Just because someone exists and needs food does not mean I am morally bound to feed him.
Look up Polyface Farms... Here, I did it for you: www.polyfacefarms.com... This is the vision I have of comfort for the Conscious beings (small "b" to differentiate from Beings, who are ones who ask for rights...) while maintaining harmony and high yield. If Humans did this, rather than the evil out of love for money, our planet would blossom and provide as needed. We could distribute based on need. "Pricing" would be moot.
Sorry, again, learn some basic economics before you start delcaring solutions that great minds have grappled over for generations. Distribution based on 'need' (whatever that is) has been tried for a century and has been proven to be the single greatest killer of mankind of all time beyond natural death. That a homeless man needs booze does not mean I must work to provide him with such, and that a man cannot afford color TV does not necessitate (morally) that I work an extra hour per week to suite his preferences.
No, I won't call it by any name which uses scarcity paradigm terminology, because that is not what it is. And though there have been Systems that have used "communism" as their basis, no System on earth has been truly communistic - all have included power elite and a disproportionate amount of pie given to the inner party. 1984 is a prime example of the fascist overlay onto ideals of managing scarcity. In abundance, no one is above any others, and management is chaotic, emerging through the Interweb.
You dont seem to realize where that pie arrises from initially. Ill give you a hint - its not by robots or central planners.
Where people have the tools, materials and time we absolutely see problems solved, art and science emerging. If there were no such expression, there would be no overarching problems solved, there would be no art or science. With tools, materials and time available to any who want to avail themselves, we will see all the more of problems solved, art and science.
But you would at least admit that all such endevours are currently funded by money, yes?
You, as sociopath, may hunker in your domicile and ignore the world at large - in abundance you would be no drain. Have a nice life then, I guess it would be. But Humans, by and large are social, caring, Beings - many of whom would do something for the bliss of it, even for strangers.
You hurl a whole slew of intended insults at me in one short burst of veiled contempt. I have no response to this, being a 'sociopath', besides idle curiosity and mild distain. You assume that because i dont allow myself to be cowed by the invalid whip of fake aultriusm, that i dont care for anything but myself. Well, I dont, and neither do you. The difference between us is that i embrace my own self interest, while you seem to mask it behind some false pretense of caring for your fellow man. Let me shock you some - you and I only care about our fellow to the extent to which they allow us to live a preferable life. The suffering of others is only painful because their suffering effects *us*, and thus our desire to help our fellow man is just an extention of our rightful desire to help ourselves,
a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
I think you must check your assumtions, as my moral code is specifically tailored to my social concience.
Given that you say you have no connection to society as a whole - only individuals you encounter - I can see "sociopath" being used to describe who you say you are. You lack social conscience, it would seem.
You lack basic reasoning, it would seem. If I owe nothing to anyone who has not earned it, but owe every last bit of compensation to those who have, does this make me evil, in your estimation? A simple way of asking this would be to ask 'if I am in *need*, (your standard) so you owe me anything? And visa versa?
Am I evil for not giving a beggar my hard earned change?
If it is selfish to demand resiprocity in every one of my binding relationships, I suppose Ive earned your intended slur.
No intended slur. An observation based on your responses here. Nothing wrong with demanding reciprocity in your relationships. But it IS sociopathic to have no connection, no conscience, to society as a whole.
If I could emphasize one point in this whole rant it would be opposition to the above slander. There is no such thing as soceity as a whole! This is a biased construct youve weaponized in your mind.
Would you say I would be sociopathic if I has no connection to the Nazi party in Hitlers Germany? Would I be a conciousless monster if I rejected societys plans under Stalin or Mao? In these cases, I stand alone and defiant, just as I do now towards your technical hyper statism, or the current system of today. Am I evil for opposing the Nazis of my day, even if they make up 'society as a whole'?
Youre right, I have no connection and no empathy for those who follow the cult of death. They are scum and vermin and in my mind, and while I would never attack another, I hold nothing but the highest contempt towards the destroyers of freedom. In my mind, this does not make me insane, but instead hyper sane, as I refuse to forgive the unforgiveable. I refuse to sanction the evil society at large by consenting to its parasitic needs over my own.
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If you hate, you do not understand agape. It's kinda like loving the sinner and not the sin. And I propose that it is your sociopathic nature that renders you incapable of this love, this agape
That you believe love in unconditional shows me only that you are not familiar with real love, which must be mirrored by hate of that which is loves opposite.
That you allow love for the most underserving shows me you disprese your love without true disernment and value judgement that must preceed true love.
Hitler, Mao and Bernake are not *worthy* of love. If you feel they are, love truly has no meaning to you.
The root of money is the accounting of energy expended.
Money is NOT the root of all evil. It is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil. Rand, right there, nullifies her analysis. Of course there would be no money if we expended no energy to produce things. Money has no connection to the goods and services themselves. Only the energy expended which produced the goods and services. Money is made necessary by a scarcity of energy. What I consider evil is the love of it such that technology is hidden to ensure profit, cures are hidden to protect profit, wars are instigated to ensure profit, illnesses are created to ensure profit (think water fluoridation - which is a way of disposing of toxic chemicals under the guise of being good), and any other evil done in the name of profit.
The value we place on money is rather arbitrary - the energy of the farm worker is valued much lower than the energy a star football player puts out. And Rand right there explains that money is an accounting of energy! "[Y]our claim upon the energy of the men who produce."
So if we have infinite energy and robots to do the production... What do we need money for? And "moral principle?" The root of money is NOT a moral principle in and of itself. We surround it with a cloak of moral principle (don't be evil because of it). But the fact is that those who covet it, who love it, ignore the moral cloak and do evil to have it in one of its three forms: money/power/energy.
Yes, I have taken a look at the root of production. It is often based on (wage) slave labor to ensure large profits. The ideas developed and the personal labor to bring them into reality are based in bliss. Bliss in solving a problem, or creating more ease, or getting money in the end. Bliss.
Rand is correct in saying that man's mind is responsible for all the goods produced - but very wrong in saying that man's mind is the root of all wealth - wealth is just an accumulation of energy credits as they ooze around the economy greasing the exchange of goods and services.
This is all fine - until...the love of money breaks down that code. Men lose their good will in favor of their price - the point at which money becomes overwhelmingly enticing.
which had the downside that if one had something to trade but no one wanted or needed it, one might starve.
This is true. But again, it points out that money is based on energy expended.
Not exactly. Money also promotes motive to evil to gain more of it.
No... Money also permits fraud, theft, and unethical business choices to promote profit. Hardly things of mutual benefit.
Money merely greases the mutual agreements.
It is inequitably distributed
Farm workers are paid far closer to what we pay slaves (and about as much as it would cost a slave owner to keep them) while the star football player is paid like a prince...
And what happens when the "best" is still a pale comparison to what we COULD produce but that we love our money so much that we produce cheaper and shoddier work to turn a good profit? Ayn presumes that there is no force involved which motivates Humans to cut corners. She claims a code, but there is none. The code is anything that makes a profit goes. Even if it will put many in misery (polluting because it's cheaper than not, for example), if the profit is better, do it.
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
Rand presumes no motive for doing things other than being paid money
True. But money WILL degrade any code we may have in place where obtaining (more) money is placed higher in importance than Human consideration. It spawns love of it and thereby evil.
Well... In order to really understand what Ayn is saying here, I need a definition of "superiors" and "inferiors." Seems a bit elitist. These problems, however, are not the problems with having a money system. It is the breakdown of ethics which the love of it engenders.
What!?! Only the man who does not need it is fit to inherit wealth? What determines "fitness" here? Ayn is unaware, it would seem, of how much luck has to do with success. Many Humans would make their own fortunes (and too many by evil means), but not all can be very lucky in the connections they make and the opportunities that come along. (Read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers for an analysis of the importance of luck in making fortunes.)
Wow. It's hard to decide where to begin on this. "Equal to his money???" How does one measure whether someone is "equal" to their money? You cannot corrupt money. Corruption is a behavior and money does not behave; rather, it moves based on OUR behaviors. We are the ones who become corrupt in efforts to gain as much money as possible. So if there is a question of corruption, it is within Humans, not money. And her idea that MONEY has virtue...objects have no virtue. Humans have virtue (most of them). And it is very elitist indeed to say "Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it." Money serves anyone who has it, by the luck of the draw. (Getting that job, inheriting it, meeting the right investor, having parents that can afford an education, etc.) And how would one measure this mind and its relationship to being served by money?
"Money is your means of survival.
The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.
Not so at all. Money is only representationally the source of my livelihood. The actual source is my energy expended. The verdict that money is unnecessary in an abundance paradigm is not the same as saying my life is unnecessary in an abundance paradigm. In fact, my life is likely to be far more useful, as I will then have the freedom to have time and tools necessary to better the world.
It is not the source, per se, that is corrupt - it is the choices made. If YOU are corrupt, you have damned your own existence (if you are caught). And about the "ability" "deserving" a specific amount... LOLOL! Again. Farm workers are slaves, even though we need the produce from the farms to live; star football players are princes, even though no one died for lack of football. "Deserving..."
And again, I don't hate money. I hate evil - which the LOVE of money creates.
Money is not the product of virtue. It is the produce of a need for a better system of accounting for energy expended. It can handle virtuous functions equally as well as evil ones. It is impartial.
"Money is the creation of the best power within you???" Hahaha! Money is an accounting tool. To love money is to put it above Human consideration. To love Humanity is the creation of the best power within you. No keys are necessary to trade good effort in today's society with the introduction of robots to do slave work and energy eliminating scarcity.
The lovers of money are not the ones willing to work for it, but those willing to sacrifice Human principle and concern in getting it. Those who would use high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar - despite the vast evidence that it is extremely unhealthy to consume - because it's cheaper. Those that would try to hide its use with labeling such as "corn sugar." Those that market a substance called "Neotame" that just happens to be a version of Aspartame that looks worse than the original - and yet...unlike Aspartame, it doesn't HAVE to be on the label, and is approved for use in foods labeled "Organic" and "Kosher..." I'm sorry. That's done for the love of money - you can bet that Neotame interests are intermingled with pharmaceutical industry interests.
"Oh, but they would never kill off their customer base! That doesn't make sense!" Slowly suffering Human Beings who eventually die are great cash cows. They recycle. Plenty more coming in.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
LOLOL! If One approaches money in terms of the anguish it engenders and also sees that it all springs from a scarcity of energy, when One sees that "free energy" would solve the problem of eliminating virtually all the anguish and allow everyone to live richly if they desire, because it will dissipate money as a necessity and because We are at this position in our robotics and communication We can seize the day and make this happen. Ayn was too busy examining the trees to see the forest, I'm afraid.
Well *I* surely won't tell you that money is evil.
Originally posted by Neo_Serf
Looks like I have my work cut out for me! Appologies if I dont make it through all of your thoughtful responses. (which is greatly appriciated, even if youre wrong
The root of money is the accounting of energy expended.
No. Just No. You must abandon this premise if we are to continue.
The ditch digger expends *far* more energy than the CEO. The farmers energetic output far exceeds the day traders. Money accounts for nothing besides the aggregate demand for the energy expended. The ditch digger inputs far more joules of expended energy to his task, and yet makes exponentially less money. If money = energy expended, I would be a far richer man.
Since the basic foundation of economics is unlimited desires vs finite resources, I fully agree with you that scarcity produces money. We dont pay for air because it is relatively abundant. So I will conceed that abundance in any field will relieve us of the need for money.
But since you have conceeded that not *everything* will be abundant (lobster example), some mechanism is required to decide who will get what. Two options are available here. Top down,violentcentral planning, or negotiated and voluntary exchange, represented by money.
Your example of water floridation is not specific to money as this is a government program. The corperations disposing of this toxic waste are offloading the costs of disposal involuntarily to the tax payer - if they had no body to offload these enormous costs to, they would likely have to find a more cost effective and sustainable solution.
Again, money is not the problem - institutionalized violence is.
The value we place on money is rather arbitrary - the energy of the farm worker is valued much lower than the energy a star football player puts out. And Rand right there explains that money is an accounting of energy! "[Y]our claim upon the energy of the men who produce."
Youre missing the key part of the idea - the 'men who produce'. Produce what? Produce value.
A man could spend his entire life digging ditches for which no one has a use, or value for, while expending enormous physical energy. That energy is expended is not the key point here - that others value his expenditure is the key point. This value is *not* arbitrary in that it is arrived at by the objective aggregate demand of all parties valuing his work.
Value of money and energy is only arbitrary when one group fixes artificially the value of the energy expended. If the government decides the ditch digger is to be paid the same as the football star, *then* the value of money becomes arbitrary.
So if we have infinite energy and robots to do the production... What do we need money for? And "moral principle?" The root of money is NOT a moral principle in and of itself. We surround it with a cloak of moral principle (don't be evil because of it). But the fact is that those who covet it, who love it, ignore the moral cloak and do evil to have it in one of its three forms: money/power/energy.
By this logic, any tool used by any evil person is also evil. And yes, if everything, including the human life, were infinite, money would become obsolete.
Yes, I have taken a look at the root of production. It is often based on (wage) slave labor to ensure large profits. The ideas developed and the personal labor to bring them into reality are based in bliss. Bliss in solving a problem, or creating more ease, or getting money in the end. Bliss.
No, the root of production is simply producing something that would not have existed if not for the input of the human mind. Everything you take for granted, that makes your life infnitely better than that which came before, is based on production. The marxist wage slave canard is irrelevant. Our current levels of bliss is a result of our productive struggle out of the caves.
Rand is correct in saying that man's mind is responsible for all the goods produced - but very wrong in saying that man's mind is the root of all wealth - wealth is just an accumulation of energy credits as they ooze around the economy greasing the exchange of goods and services.
Serious contradiction here. You accept that mans mind produces all goods, but then somehow deny that the wealth itself is a product of the goods that a mans mind produces?
Money is nothing more than a symbol that represents the objective value placed on goods, which are products of mans mind. You cannot artificially seperate the two and call one valid and the other evil.
This is all fine - until...the love of money breaks down that code. Men lose their good will in favor of their price - the point at which money becomes overwhelmingly enticing.
So money is fine until it corrupts? Couldnt the same be said for sex?
which had the downside that if one had something to trade but no one wanted or needed it, one might starve.
So in conclusion, one must offer others something of value if one wishes to exist?
And this is wrong how? The alternative is to be a slave.
This is true. But again, it points out that money is based on energy expended.
No! No no no! Energy expended is *meaningless* if said energy is not valued by others! If I go for a run, which benefits myself only, yet expends a lot of energy, I couldnt expect a walker to somehow value my sweat and be willing to exchange anything for it!
Not exactly. Money also promotes motive to evil to gain more of it.
Sex promotes rape and therefor sex is bad.
No... Money also permits fraud, theft, and unethical business choices to promote profit. Hardly things of mutual benefit.
Sex promotes rape, molestation and murder. Hardly things of mutual benefit.
Money merely greases the mutual agreements.
Can we at least agree that this is a good thing?
It is inequitably distributed
As is human ability. Money reflects this.
Farm workers are paid far closer to what we pay slaves (and about as much as it would cost a slave owner to keep them) while the star football player is paid like a prince...
Football players posses unique abilities that people are willing to pay them for. Farm hands, comparitively, do not.
People want cheap, abundant food and thus farmers respond to that demand by lowering labour costs, among other things. If food were in shortage, I assure you that trend would reverse...
And yes, in my estimation athletes are way overpaid. My solution? Dont buy a ticket.
And what happens when the "best" is still a pale comparison to what we COULD produce but that we love our money so much that we produce cheaper and shoddier work to turn a good profit? Ayn presumes that there is no force involved which motivates Humans to cut corners. She claims a code, but there is none. The code is anything that makes a profit goes. Even if it will put many in misery (polluting because it's cheaper than not, for example), if the profit is better, do it.
If cheaper and shoddier is what people demand and deem the 'best', then that is what they will recieve. I buy cheap underwear from Walmart because its cheap, and I expect is to wear our shortly. On the other hand, if I were to buy a house I would want only the best, strongest and enviromentally most friendly construction possible. Not everyone shares your preferences.
Polluting is only made possible by the problem of the commons, which is created soley by the government. I will not go in to this further, though, and instead will simply say that if you own your own land and are responsible for it, (and cannot offload the price of pollution to the taxpayer) you wouldnt # where you eat.
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
Rand presumes no motive for doing things other than being paid money
Rand *asserts* that the value of exchange between parties is represented in money. This can only occur if value is exchanged. Exhanged value = good!
True. But money WILL degrade any code we may have in place where obtaining (more) money is placed higher in importance than Human consideration. It spawns love of it and thereby evil.
True. But *sex* WILL degrade any code we may have in place where obtaining (more) sex is placed higher in importance than the Human consideration. Sex spawns love of it and is thereby evil.
Well... In order to really understand what Ayn is saying here, I need a definition of "superiors" and "inferiors." Seems a bit elitist. These problems, however, are not the problems with having a money system. It is the breakdown of ethics which the love of it engenders.
One of us is 'superior' in argument and one of us is 'inferior'. If you think your argument is superior, is it then invalidated because is it 'elitist'?
So money isnt the problem?
What!?! Only the man who does not need it is fit to inherit wealth? What determines "fitness" here? Ayn is unaware, it would seem, of how much luck has to do with success. Many Humans would make their own fortunes (and too many by evil means), but not all can be very lucky in the connections they make and the opportunities that come along. (Read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers for an analysis of the importance of luck in making fortunes.)
You might also want to reveiw the countless fortunes squandered and destroyed by 'unfit' secessors. History is replete with examples.
Wow. It's hard to decide where to begin on this. "Equal to his money???" How does one measure whether someone is "equal" to their money? You cannot corrupt money. Corruption is a behavior and money does not behave; rather, it moves based on OUR behaviors. We are the ones who become corrupt in efforts to gain as much money as possible. So if there is a question of corruption, it is within Humans, not money. And her idea that MONEY has virtue...objects have no virtue. Humans have virtue (most of them). And it is very elitist indeed to say "Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it." Money serves anyone who has it, by the luck of the draw. (Getting that job, inheriting it, meeting the right investor, having parents that can afford an education, etc.) And how would one measure this mind and its relationship to being served by money?
"Money is your means of survival.
If I inherited a million bucks it would most likely be hookers and blow unto oblivion, lol. Thus I would be measured unfit and unequal to that wealth. If I eared it through a lifetime of mutual and benefiticial exchange, however, I might be more prudent, and thus be 'equal' to my wealth.
The mind itself is an object. Does it lack virtue? Do the skilled, lifesaving hands of a surgeon lack virtue? How about the tools he uses to save lives? Do they not play a part in virtue? How about the miraculous advancement in farming technology? Does not its life giving nature have the potential for goodness? Or the prinitng press? Or the internet? Do they not contain the ingredients needed to advance? Can we not call our capacity to produce such things 'virtuous'?
Or is 'virtue' to live in a cave and die and 28?
The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.
Not so at all. Money is only representationally the source of my livelihood. The actual source is my energy expended. The verdict that money is unnecessary in an abundance paradigm is not the same as saying my life is unnecessary in an abundance paradigm. In fact, my life is likely to be far more useful, as I will then have the freedom to have time and tools necessary to better the world.
Do you exercise? How much energy do you expend in doing so?
How much do you think i should 'pay you' for your energy expended?
Zero, you say? But I thought money was based on expenditure?
It is not the source, per se, that is corrupt - it is the choices made. If YOU are corrupt, you have damned your own existence (if you are caught). And about the "ability" "deserving" a specific amount... LOLOL! Again. Farm workers are slaves, even though we need the produce from the farms to live; star football players are princes, even though no one died for lack of football. "Deserving..."
If you do none of these things, but instead buy food at the offered price, your words are empty and thus meaningless because you do not practice what you preach.
And again, I don't hate money. I hate evil - which the LOVE of money creates.
Again, replace 'money' (a voluntary transaction) with 'sex' (a voluntary transaction) and see if you arent contradicting yourself.
Money is not the product of virtue. It is the produce of a need for a better system of accounting for energy expended. It can handle virtuous functions equally as well as evil ones. It is impartial.
The only thing I demand is non contradiction, yet you seem to contradict youself at every turn. Which is it? Money? Or human corruption? If its the latter, let us drop all reference to money and focus on the real evil.
"Money is the creation of the best power within you???" Hahaha! Money is an accounting tool. To love money is to put it above Human consideration. To love Humanity is the creation of the best power within you. No keys are necessary to trade good effort in today's society with the introduction of robots to do slave work and energy eliminating scarcity.
Perhaps money accounts for all the power you had within you, as expressed by others willingness to trade their own power for your own.
The lovers of money are not the ones willing to work for it, but those willing to sacrifice Human principle and concern in getting it. Those who would use high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar - despite the vast evidence that it is extremely unhealthy to consume - because it's cheaper. Those that would try to hide its use with labeling such as "corn sugar." Those that market a substance called "Neotame" that just happens to be a version of Aspartame that looks worse than the original - and yet...unlike Aspartame, it doesn't HAVE to be on the label, and is approved for use in foods labeled "Organic" and "Kosher..." I'm sorry. That's done for the love of money - you can bet that Neotame interests are intermingled with pharmaceutical industry interests.
You realize all your above examples were given the stamp of approval by a governmental agency, which people mistakenly believe to be in their interest of safety?
Again, money, not the problem. Coercive monopoly of violence conning everyone into the corperatist dystopia? More so the problem.
"Oh, but they would never kill off their customer base! That doesn't make sense!" Slowly suffering Human Beings who eventually die are great cash cows. They recycle. Plenty more coming in.
Do you pay for the services of death and destruction? No? But you pay for benefitial services. What seperates the customers of death from the customers of life? Is it money? (which you of course yourself use) Or is it ignorance? Did money produce that ignorance? Or something deeper...
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
LOLOL! If One approaches money in terms of the anguish it engenders and also sees that it all springs from a scarcity of energy, when One sees that "free energy" would solve the problem of eliminating virtually all the anguish and allow everyone to live richly if they desire, because it will dissipate money as a necessity and because We are at this position in our robotics and communication We can seize the day and make this happen. Ayn was too busy examining the trees to see the forest, I'm afraid.
Ayns objectivist philosophy was, unfortunately, based in the real world as it exists today. Like us, she did not have access to magical infinite abundance, (although Atlas Shrugged centers around a free energy device much like what you propose) and thus her philosophy was bound by scarcity, just as we are today. When infinite resources do arrive, we will be safe in updating her conclusions. Until then, scarcity stands and must not be simply disregarded because it might not exist in some future time.
Well *I* surely won't tell you that money is evil.
*sigh* Theres only so many contradictions I can stand in one sitting. Your entire premise is that money is evil, or is incapable of virtue due to its corruptive power. I simply dont know which way to argue when you constantly dance between money being the root of evil, and/or mans desire, instead, being the root.
It is not a premise, but the truth. Just because we say, "Ditch digger, your energy is only worth minimum wage, and CEO, your energy is worth a huge salary does NOT follow that money does not represent energy expended. (And if I must abandon the truth here to continue, I would not continue.)
And if we have abundance of energy, eventually we would have no need for money.
Or, first come first served sign up on a website.
LOLOL! Originally, the makers of aluminum had all this sodium fluoride They wanted to get rid of - but it cost LOTS of money to dispose of it because it is a toxic waste. By convincing people that it was good for the teeth, They got approval to instead sell it to municipalities - Pay to dispose or get paid to dispose... Oh, yes. Money was very much involved. Why do you think they dreamed this scam up?
What motivates "institutionalized violence?"
You cannot "produce" value. Value is a judgment and can (and often does) vary from individual to individual for any given thing. The only things that can be produced are goods and services. How we value them is a personal evaluation, though we often find consensus.
True, but the product was the ditch(es), not the value. Others are judging to set each his/her own value. And yes the value IS arbitrary - insofar as it is merely an aggregate of many personal estimations which could be set anywhere - and can shift radically depending on situation or additional information. Like stocks - yesterday XYZ company's stock is valued at $10. They may introduce a new invention. Today their stock is valued at $20. The value fluctuates because there is no baseline value for anything. It is merely a judgment.
I disagree. ALL value is either arbitrary or semiarbitrary. It becomes semiarbitrary in a supply and demand situation where there is a glut or a dearth. Beyond that, who's to say that painting has a value of $5,000 and not $5? Arbitrary, and based on personal judgment.
No. By this logic any tool used by any evil person is still a tool. Any action taken may be evil, but the tool is the tool. We don't need infinity, just abundance of energy to make money obsolete.
Let me see if I understand... The root of production is production. Sorry. No. The root of production is motivation to produce. That motivation can be money, personal pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, reputation... Money is to buy bliss as much as possible. The rest deal directly with bliss.
Wealth is greatly a product of luck. Just because one produces goods does not follow that one will then have wealth. So wealth is more a product of having control over the producers and is substantially a result of luck.
Um... No.... The value has no objective standard. Value is only a consensus of personal arbitrary values.
Or get rid of money by infusing the system with plenum energy and the alternative then results in leisure, best solutions over the cheapest or most profitable, reputation as "coin," and opportunity to create for all. As long as money is part of the system, there WILL be wage slavery, exploitation, greed, elite, and evil choices made.
I suppose I thought this went without saying, but yes, money represents meaningful energy expended.
I never said it represents ALL energy expended for whatever reason.
Rand's comments about money representing the efforts of people is the same thing as saying money represents meaningful energy expended.
Not exactly. Money also promotes motive to evil to gain more of it.
I covered this in my LAST post. It IS NOT MONEY OR SEX THAT IS EVIL. It is THE LOVE OF money/sex that promotes evil behaviors.
So wheres your attack on sex? I assure you I love both money and sex, and yet Im pretty much in the 'good' catergory by any objective yardstick.
Let's get off this sex thing. You keep talking to me as if I am saying money is evil. I am not. It IS NOT MONEY OR SEX THAT IS EVIL. It is THE LOVE OF money/sex that promotes evil behaviors.
But you are saying money is intrinsically bad because it promotes bad behaviour. The same could be said for sex.
We can agree that this is a good thing if the mutual agreements that money is greasing are Ethical, sure. But money, being a tool, does not care about whether it is being used to grease Ethical agreements, or agreements with evil in them. And with plenum energy, We can eliminate the need for money, and if We eliminate the need for money, the root of all evil ( the LOVE of money) will have nothing to grow from.
I can assure you that the rapist needs no monetary incentive to rape his victim.
Wrong. Money reflects mostly who was lucky and who wasn't. Bill Gates lucked out and had a mom who got him into computer labs that virtually none of us could have dreamed of having access to at the time. If he had not had that opportunity, HE WOULD NOT BE WHERE HE IS TODAY. Is it brains that got him into the labs? No. Luck only. Though there is a slight correlation between inventiveness and success, largely the main factor is luck.
So all of life it just a roll of the dice to you? Free will plays no part? What about a child molester? Is he just 'unlucky' to inherit the pedophile gene? What about the child he molests? Just a #ty hand?
Is anyone ever responsible for their actions?
According to SOME people's valuation of their energy. Not all. I think star football players are grossly overpaid. And farm workers grossly underpaid. Others do not. A clear example of the fact that energy expenditure is valued arbitrarily.
Most peoples.
Oh, I understand economics, supply and demand, and all. But I doubt labor costs would change directly. The producers would only see increase as a result of inflation.
And what does this tell you about the value of their labour?
Oh, I don't buy tickets. My point is that the valuation is arbitrary - we don't think it appropriate, but clearly others do. And enough of them, at that.
And I suppose youre 'lucky' enough to know better.
Except, that is NOT what people want. They WANT well-made. They can afford only the crap - which is made shoddily so as to enhance profits. You make it sound like We have a choice to buy the good stuff - and (statistically speaking) We do not. We have limited funds that We are trying to stretch to cover all bases, and shoddy is all we have the money for. Because we did not luck out into a position in that top 1%.
Our lack of choice and inablity to afford things is a result of the debasement of currency, which is directly attributable to government.
What? Polluting is made possible by companies paying money to people who love it (and therefore willing to do evil) to look the other way, or falsify information, so that the polluters don't have to do anything about it. It cost too much to make sure there was no pollution to begin with, and too much to quit. Cheaper to pay fines. It has little to do with the government (except as regulations are set) and everything to do with evil choices to ensure maximum profit.
Government is the king of polluters. This is too broad a topic to delve into here.
--------------------------------------
Will perhaps continue later.
Originally posted by Neo_Serf
It is not a premise, but the truth. Just because we say, "Ditch digger, your energy is only worth minimum wage, and CEO, your energy is worth a huge salary does NOT follow that money does not represent energy expended. (And if I must abandon the truth here to continue, I would not continue.)
Yes it does completely follow. If it did not, I wouldnt have wasted the keystrokes.
If money = energy expended, then ditch digger *must* (by your own reasoning) = wealthy man! I dont know how to say this any simpler. But lets test your premise in a few other ways and see if it stands.
- Me doing 20 pushups = much time + energy expended. Monetary gain = $0.
- A multi national mining company inputs countless man hours and investment of resources to find copper in an unexplored mountin range. 5 years and the careers of many up and comers are expended. Said company finds nothing but granite, at massive energy expenditure. Monetary gain = negative untold millions.
- A potential olympic swimmer invests his entire life into training, expecting to reap the rewards from placing as a medalist olympian. He places .2 seconds behind his competition in trials and doesnt even compete in the olympics. His monetary loss is incalcuable in terms of youth and time invested. Yet his energy invested exceeds the lifetime investment of an average person.
If money = energy invested, as you stubbornly assert, the above examples would be impossible.
Now conversely, if the above examples resulted in success, others would *value* the energy expended, and thus would be willing to trade their surplus value (represented in money) to the successful parties for a negotiated exchange for mutual benefit.
If I spend my whole life collecting coke cans, and expend my every last joule of energy digging through dumpsters for cans, I can expect nothing more than what others are willing to pay for my energy expenditure. That would probably not exceed the deposit price of the cans, and could expect to not have much money in the end.
Money is simply a yardstick for the objective value placed on goods and services.
Value is determined by aggragate demand. Aggragate demand is determined by the culmination of each individual exchange between parties. Energy expended is only one factor in determining value.
You simply *must* abandon this fallicious arguement if we are to continue.
And if we have abundance of energy, eventually we would have no need for money.
Agreed.
Or, first come first served sign up on a website.
So you imply that a body exists that controls the limited lobster resources and can administer them as it sees fit. In other words, a central monopoly which must (by definition) control the lobster catching grounds by force. (otherwise it would not control said resource and thus would not be able to administer the lobster allocation monopolistically on its website)
LOLOL! Originally, the makers of aluminum had all this sodium fluoride They wanted to get rid of - but it cost LOTS of money to dispose of it because it is a toxic waste. By convincing people that it was good for the teeth, They got approval to instead sell it to municipalities - Pay to dispose or get paid to dispose... Oh, yes. Money was very much involved. Why do you think they dreamed this scam up?
Again, you over simplify and scape goat money as the prime factor here. You say sodium floride was *expensive* to dispose of. Thus the *state* (Stalin in the gulags, then Hitler in the concentration camps, then the western world in water 'treatment') stepped in and allowed the aluminum concerns to *offload the costs of disposal* to the taxpayer by allowing the industrials to dump their poison into the *public* (state controlled)water supply.
This situation can only exist because the state interjects and allows toxic waste into the water supply it controls.
The aluminum smelters are of course motivated by money to reduce costs and thus will of course take the state up on 'free' disposal. This option would not be available to them if the state did not exist, or allow it to take place.
Thus the state (monopolized violence) is to blame, not money.
What motivates "institutionalized violence?"
The desire to rule others by force.
You cannot "produce" value. Value is a judgment and can (and often does) vary from individual to individual for any given thing. The only things that can be produced are goods and services. How we value them is a personal evaluation, though we often find consensus.
I can produce a good or service that is deemed to be 'valuble' through concensus, and that concensus is objectively represented by 'money'.
You just (unknowingly?) validated everything ive been trying to say.
True, but the product was the ditch(es), not the value. Others are judging to set each his/her own value. And yes the value IS arbitrary - insofar as it is merely an aggregate of many personal estimations which could be set anywhere - and can shift radically depending on situation or additional information. Like stocks - yesterday XYZ company's stock is valued at $10. They may introduce a new invention. Today their stock is valued at $20. The value fluctuates because there is no baseline value for anything. It is merely a judgment.
True? Thank you.
ar·bi·trar·y/ˈärbiˌtrerē/Adjective1. Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
2. (of power or a ruling body) Unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.
*depending on the situation of additional information* ie. *not* based on person whim or random choice. The stock is valued higher because individual actors judge the new invention to be valuble, not randomly or on a whim, but because they have an objective system in place that measures value on aggragte demand. NOT an arbitrary one.
You are correct in saying there is no intrinsic value to anything, even air or water, as some (who wish to die) do not value these things. Gold has no intrinsic value as it is just a metal in the ground that can be used be people who value it, or disused by those who dont.
Money is simply a yardstick measuring how much gold, or any other good, is valued by those who wish to trade for it. Again, nothing to do with energy expenditure.
I disagree. ALL value is either arbitrary or semiarbitrary. It becomes semiarbitrary in a supply and demand situation where there is a glut or a dearth. Beyond that, who's to say that painting has a value of $5,000 and not $5? Arbitrary, and based on personal judgment.
Whos to say what a painting it worth? Something is worth *exactly* what others are willing to pay for it. The painting is worth $5 if the painter sells for $5. The painting is worth $1 000 000 if it is sold for $1 000 000, even if every other bid was $5.
Things are worth what you are willing to exchange for them. Period. If this payment is based on personal whim, or aggragate demand, is immeterial.
That people generally wish to deal based on a generally accepted yardstick such as money or gold tells us that people generally prefer an objective standard to compare relative values of goods to. This tells us that people generally prefer money.
No. By this logic any tool used by any evil person is still a tool. Any action taken may be evil, but the tool is the tool. We don't need infinity, just abundance of energy to make money obsolete.
Paperclips are abundant and yet we still find money a useful tool to allocate them.
If money is not evil, stop your attack on it and seek the deeper cause.
Let me see if I understand... The root of production is production. Sorry. No. The root of production is motivation to produce. That motivation can be money, personal pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, reputation... Money is to buy bliss as much as possible. The rest deal directly with bliss.
Now youre just being obtuse. The root of production is the human mind coupled with its desire to control its enviroment to its benefit.
Wealth is greatly a product of luck. Just because one produces goods does not follow that one will then have wealth. So wealth is more a product of having control over the producers and is substantially a result of luck.
Are you seriously going to sit there, on the other end of this futuristic and unfathomable device called the internet, and tell me with a strait face that it bubbled up randomly from the eather based on sheer 'luck'?
You know what lucky is? That we are lucky enough to live today with access to such wonderous technologies that our ancestors couldnt even dream of, and that we are able to have thing conversation across the globe, all the while not being hunted by wild beasts or whipped mercilessly by slave drivers, unlike the 99.99% of humans who have existed before us. THAT is luck. The inventions and advances you say were arrived at by luck, though, certainly did not chance into reality, like you assert, but instead are the result of the focused and productive human mind.
Do you feel everything you personally have produced and achived (including your arguments) to be a result of 'luck'?
Um... No.... The value has no objective standard. Value is only a consensus of personal arbitrary values.
Ok and this concensus is symbolized by money. Im glad we finially agree that money represents aggragate value and *not* energy expended.
Or get rid of money by infusing the system with plenum energy and the alternative then results in leisure, best solutions over the cheapest or most profitable, reputation as "coin," and opportunity to create for all. As long as money is part of the system, there WILL be wage slavery, exploitation, greed, elite, and evil choices made.
Are you saying that without money, evil and exploitation will end?
You realize moneyless systems have been tried before, right...?
I suppose I thought this went without saying, but yes, money represents meaningful energy expended.
FINALLY we make some progress. You admit that meaningless energy expenditure does not equal money. Thus it is 'meaning' or 'value' that defines money, and not energy expended. Value is defined by others definition of what is valuble. Thus money is a means of exchange of value.
AGREED.
I never said it represents ALL energy expended for whatever reason.
A lot of energy could have been conserved if you were clear about this up front.
Rand's comments about money representing the efforts of people is the same thing as saying money represents meaningful energy expended.
And since we agree that value is based on aggragate demand, we must conclude that money is an effective tool in facilitating the exchange of value.
Not exactly. Money also promotes motive to evil to gain more of it.
I covered this in my LAST post. It IS NOT MONEY OR SEX THAT IS EVIL. It is THE LOVE OF money/sex that promotes evil behaviors.
So wheres your attack on sex? I assure you I love both money and sex, and yet Im pretty much in the 'good' catergory by any objective yardstick.
Let's get off this sex thing. You keep talking to me as if I am saying money is evil. I am not. It IS NOT MONEY OR SEX THAT IS EVIL. It is THE LOVE OF money/sex that promotes evil behaviors.
But you are saying money is intrinsically bad because it promotes bad behaviour. The same could be said for sex.
We can agree that this is a good thing if the mutual agreements that money is greasing are Ethical, sure. But money, being a tool, does not care about whether it is being used to grease Ethical agreements, or agreements with evil in them. And with plenum energy, We can eliminate the need for money, and if We eliminate the need for money, the root of all evil (the LOVE of money) will have nothing to grow from.
I can assure you that the rapist needs no monetary incentive to rape his victim.
Wrong. Money reflects mostly who was lucky and who wasn't. Bill Gates lucked out and had a mom who got him into computer labs that virtually none of us could have dreamed of having access to at the time. If he had not had that opportunity, HE WOULD NOT BE WHERE HE IS TODAY. Is it brains that got him into the labs? No. Luck only. Though there is a slight correlation between inventiveness and success, largely the main factor is luck.
So all of life it just a roll of the dice to you? Free will plays no part? What about a child molester? Is he just 'unlucky' to inherit the pedophile gene? What about the child he molests? Just a #ty hand?
Is anyone ever responsible for their actions?
Oh, I understand economics, supply and demand, and all. But I doubt labor costs would change directly. The producers would only see increase as a result of inflation.
And what does this tell you about the value of their labour?
Oh, I don't buy tickets. My point is that the valuation is arbitrary - we don't think it appropriate, but clearly others do. And enough of them, at that.
And I suppose youre 'lucky' enough to know better.
Except, that is NOT what people want. They WANT well-made. They can afford only the crap - which is made shoddily so as to enhance profits. You make it sound like We have a choice to buy the good stuff - and (statistically speaking) We do not. We have limited funds that We are trying to stretch to cover all bases, and shoddy is all we have the money for. Because we did not luck out into a position in that top 1%.
Our lack of choice and inablity to afford things is a result of the debasement of currency, which is directly attributable to government.
What? Polluting is made possible by companies paying money to people who love it (and therefore willing to do evil) to look the other way, or falsify information, so that the polluters don't have to do anything about it. It cost too much to make sure there was no pollution to begin with, and too much to quit. Cheaper to pay fines. It has little to do with the government (except as regulations are set) and everything to do with evil choices to ensure maximum profit.
Government is the king of polluters. This is too broad a topic to delve into here.
--------------------------------------
Will perhaps continue later.
No... Ditch digger does not GET the perceived value of his energy in money. The company he works for gets most of it. Maybe the City hired the company ditch digger works for to dig a bed for their canal. The City pays the company 200,000. The company pays the boss 50,000 and has 10 ditch diggers - whose work/energy is what is actually being done. He pays each of them $1,000 to dig the ditch. It takes 100 hours.
The ditch digger made $10 an hour - his energy is "worth" that, even though it was HIM that actually made it happen. The boss made $500 an hour for mostly doing nothing. The company has $140,000 to pay the stock holders and reinvest in the company.
So though the energy was expended by the ditch digger, others took his money.
Better to have robots digging the ditches and the ditch digger doing what he wants to do.
Who besides you finds meaning in that energy you expended? You can't do business with yourself alone and expect to turn a profit.
Ok, I see your problem. You seem to think that money representing meaningful energy expended means that the one expending the energy is the one who actually gets the money.
No, no, no. Sometimes this is the case - freelance workers, for example - but most often, the energy is expended by one and the money goes to another. And money representing meaningful energy expended does not mean you can create more inflow of money by expending energy (in this example, your energy enriched the workers at the company, but since the energy expended had no meaning from the standpoint of a viable place to mine, there was no inflow.
If money being REPRESENTATIVE of MEANINGFUL energy EXPENDED, regardless of who winds up with the money...
Agreed that when the energy expended has meaning, money (of some kind) will be created, some kind of exchange can take place. What that is depends on the subjective view of value. Yes.
Yes. I never said every joule had an absolute value. You are likely not to create money at a high unit to joule ratio. Though the City in my example above paid premium for those joules the ditch digger expended, by the time it got to him, others were "compensated."
LOLOL! Value is ENTIRELY subjective. Money is a yardstick for determining who (of those with it to spend) values what how much, I suppose. And a yardstick for how much we value Human life.
Energy expended is NO factor in determining value.
Money, which represents energy meaningfully expended, may be how we indicate how much we value something, but we never value something because it took energy expense to produce. (I have seen detailed, painstaking paintings not sell at all, and paintings where someone merely tossed cans of paint at the canvas sell for hundreds of thousands.)
Since it's not fallacious, I cannot abandon it. You THINK it is because you are failing to understand how the relationship between meaningful energy expended and money develops.
Ok. That's good. My point in the End of Entropy piece (linked in my sig) is that, since we have plenum energy everywhere, if we tap it, we don't need money. This piece, The Ethical Planetarian Party Platform, offers a structure for a moneyless society to function under.
Not yet it doesn't. But it will. No "monopoly." In order for the concept of "monopoly" to exist, one has to have a money system.
There's no *competition* to supply lobsters. All available in the centralized, robotic control are given to those on the list. If someone loves to catch lobster, they can do that too and, like the man who sent you those 25 lobsters, put their catch up on the web.
No. No oversimplification at all. And I do not blame money. Quit saying that. I blame THE LOVE OF MONEY.
And why would the state accept this? Because somebody got paid off. No one in their right mind would say, sure. Dump poison in the water so you don't have to pay to dispose of it properly. Unless... Either they were lied to ("Fluoride helps teeth") for the purposes of making money or they were paid off to make money.
And in the end, we're poisoning people to the end of making money/power/energy. Without money as a motive, no one would do this evil.
Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. The STATE didn't say, "Here. Dump that waste in the water supply." No. Didn't happen that way. The Aluminum companies sold the idea under pretense and payoff to the municipalities. They ACTIVELY courted the Cities. This option would not exist if the creators of sodium fluoride had not lied and brought money to bear.
Thus the LOVE of money is to blame, not money.
What allows them to proceed? Money/power/energy. WHY do they proceed? The LOVE of money/power/energy.
Yes, you can produce a good or service. It's value depends on who is looking at it and where they place that value. Consensus does not set value but gives you an average of values placed. It may be that consensus would give an average value of $100 for your gizmo, but if you can only find people who value it at $50, you will not be getting $100.
Money only objectively defines any given individual's assessment of value.
I'm not seeing it.
And what do they base their judgment on? Their personal, arbitrary (as in the first definition above) evaluation. That may be influenced by the fact that someone sold something like it for $2,000 and this looks better, so it must be worth $3,000... But it is still arbitrary on the whole.
Once money is circulating, you can use it as a yardstick of how much and what people value, yes. But the making of money requires energy to be expended at some point along the line.
And what others are willing to pay is arbitrary.
You can find an average, to be sure. If you had a bunch of $5 offers and one million dollar offers, it just would highlight the arbitrary valuation. You say the painting is worth a million, but I say that is not to. To the BUYER it's worth that much. The buyer is not guaranteed (s)he will get anything for it if (s)he decides to sell it. The arbitrary evaluations of others will determine what the seller gets. Or does a good or service's value fluctuate naturally outside the evaluation of the potential buyer?
But it's NOT objective. It's subjective as hell. If it was objective, there would be no such thing as inflation. Things would stay at fixed prices. No one would wait for sales, as there would be no such thing. All it tells us is that people will use money when it is there and they feel confident that the next guy will take it. But there is plenty of evidence that people would prefer not having to worry about it.
Are you suggesting we cannot use one tool relative to another? That is the only way I can make sense of this statement. I mean, what is your point here?
I think I will go back and count how many times you have accused me, directly or, as in this case, obliquely, of saying money is evil.
I think YOU're being obtuse here. The root of production is the Human desire to improve the environment because of personal satisfaction/pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, reputation...or, if it's there, money.
Yes. If you weren't born to a mother that could get you access to a computer lab when such things were very rare, you won't become Bill Gates. If you weren't born of parents who can send you to Harvard and there is no scholarship, you aren't going to graduate from Harvard, even if it's a dream you had since you were a child. Think of all the money you lose being born to parents who can't send you to Harvard and instead send you to community college!
I can't tell you how lucky I feel when I solve a problem. I was lucky I thought of the solution. I'm lucky it was ME who solved the problem. I'm lucky I was smart enough.
Nope. One has to be lucky to succeed in any large measure.
Yep. I am lucky enough to be pretty sharp and capable. I am lucky enough to have been taught how to read and write. I am lucky that the clarity of thought and analysis are mine to offer ideas that have merit. I am lucky to have the Interweb to convey the ideas. I am lucky to have personal knowledge of elements some dispute (plenum energy). I am lucky to have what it takes.
Pretty much, yes - as long as you have enough energy, technology and a structure.
Yep, and in all of them people had to work. This is no longer the case. Robots can work and Humans can create. Be blissful. Live as the elite of today live if They choose. Only because for the first time in our present history we have robotics, Interweb and plenum energy will a moneyless society succeed.
No. It is meaning which assigns value for any individual. The degree of value is reflected in the amount offered in money. Money still represents energy expended, but it can be used to "shortcut" barter - that was it's purpose to begin with.
I never said it was not effective. I said we don't need it.
I also said that since we cannot excise the LOVE of money - which would be awesome if we could, as it is the root of all evil - excising money does effectively the same thing. And that can be accomplished by adding plenum energy to the system. Which leads to richness of lifestyle for all who choose it, no poverty, no starvation, and no evil done for the LOVE of money (virtually all evil).
I have no attack on sex. I have no attack on money. I have an attack on the LOVE of each. And if we could get rid of sex, it would get rid of the LOVE of it. However, unlike money, which we CAN get rid of, sex is pretty much here to stay.
Me? I hate money. I love all the stuff, though, so I endure money as far as it goes. But I am certainly motivated to get rid of it if I can and eliminate poverty for those so unlucky to be born into it (some lucky few do get out - but they are the exceptions, the lucky ones; some unlucky few - well, many these days - fall into poverty).
You show me where I said that. In fact I may count the times I have said just the opposite. The LOVE of money...
And since we can't excise the LOVE of money, but CAN excise money, let's excise money to eliminate the problem of LOVING it.
Yeah. He needs a LOVE of sex. He needs to put sex before Human value. What's your point?
Surely will plays a part - without it, any luck has no chance. But you judge harshly people who are in poverty, as if they "just didn't TRY hard enough" or are necessarily lacking in intelligence. Because YOU made it, everyone else should be able to, I guess. But the fact is that statistically all people are poor and a large chunk are in poverty because the luck of the draw landed them there, and no matter how much will they brought to bear, they were stuck.
100% But their actions cannot guarantee success. A very large part of life is luck.
I wouldn't throw luck in there unless we're talking about the luck that I was born such that I could become aware enough to make a value judgment. How I judge is irrelevant to luck.
Or rather to those controlling the government...impelled to do so by a LOVE of money/power/energy.
I am going to doubt that. All the pollution I have ever seen is either littering, cars, or coming from some private industry plant. And they get by with it by greasing palms.
Originally posted by Neo_Serf
No... Ditch digger does not GET the perceived value of his energy in money. The company he works for gets most of it. Maybe the City hired the company ditch digger works for to dig a bed for their canal. The City pays the company 200,000. The company pays the boss 50,000 and has 10 ditch diggers - whose work/energy is what is actually being done. He pays each of them $1,000 to dig the ditch. It takes 100 hours.
Firstly, your example is predicated on the 'city' using stolen (taxed) money, which is the antithesis of the free, peaceful market situation that I advocate.
Secondly, youre totally falling for the marxist fallacy that incorrectly believes that the company, comprised of various directors and bosses, *arent working or producing anything*. This = FALSE, and Id like you to address this point specifically because I believe this is a major flaw in your reasoning.
Do you actually believe (and lets pretend this is a free market situation, wherin the ditches actually were in demand and demand was not artificially manufactured by government) that the bosses and executives, the owners and financial executives that run this ditch digging concern are *not working*?
Do you actually believe (yes or no will do) that the countless hours invested by the 'bosses' in business school, the immense risk the owner took in investing in a new company, the many hours of overtime paid into the essential book keeping by the accountants...do you actually believe the intelligence and brains of the operation, that actually went out, took a risk of time and money, hired a staff, advertised, competed for contracts head to head with other ditch digging concerns, spent weekends at the office optomising practices...do you actually believe these people are *not working*?
Do you actually believe that these highly ambitious and immensely skilled and groomed proffesionals, upon which the digger himself depends, is not working harder or longer hours that the digger himself?
As one who has dug ditches myself, I can tell you in my experience, the boss was always the one to work into the night. He was always the one grinding out the weekends, as I took them off to let my body recover. Never did it occur to me to resent his input, as his hard work, although not physical, was exaustive, and without it my tiring job would *not exist*. Without my boss, I would have been producing $0/h instead of $10.
What do you think would happen if my boss was forced to pay me and my fellow diggers (unskilled, young and expendable) the same wage as his accountant, who invested years of his life into a highly specialized and demanded feild?
The ditch digger made $10 an hour - his energy is "worth" that, even though it was HIM that actually made it happen. The boss made $500 an hour for mostly doing nothing. The company has $140,000 to pay the stock holders and reinvest in the company.
Butit wasnt the ditch digger at all who made it happen!
Who hired the ditch digger, and to what end? Why does the position of digger even exist in the first place?
People dont demand random holes everywhere; if they did, I could pick up a shovel and make a fortune in my back yard.
The demand for ditches only arrises where there is need for ditches, and those who need a ditch are willing to pay a certain amount for a reputable *company* to forfill their ditch desire. Those who demand ditches must first find an outfit who is capable and reputable in the feild of ditch digging - this requires specialized expertise, not to mention advertising. (if the person demanding ditches is to even become aware of the ditch diing outfit) Shovels and machinery must be bought, advertisment must be placed, skilled foremen must be hired, and training must be provided to raw and unskilled diggers. All of this must be coordinated by the massive input of ingenuity provided by the owner/boss. And if he cannot raise the capital required for this highly complicated system to operate, investors must be courted into throwing down their own hard earned wealth.
You IGNORE all this in favour of the poor ditch digger who you declare is the one making all the above happen. You ignore the fact that without all of the energy and time invested by his superiors, he would not have a ditch to dig at all. You also ignore the fact that he accepts his job voluntarily and of his own free will, and does so because he *knows* his unskilled labour is not worth to anyone more than $10/h.
Besides, I has a blast digging ditches, I got an awesome tan, and at the time $10/h wasnt bad scratch.
So though the energy was expended by the ditch digger, others took his money.
So youre saying that his boss held a gun to his head and stole an unspecified amount of money that was justly due to him?
If I sell you a car for a $1000, and you accept of your own free will, do you then have the moral right to turn around to me and demand another $500?
Did I 'take' anything from you, in the above example?
Better to have robots digging the ditches and the ditch digger doing what he wants to do.
Agreed. But the ditch digging company would still require skilled executives to deploy and operate said robots.
Ok, I see your problem. You seem to think that money representing meaningful energy expended means that the one expending the energy is the one who actually gets the money.
Where did you get this idea? Whoever trades their valued surplus gets the money. I hardly have to lift a finger to sell my car.
No, no, no. Sometimes this is the case - freelance workers, for example - but most often, the energy is expended by one and the money goes to another. And money representing meaningful energy expended does not mean you can create more inflow of money by expending energy (in this example, your energy enriched the workers at the company, but since the energy expended had no meaning from the standpoint of a viable place to mine, there was no inflow.
So you agree that expended energy is meaninless if said energy has no value to others.
Ummm, thats what Ive been saying the whole time, and what youve been vigerously arguing against. (until your last post, which is confusing to me, and highlights your contradicary premises.)
If money being REPRESENTATIVE of MEANINGFUL energy EXPENDED, regardless of who winds up with the money...
Again, you misunderstand the nature of money, which, seeing as youre an intelligent person, must be willful at this point.
The person who winds up with the money is the one who is the most successful at exchanging meaningful energy expenditure. If exchange is necessarily meaningful to all the parties he voluntarily exchanged with, the person with the most justly earned money has offered the most meaningful energy to the world.
Money doesnt just end up randomly in some guys bank account. (unless if was inherited.) It got there by his skillful trading of value between himself and voluntary trading partners, who are better off for his wealth. This does not apply to money gained by coersion, theft or fraud.
Agreed that when the energy expended has meaning, money (of some kind) will be created, some kind of exchange can take place. What that is depends on the subjective view of value. Yes.
Hooray for progress! Money will be created in any situation in which resources are not infinite. People need a mode of allocation that does not involve force. That mode is best represented by a commodity of near universal value, be it sea shells, salt, gold, sticks or paper notes. Or bliss. (although the accounting for an all bliss economy would be a nightmare~) Whatevr people feel they can convert their resources into and trade them to others widely.
This is not evil! Voluntary trade for mutual benefit is, in fact, the opposite of evil.
Yes. I never said every joule had an absolute value. You are likely not to create money at a high unit to joule ratio. Though the City in my example above paid premium for those joules the ditch digger expended, by the time it got to him, others were "compensated."
And justly so. Have you ever run a business? I have. Its hard. I failed. Now I provide value to others as a sub contractor, effectively contracting out the messy and risky aspects of business to those who are more capable than I was. When I aquire the needed skillset to go it on my own again, I will. But first I must invest heavily in my intellectual capital and knowlege if I am to succeed.
LOLOL! Value is ENTIRELY subjective. Money is a yardstick for determining who (of those with it to spend) values what how much, I suppose. And a yardstick for how much we value Human life.
It is objective in that we objectively agree that an ounce of silver is worth (objectively) about $47 today. (prolly $50 by the time you read this) If the value of silver were subjective, ie anything you want it to be, well, try buying it for $5 and tell the seller that its value is subjective, and that you have arbitrarily decided this. He'll either laugh, or play along, and if he does decide to humour you, he might tell you the value of an ouce of silver is subjectively $1000 and ounce, since all value is arbitrary, as you assert. See how far you get with him.
Energy expended is NO factor in determining value.
Its amazing to me how you started by arguing the exact opposite of this, and now you go as far as to capitalize the opposite to which you so energetically argued to begin with, as if this is the position you held all along, and *im* the fool for pointing this out.
You really would make a great politician~
Money, which represents energy meaningfully expended, may be how we indicate how much we value something, but we never value something because it took energy expense to produce. (I have seen detailed, painstaking paintings not sell at all, and paintings where someone merely tossed cans of paint at the canvas sell for hundreds of thousands.)
Remember, you do not determine the value of the energy expended. The market does this. If the market is filled with dummies who embrace irrationality, then irrational objects is what they will value. This is not for you to decide.
Since it's not fallacious, I cannot abandon it. You THINK it is because you are failing to understand how the relationship between meaningful energy expended and money develops.
Since you have accepted my argument that money = meaningful products, and products = energy expenditure, therefor meaningful energy = meaning as defined by the market, I dont think I am the one with the misunderstanding.
No. Just No. You must abandon this premise if we are to continue.
The ditch digger expends *far* more energy than the CEO. The farmers energetic output far exceeds the day traders. Money accounts for nothing besides the aggregate demand for the energy expended. The ditch digger inputs far more joules of expended energy to his task, and yet makes exponentially less money. If money = energy expended, I would be a far richer man.
You simply *must* abandon this fallicious arguement if we are to continue.
Remember, you started this discussion in the position that money = energy expended. You then reversed your postition and admitted that energy expended must have value, or meaning, to others.
We agreed, then, that meaning to others is arrived at by the aggregate demand generated by each individuals preferences, which you assert is arbitrary and random, and i conclude is based on a rational methdology that determines value to each individual.
The last point is immeterial if we both agree that money = value to others.
How others arrive at their standards of what is valuble is irrelevant to the discussion, and your opinion of what and how others should arrive at value is also irrelevant.
I think I understand just fine. If you did, you wouldnt have had to reverse your position and argue to opposite of your original stance.
Ok. That's good. My point in the End of Entropy piece (linked in my sig) is that, since we have plenum energy everywhere, if we tap it, we don't need money. This piece, The Ethical Planetarian Party Platform, offers a structure for a moneyless society to function under.
But you agreed some things will still be scarce, like lobster. You provide no adaquate function as to how the remaining scarce resources shall be allocated.
Not yet it doesn't. But it will. No "monopoly." In order for the concept of "monopoly" to exist, one has to have a money system.
You havent thought this through, and once again have contradicted yourself.
You said in your moneyless utopia, a website would exist that would be a 'first come first serve' system. Thus you imply that there is someone who does the 'serving', and that someone is probably the one who runs the website. Thus, in *your own words* this person or persons has exclusive rights to distributed the lobster as it sees fit. (in this case it distributes by first come first serve) Thus, by necessity of *your own argument*, that person must have exclusive control over the lobster fishing grounds and thus *must* have a monopoly over them!
If they didnt, your plan would be nonsensical, as I could easily just disobey your internet poll and go fish all the lobster i wanted, regardless of your plan.
Others could do the same.
Thus, your first come first serve system would be just that, but not in the way you intended.
Your internet allocation would be a meaningless farce, as those who skipped the whole inventory checklist and just went out and trapped lobster would control all of the scarce crustation,
and no one who actually checked a box on your site would receive anything, as it would all be controlled by the lobster fishermen themselves.
Thus it follows that either your plan is meaningless, in which case its back to the drawing board, or it is enforced by monopolisitc violence, in which case you violate one or more of your own three rules.
There's no *competition* to supply lobsters. All available in the centralized, robotic control are given to those on the list. If someone loves to catch lobster, they can do that too and, like the man who sent you those 25 lobsters, put their catch up on the web.
If lobsters were infinite, competition would be meaningless, just as no one competes for air. Since they are scarce, and coveted (cuz lobsters are downright delicious), we must accept that competition would be fierce. (as it is)
Centralized, robotic control, you say? Well at least now you admit that we are to be ruled by robots.
Theres a reason a central theme of dystopic sci fi novels is the ensalvement and destruction of man at the hand of his own robotic creations.
You wistfully ignore that this central robo command must be programmed by HUMANS.
No. No oversimplification at all. And I do not blame money. Quit saying that. I blame THE LOVE OF MONEY.
So it is humans who corrupt money, and not the other way around?
It follows that, in the absence of money, humans will find another idol to pave their way to corruption.
And why would the state accept this? Because somebody got paid off. No one in their right mind would say, sure. Dump poison in the water so you don't have to pay to dispose of it properly. Unless... Either they were lied to ("Fluoride helps teeth") for the purposes of making money or they were paid off to make money.
So we agree that without the state, these companies would have to bear the costs of disposal and thus go bankrupt if they were unable to do so.
The state in this example is the enabler. Without it, money would serve the opposite end - money would then force said company to find an economical solution to its waste that was acceptable to its customers.
Thus money, in a truly free society, would force polluters to reduce and eliminate pollution, as pollution is nothing but overhead. (which the market always seeks to eliminate.)
example: nuclear power could never exist without the state, as no private insurance company could insure the potential liability ranging in the billions that nuke plants represent. (england actually tried to privatize their nuke plants, which sent investors fleeing - no one but the state can afford to take on such a risky and potentially catasrophic endeavor, and the state is only able to do to because of the extortion of taxation) In this example, money actually serves as a rational check on irrational behaviour.
And in the end, we're poisoning people to the end of making money/power/energy. Without money as a motive, no one would do this evil.
Power is an actual biochemical stimulant and addiction to the human brain, as it served us to seek it in our primordial evolution. But just as sugar tastes sweet to us because it was so scarce in our caveman days, so to does power feel sweet to us today, just as it did when our evolutionary pathway rewarded us for seeking and obtaining it.
But now we command near infinite sugar, and near inifinite power, never conceived by the slow process of evolution, which has not caught up to our rapid advancement. We are fat because we seek sweets as we are programmed to, and we are mad with power because we are not equipped to weild the immense power over others that technology has allowed us. Power is an addiction, and money can be a means to that fix, but it it the craving for power itself that is our destroyer, and not money, which actually serves as our best defense against unchecked power.
A wealthy society with a diffused power base and many competing concentrations of wealth and power is the only check against the nightmare of centralized control.
If not money, the human desire to rule others will manifest in another way, like, say, controlling the centrally planned robot AI in your utopian (dystopian) future.
Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. The STATE didn't say, "Here. Dump that waste in the water supply." No. Didn't happen that way. The Aluminum companies sold the idea under pretense and payoff to the municipalities. They ACTIVELY courted the Cities. This option would not exist if the creators of sodium fluoride had not lied and brought money to bear.
Actually, and you should know this so Im sure Im not updating you on anything, but Stalin was the first to introduce Sodium Floride into drinking water that supplied his slaves in the gulags. Hitler then took his example and used it in the water fed to the concentration camp inmated. Only after ww2 was water floridization introduced to North America, largely at the behest of Nazi chemists working for Bayer who knew exactly the effects of this most toxic substance.
Again, the state enabled the situation under which aluminum and uranium smelters could offload their costs to the state in the form of dumping in the state water supply.
OF COURSE these companies chose to cut costs by not properly disposing of their pollution, but this is not enabled by money, as money, in a free system, would explicitly PROHIBIT such behaviour, as no person would voluntarily pay for tainted water.
It was the STATE who poured millions into public disinformation programs during the manhattan project to disinform the public on the effects of flouride on humans.
No private concern could ever, or would ever want to, engage in a multigenerational plan to poison its customers, only to open itself to being sued out of existence, if it did not have the umbrella of legal protection that the STATE provides.
Again, in an actually free society, money would serve as a bulwark against this kind of behaviour because if the public ever found out that a company was willingly poisoning them, that company would be sued into bankruptcy, and all its competitors would have every incentive to reveal its nefarious deeds to the public. (and thus competing water companies would constantly test their competitors water purity, and widely publish and adverse results.)
Thus the STATE enables this, and not money, which would serve as an effective check against this sort of evil in a free situation.
Thus the LOVE of money is to blame, not money.
That I love my paycheck, and yet somehow remain a pretty good dude, flies in the face of your basic premise.
What allows them to proceed? Money/power/energy. WHY do they proceed? The LOVE of money/power/energy.
A gun can be used to attack and murder others, or defend those same victims from murder.
The desire to rule others by force.
Money doesnt kill people, people kill people.
Yes, you can produce a good or service. It's value depends on who is looking at it and where they place that value. Consensus does not set value but gives you an average of values placed. It may be that consensus would give an average value of $100 for your gizmo, but if you can only find people who value it at $50, you will not be getting $100.
Should it be any other way?
Money only objectively defines any given individual's assessment of value.
But you have been saying the whole time that the value of money is subjective! Arrrrrrrg! Which is it??
I'm not seeing it.
I see that!
And what do they base their judgment on? Their personal, arbitrary (as in the first definition above) evaluation. That may be influenced by the fact that someone sold something like it for $2,000 and this looks better, so it must be worth $3,000... But it is still arbitrary on the whole.
Regardless of how each individual determies value (i may value my great grandfathers $2 watch as priceless, while the pawnshop would only actually give me $2) the fact is that competing bids (each bids value based on individual preference) will determine the 'value' of any item. That value, which in summation might be an aggragte based on aribitrary or even random preferences, will in the end be represented by an objective, agreed upon sum, in this case dollars. How or why the specific dollar amount is arrived upon is meaningless - that a final sum is agreed to, and exchanged in, is what is important to our discussion.
In an auction, we dont just yell out random numbers (arbitrary) and expect a result. We yell out a specific number with a specific value attached to said number, which is objectively defined and agreed upon by all parties as is implied by the very act of bidding.
That we engage in bidding only with the knowlege that our bids have meaninging implies that all parties involved may have no objectively agreed to the value to the specific object they are bidding on, (otherwise they wouldnt be bidding) but they have implicitly and objectively agreed to the means by which they making the bids - money itself.
Money only functions when all parties involved agree, objectively, that said money has a set value that is agreed upon. Thus we use gold as a unit of exchange because we know its realitve value wont fluctuate wildly and will almost always be a medium of exchange that others objectively value. We dont use seashells because, although there might be one savant who really, really values seashells, his *arbitrary* value of seashells does not represent what is *objectively* understood - that seashells and abundant and thus cannot represent scarcity.
Thus the value of individual items may be based on arbitrary and personal preferences, but the *mode of exchange*, by its very nature, cannot. Money only works when it its objectively valued by those who use it.
Once money is circulating, you can use it as a yardstick of how much and what people value, yes. But the making of money requires energy to be expended at some point along the line.
*Of course* energy expenditure is one factor in determinig value.
This is why a ditch digger can expect more pay than a burger flipper, even though both require similar aptitudes. Oil shale, while abundant, is only as valuble as its ratio of oil produced to its ratio of energy expended to create said oil, which is also in relation to the energy inputs required to drill for sweet crude. If more energy per unit was expended in extracting oil from shale (as it used to be), no one would develope it and no money would be produced. So of course energy expenditure is a factor in a products cost. But this has nothing to do with money itself. Money simply measures the aggragte demand for the above processes.
A barrel of sweet crude and a barrel of tarsand oil go for roughly the same price, if my assumtion is not mistaken. But shale oil requires in order of magnitude more input of energy per barrel than a saudi oil well does, yet they demand the same money per barrel. Thus energy input is a concern only to the producers of the oil and not the purchasers. In this case energy input is irrelevant to money, as money will represent the same amount of value (oil or sweet crude) regardless of the huge disparity in energy expended between the two.
In other words, if something *must* cost more because the energy it consumes in production consumes money, then so be it, and this will be represented in the final cost. But money is by no means bound by energy consumtion, it just represents it in the cases where energy consumtion is valuble. I can expend next to zero additional resources (compared to my normal day) by sitting on a stage and telling jokes, the production of which cost me negligable resources, and yet, if i was funny, i would receive huge amounts of money represented by ticket sales.
Expended energy is only one variable in the formula that = value.
And what others are willing to pay is arbitrary.
How many dollars or ounces of gold they are willing to pay may be arbitrary. The value of the gold or dollars themselves is not.
You can find an average, to be sure. If you had a bunch of $5 offers and one million dollar offers, it just would highlight the arbitrary valuation. You say the painting is worth a million, but I say that is not to. To the BUYER it's worth that much. The buyer is not guaranteed (s)he will get anything for it if (s)he decides to sell it. The arbitrary evaluations of others will determine what the seller gets. Or does a good or service's value fluctuate naturally outside the evaluation of the potential buyer?
If something is only worth what others will trade for it, the BUYER is the only relevant factor in the eyes of the SELLER. The buyer and the seller are the only relevant parties when considering the value of their trade.
No one is garanteed anything if trading is voluntary. I might not sell you my hockey card collection for a million billion bux. The only way you could garantee the transfer of my hockey cards would be through violence.
But it's NOT objective. It's subjective as hell. If it was objective, there would be no such thing as inflation. Things would stay at fixed prices. No one would wait for sales, as there would be no such thing. All it tells us is that people will use money when it is there and they feel confident that the next guy will take it. But there is plenty of evidence that people would prefer not having to worry about it.
If the value of money was arbitrary, and whatever you wanted it to be, you could walk into McDonalds and demand a big mac for 25c, and your arbitrary estimation of the value of those cents would be just as valid as their arbitrary estimation that the big mac was indeed worth $2500. That they post a fixed price, in dollars, on their board, and people, generally, will pay said price, means that both McDonalds and their customers have objectively agreed upon the value in dollars that said big mac will cost. If the value of money were arbitrary, this would not be possible.
Inflation itself is objective. We can all track and define the rate of inflation (an insideous hidden tax), make plans to counteract it, and still buy a cheeseburger, does not make the value of money arbitrary. It simply make the value of money objectively deminishing. But I think youre right, to an extent. The current money system run by fiat by central bankers is certainly, to a degree, arbitrarly decreed by rule of force. Our currencies have lost %90+ of their value over the last century, and this is not because we have all, conciously agreed to downgrage our money. So to the extent that money deviates from is natural form due to the meddling of the evil central banks, that portion of its deviation i think could be called arbitrary.
But this devaluation is only possible because money has objective value to begin with. If Im a milk farmer, and I sell %100 pure milk for $3, and then I slowly begin to dilute my milk with water, but still sell my milk for $3, customers will only pay the original price under the illusion that my milk was still %100. If my milk dropped to %50 milk/water, and people got suspicious and discovered my fraud, they would, at the very least, demand my milk be revalued at half of what i was charging, and that value would be entirely based on the milk value content of my product. Thus my milk, while devalued through fraud, still retains is objective value, just as money, while devalued through fraud, does aswell.
That precious metals are currently skyrocketing in relation to paper dollars should show you the objective standard of value - gold and silver are simply responding to the massive inflation and devaluing of paper currency. If money were arbitrary, no such relationship could exist.
Are you suggesting we cannot use one tool relative to another? That is the only way I can make sense of this statement. I mean, what is your point here?
My point is that money is a tool, and an extremely advanced one at that. Even in an abundance of paperclips, money is still the most useful tool to determine how many should be made and where they should go.
I think I will go back and count how many times you have accused me, directly or, as in this case, obliquely, of saying money is evil.
Youve said countless times that money causes most if not all of humanities ills. If not the object itself, our desire for it is to blame. To eliminate money, you claim, would resolve the worst ills that face humanity.
Im simpy saying that this is not the case, and indeed is the opposite. Money has allowed for the comfortable life you and I enjoy, which is basically a utopia in our own little bubble if a time traveler from the past were to see us. Money, and the exchange of values it represents, has brought to your fingertips the most incredible advancements in our standards of living that our ancestors could literally never have even dreamed of. Voluntary exchange of value, respresented by money, is *entirely* responsible for this, and if your robot utopia is ever to come into existence (which I hope it will) it will only do so incentivised by the productive wealth and capital humans produce, represented by, you got it, MONEY.
So if money falls into disuse of its on downward momentum, so be it, but until then, lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater, eh?
It is THE LOVE of money that promotes evil. THAT is the deeper cause.
I think YOU're being obtuse here. The root of production is the Human desire to improve the environment because of personal satisfaction/pride, prestige, fame, desire to fill a need or solve a problem, reputation...or, if it's there, money.
But money, in many ways, symbolizes the previous virtues you mentioned.
Yes. If you weren't born to a mother that could get you access to a computer lab when such things were very rare, you won't become Bill Gates. If you weren't born of parents who can send you to Harvard and there is no scholarship, you aren't going to graduate from Harvard, even if it's a dream you had since you were a child. Think of all the money you lose being born to parents who can't send you to Harvard and instead send you to community college!
Must we delve into the number of rich who didnt even go to college? For every 'lucky' sob born with a silver spoon, theres an unlucky one born dirt poor.
Not that it matters. If im 'lucky' enought (or skilled enough) to be able to give my children an awesome advantage in early life that I was never afforded, no blame on my child can be assigned. To improve on your own circumtances throught your offspring is one of the most essential functions of all life.
I can't tell you how lucky I feel when I solve a problem. I was lucky I thought of the solution. I'm lucky it was ME who solved the problem. I'm lucky I was smart enough.
So you dont believe in free will?
What do you hope to achive by debating with me, if Im not at all responsible for my arguments? (as it was sheer luck that led me to them) Are you hoping to 'get lucky' and convince me of the validity of your position?
Nope. One has to be lucky to succeed in any large measure.
Even if this is the case, does my 'luck' invalidate any of my achivements? Does my 'luck' invalidate my arguments? If so, why argue? Does your 'luck' validate yours? If youre just lucky to have defeated my reasoning, what could possibly be gained from that? If you bested me in debate, it would be no different than a landslide crushing my car, while leaving yours unscathed. Certainly, either way, you could make no claim to 'rightness' as luck determines all action and cause.
So if you have won, in your mind, you just got 'lucky' and thus no validity can be claimed, just as it would be absurd to claim victory if the landslide crushed my car and not your own.
Yep. I am lucky enough to be pretty sharp and capable. I am lucky enough to have been taught how to read and write. I am lucky that the clarity of thought and analysis are mine to offer ideas that have merit. I am lucky to have the Interweb to convey the ideas. I am lucky to have personal knowledge of elements some dispute (plenum energy). I am lucky to have what it takes.
So you take no responsibility for any of your actions?
If I murdered one of your loved ones, would you simply say 'he was unlucky to be born a murderer'?
Pretty much, yes - as long as you have enough energy, technology and a structure.
These things are a product of money.
Yep, and in all of them people had to work. This is no longer the case. Robots can work and Humans can create. Be blissful. Live as the elite of today live if They choose. Only because for the first time in our present history we have robotics, Interweb and plenum energy will a moneyless society succeed.
except for lobster, of course.
No. It is meaning which assigns value for any individual. The degree of value is reflected in the amount offered in money. Money still represents energy expended, but it can be used to "shortcut" barter - that was it's purpose to begin with.
Weve demonstrated that energy expended is just one variable in the value of money. Weve agreed that moneys central function is to facilitate voluntary trade of mutual value.
I never said it was not effective. I said we don't need it.
HOLY SMOKES!!
If we didnt *need* it, it wouldnt be *effective*~~~~
I also said that since we cannot excise the LOVE of money - which would be awesome if we could, as it is the root of all evil - excising money does effectively the same thing. And that can be accomplished by adding plenum energy to the system. Which leads to richness of lifestyle for all who choose it, no poverty, no starvation, and no evil done for the LOVE of money (virtually all evil).
Your argument is comparable to what they inflict on catholic priests - the love of sex is evil, and thus, without sex, they couldnt be evil.
I think you know where that led!
Evil is done for the addiction of power, of which money can be one facilitator. Removing money would simply manifest mans evil desire to another object.
I have no attack on sex. I have no attack on money. I have an attack on the LOVE of each. And if we could get rid of sex, it would get rid of the LOVE of it. However, unlike money, which we CAN get rid of, sex is pretty much here to stay.
Just as super technology could obsolete money, so too could it obsolete sex. This does not make it desireable.
Me? I hate money. I love all the stuff, though, so I endure money as far as it goes. But I am certainly motivated to get rid of it if I can and eliminate poverty for those so unlucky to be born into it (some lucky few do get out - but they are the exceptions, the lucky ones; some unlucky few - well, many these days - fall into poverty).
You hate money, but you love stuff. Stuff is a creation of money. Thus, another contradiction.
Eliminate poverty? You know how many millions of chinese and indians have climbed out of poverty in the last decade?
What have you ever actually done, in your own life, to eliminate poverty? An an employer, I can speak to the subject in non theoretical terms, as my action has led directly from people rising out of poverty.
Actions > Words.
You show me where I said that. In fact I may count the times I have said just the opposite. The LOVE of money...
LOVE of sex...
And since we can't excise the LOVE of money, but CAN excise money, let's excise money to eliminate the problem of LOVING it.
I love it. Not seeing the problem.
Yeah. He needs a LOVE of sex. He needs to put sex before Human value. What's your point?
So lets get rid of sex!
Are you listening to youself!?
Surely will plays a part - without it, any luck has no chance. But you judge harshly people who are in poverty, as if they "just didn't TRY hard enough" or are necessarily lacking in intelligence. Because YOU made it, everyone else should be able to, I guess. But the fact is that statistically all people are poor and a large chunk are in poverty because the luck of the draw landed them there, and no matter how much will they brought to bear, they were stuck.
So free will is superior to luck, and luck is secondary to purposful action. Earlier you proclaimed that luck was the be all and end all. Again, contradictions = error.
Who said I 'made it'?
We are all unlucky to be born into debt slavery. We are all responsible for how we react to this.
100% But their actions cannot guarantee success. A very large part of life is luck.
So are we not to act because we might end up 'unlucky'?
I wouldn't throw luck in there unless we're talking about the luck that I was born such that I could become aware enough to make a value judgment. How I judge is irrelevant to luck.
Arrrrg! But you *just said* not a few paragraphs above that all you skills, talents, abilities and intelligence is entirely decided by luck! How you judge is based on these qualities!
And I suppose youre 'lucky' enough to know better.
Or rather to those controlling the government...impelled to do so by a LOVE of money/power/energy.
So without government these compulsions would have no foundation.
I am going to doubt that. All the pollution I have ever seen is either littering, cars, or coming from some private industry plant. And they get by with it by greasing palms.
And whos palms are they greasing?! The ones with the gun in the other hand!