What we use now is not actual money...

reply to post by seabhac-rua


Its a commodity man. It can be metal, tobacco, salts, cattle, and any commodity that the market chooses.

It can be represented by certificates or electronically but it must be an actual good. A good that is widely accepted and maintains a relatively stable price. Most importantly it is a product of the market and not paper made by a government.

reply to post by crankySamurai


I understand what you're saying dude.

I was just being cheeky

Gold is just a metal, a metal that people want, a metal that "makes the white men go crazy". Same with paper money. It all depends on the value attached to an item, be it paper money, a certificate, a piece of yellow shiny metal. I know a guy who doesn't want to pay his mortgage because "the money he borrowed to buy the house didn't exist in the first place", he doesn't get the fact that to build his house cost other people time, money, resources, and that his house has a value attached to it regardless......it didn't just appear out of nowhere.

Originally posted by crankySamurai
reply to post by NthOther

 

So your plan is to forgo technology?

With no mines we have no steal, no metal ect. Your plan is to go back to the dark ages before we even mined copper?

I'm not sure what kind of world you are envisioning but it sounds like one where people live in pretty rough conditions, struggling to meet basic needs like warmth and water... Not sure why you are pushing this.

Technology is a good thing, mines are a good thing. It is what has brought man out of the dark ages. People are not forced by other people to go down into mines. People are forced to by nature to move forward or else live in the same conditions that we arrived in. It is a choice to progress. It is tough to progress. But guarantee you it is tougher to live in huts struggling for food warmth and water.

1) Where is there any evidence that hunter-gatherer societies endured "tough lives"? We would consider it a struggle, but only because we're entirely dependent on technology. In fact if you look at history, almost every indigineous or "primitive" (I hate the connotations that word carries with it) culture that has been exposed to western civilization has violently resisted it, even to the brink of their own cultural and racial extinction. Apparently they didn't think too much of our "progress".

2) Technology could be a good thing, if three conditions are met: A) said technology is not the product of conscripted labor; B) the production and use of said technology does not harm our environment; and, C) human beings are not dependent on said technology for their survival.

I'm not saying we should just forget everything and go back to the stone age. The main problem I have with technology is the way in which it has developed, not the fact that it exists. I just think that in a truly free society people wouldn't be willing to do 99% of the things we now consider important or even vital. And I think that's a good thing. I also think that in a truly free society, money becomes increasingly abstract to the point of irrelevancy.

reply to post by NthOther


I could possibly see money becoming irrelevant when there is an extreme over abundance of wealth.

That doesn't help us now and that doesn't help us get to that point. So I'm not interested in it right now. What I am interested in however is recognizing the best way for society to live and that is in total freedom. I think we are in agreement on that.

For people to live freely private property must be acknowledge as well as non aggression. Outside of that anything goes.

I have no right to tell you how to live and you have no right to tell me. So if I decide to use money and you chose not to that is totally irrelevant.

I will say that it these two principles which capitalism is founded on and it is these two principles that gives rise to economies. It is the trend that when these principles are more closely followed free exchange takes place. No body has to participate in it but the majority of people find it beneficial. Out of this free exchange comes the concept of currency and this is once again a very beneficial progression.

It is this concept of money which is good and which will stop this mess. It is the concept of FIAT money which is bad and causes these problems.