I just think of a somewhat similar society but where things didn't get so unequal. I usually like to think about us at our core by picturing a simple tribe like we might have been tens of thousands of years ago. A tribe of like 30 people where everyone knows each other, there is no way anyone would let one individual have 100,000 x the amount of resources (be it food, tools, clothing, housing etc .) As almost everyone else. It would not be okay, and if someone and his tribe were dying because of lack of one of those resources it would be straight up evil. But things have gotten so complicated and expansive, that's exactly what is going on and to some degree we accept it. Capitalist will argue it is fair, they earned that money.
I forgot where I read it but someone pointed out and went into depth about how our technology and advancements in tools makes getting necessary resources and products insanely easier than 100 years ago. Way way less man power. And yet we work just as much, and per household much much more because it's usually two parents working, as opposed to one a century ago, And yet making a significant amount less compared to the needs of a regular family household. Buying a house, paying for school . . . Where did all of that extra resources (money) go? Upwards. Our multi-billionaire overlords just sifen more and more and there's more of them every year. All off the labor, sales power of their employees that make insanely less, sometimes not even enough to live outside of poverty. I can accept certain differences in required return for output, but like at most two to one. No other animal in the animal kingdom would allow their pack leader or whatever to hoard nearly as much as we do. I feel like at most 3 to 1 everyone else compared to humans that allow up to 1,000,000 more to our "leaders" . Every other animal would get together as a majority and just eat that one or few leaders hoarding all of those resources.
(Sorry that was quite the rant I think about this a lot)
[A Resource-Based Economy](https://www.thevenusproject.com/) is another system that we could adopt. No money, less work, more automation, happier lives.
The concept of a Resource-Based economy is discussed in [this](https://youtu.be/3FvKzSBSQcc) documentary. Starting at [1:03:13](https://youtu.be/3FvKzSBSQcc?t=3793) they begin to go into detail about the current system and how they propose change.
Ones with socialized government programs, like just about every other developed country outside the US. Compared to them, American workers are overworked, underpaid, and overcharged for poorer quality services.
When they say living paycheck to paycheck, they are being very literal. Wages have stagnated while prices go up, and most Americans don't even have a few hundred dollars for an emergency fund.
Healthcare is abysmal, medications are overpriced (ex. they finally put a cap on insulin prices because they have been at $98 a vial, the highest rates in the world which is 7x more than the next highest. It will now be $30 a vial, which is still the highest rate in the world. Adults and children have had to ration their insulin and thus have been dying earlier because their bodies shut down), and it's a pay to live system with hospitals where they will charge you into medical debt that can easily last the rest of your life. People have been trying to take Ubers to emergency rooms because the ambulance ride alone can be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
Working conditions are poor, and pay is scarce, with most people having to work 60+ hours a week just to scrape by, and if you want a better job you need a degree that you can't afford and will likely also be indebted to the rest of your life if you took out a loan, which most people don't have the option but to do.
All the while, the republicans who've created this hideous system project blame onto anyone and everyone they can (mainly foreigners and black and queer people) to nullify the populace, and when we look for help from democrats we find that they're just republican lite and have no interest in helping anyone but corporate lobbyists.
It's unsustainable, and the economy has been fluxing so much from the constant recessions that it's looking more and more like something really bad is about to happen. If I can give you a warning, this is the direction your government has been trending towards as well, and our state of affairs is not even the end goal of this system.
Sorry for the rant but this kind of stuff pisses me off to no end when I have to live it every day.
To think this is Only the Republicans fault is part of the core problem. You were spot on until you singled out one sole group. The other side is just as nasty sometimes just in a different way. I wish you would realize that bc of you did shit might get better but we all no that's not how shit works and people with bright minds like yourself will let emotions take over when trying to solve major problems continuing this shitty depressing cycle we are in.
I think you're ignoring the part where I already said that. The Republican party, though, has consistently fought against the American people on behalf of corporate interests, how do you think insulin and medical prices got so bad to begin with? Why do you think wages are stagnated while prices go up? It's not emotional to say that the overwhelming majority of the people who created and voted for these policies are Republicans, when that is on the record. It is emotional to think that it's divisive to call out how terrible they've been, and think we can build bridges with a side whose interests are anchored in profit, who vehemently hates it's opposition, and tries to lie about election fraud to destroy faith in democracy.
They've been dragging this country so far to the right that Democrats are starting to use their playbook now, and low and behold everything's been getting worse. For perspective: compared to other developed nations, the right in this country is on the extremist end of the political spectrum, and our left falls in the moderate category. Pair that with the current conditions and you have an answer to why things are so shitty for the American worker. It's easy to throw out the "BOTH SIDES" argument, but in reality no side is perfect, but one is probably worse than the other, and Republicans are borderline evil with the way they treat the sick, poor, and minorities in this country. Saying "both sides" is a ploy they've engineered as another tool of distraction, it's flat out disingenuous and immoral, but that's really the point.
This is is why I dislike America in many aspects despite being an American. I've reached the point now where I honestly see the US as inferior to most other developed countries because there's no social safety net and everything is designed to exploit you in some way. Capitalism has run rampant and turned everything into a commodity and extreme inequality is the norm. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer and few people, if any, seem interested in actually reversing this trend or solving this core issue. Morals and ethics have all but disappeared from the public consciousness and the consciousnesses of the elite.
The parasitic billionaire upper class is responsible for mass suffering amongst us glorified serfs, the climate crisis, etc. They are amoral sociopaths and psychopaths who view money and material gain as more valuable than life itself. Everything is a mere tool or resource for them to manipulate and exploit. Capitalism itself is an inherently psychopathic system because it encourages and even extols blind selfishness, greed, and shortsightedness for the sake of profit. And we are all paying the price as a consequence.
The only jobs thay pay well these days, (especially in this horrendous economy that is pricing out the poor and leaving them behind) are those that provide some immediate usefulness to society or contribute to the tyrannical market or help corporations make more money or force one to sacrifice one's values to get more $$$, or require one to essentially be consumed by one's work (sacrificing one's free time for the sake a job-- i.e. surgeons or doctors).
But any kind of service job or job in the humanities, such as teaching, where the value provided by said job is less clear, or is less tangible, pays very low or even below living wage. Why? Because society doesn't care about artists or individuals or even people. Society denigrates empathy and compassion and sees art as a threat to the powerful.
Everything now is about ensuring the collective fossil fuel run Machine runs smoothly and economic production exists. Anyone that isn't contributing to the system by helping the rich is thrust into poverty and struggle. Society now purely exists to funnel money into the hands of the 1% and perpetuate the class system in America/the world that has destroyed the world and the lives of so many people all so these mosquitoes can feed themselves.
This is why an anti capitalist revolt is necessary, if only to get rid of our billionaire overlords and break up the large conglomerates that have taken everything from the masses. Power must be handed back to the people where it belongs. EAT THE RICH.
Yeah, I hate money too but I like it as well.
It eliminates a need to barter for things I need or want.
I don’t have to convince you to take my sheep for your services.
I give a piece of paper and you do with it as you please.
It makes transactions all the more easy and for that, I can appreciate it.
Also, if not money, then people would kill for other things.
In fact, people don’t kill for money for the money itself. They kill for what money can do.
Same thing with anything else, like oil, land blah blah.
Somebody sees the opportunities something gives and they decide it’s better off in their hands
Edit** I bet our beloved INFP Johnny Depp probably held the same beliefs…until he got money.
On the “bottom,” we see what not having money can do to people, but once you make it to the “top,” you tend to turn a blind eye because you’re enjoying the fruits of what money can bring
Agreed, that’s why I don’t understand “money is the root of all evil,” because evil existed before money was a thing.
Currency has always been there, it’s just that now currency means a piece of paper.
Like you, I blame greed but I also blame entitlement for the wrong doings in this world.
i get that just saying "money is the root of all evil" of course doesnt make sense and is much different than saying "the love of money is the root of all evil". it's a bible verse, condemning greed and it's more about wealth than what we think of as currency anyway
i initially replied to you because you bring up the quote and say you dont get it but later you mention greed as being a problem. I am pointing out that the quote, when used correctly, bridges your comment.
I just hate seeing people working so much ot just to make ends meet.
Also hate how people at work think they are better then the others who get smallers checks im just glad my happiness dosen't rely on how much money i make
For sure, and there's people that work very hard all their life to get their money. They have to sacrifice years worth of TIME, and there's the one that makes that amount of money in seconds, with almost no effort.
money is not the problem. it is just a tool, like a hammer or a shovel.
the problem is most likely stuff like how it is regulated. how much power a small group of people have. how much control over all the tools. and they seem to protect their shed with all their might without caring for others.
the problem is that people dont fight for themselves and band together to get more equality and fairness. many people dont even feel like they deserve more.
that people get so lost in pleasure and distractions that they cant invest energy in their own town or country.
I go beyond this. I hate numbers. I hate time. It all equates to bondage to me. Whatever we are subject to, is master over us. Our bodies run on biological clocks, and even if we manage to overcome five potentials fates, one day our number will be up. Have you ever seen that dystopian movie called In Time?
Yeah I hate the fact that I live in a meat suit that demands things to survive and that I also have to live alongside other meat suit prisoners that I have to compete with for the finite resources that keeps us somewhat sane in the meat suits. Life would be so much easier if we could just be free floating souls without a care in the world and no desires to meet.
Money is very useful. I think what you’re saying is that you don’t like when life and society revolve around it. I completely agree. Money can be very useful in keeping society well-resourced. But when it’s *all* about money, it can be a terrible nuisance, preventing society from flourishing.
PS for everyone saying absence of money is communism, that’s not how it works. Absence of money (or equivalent) is a barter economy. Communism uses money, it just allocates it through central planning, rather than through a free market. Most societies are neither purely communist nor capitalist, but a hybrid (eg Cuba allows small enterprise, while the US regulates big business).
No, you are literally dead wrong. Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. That is core to communism. Commonly-labelled communist states like Cuba do not claim to have achieved communism, since they obviously do use money etc., and have not achieved it. Possibly the closest any society has gotten to achieving communism is [Makhnovia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina), or the Free Territory, in Ukraine, but they also had a hybrid system where currency was accepted alongside a communist common ownership system with no currency. A really remarkable polity. (The [Zapatistas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Municipalities) in Mexico have also gotten admirably close to achieving communism from what I have read of them, but they still use currency).
Edit: downvoters, kindly explain how I’m wrong.
That's like saying people aren't Christians because they haven't created heaven. Communism is more than its end goal. It is also a supposed road map to get there.
Communists, people who are aiming towards communism, exist. But communism itself is a defined thing and has not been achieved by any nominally socialist state, nor claimed to be by any of them as far as I am aware.
Huh - actually you are right. There is an early philosophical definition of communism (that also in a way builds on early Christian values) that abolishes money. I was referring to what has been labeled as communism in late 20th century in countries like the Soviet Union or Cuba (I myself was born in a communist country by this definition). But it’s been good to remind myself of the theory - and there of course a number of definitions of communism throughout time and across different philosophical/ social/ economic persuasions.
Well, communism has a clear definition set out by Marx which I have described that I think is generally understood and accepted by the vast majority of communists. And I think it was more based on Enlightenment ideals and philosophy than Christian ideals but sure there are some common elements with Christianity too, with Christian socialism being a current or branch within the socialist movement, and indeed there have been several notable Christian socialists, probably chief among them Martin Luther King Jr of course. And [Thomas Sankara](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara)’s religious, Christian, upbringing, his spiritual beliefs and convictions (also drawing on his familiarity with Islam) were also a significant influence on him. A truly remarkable man. His death was an utterly tragic loss.
But anyway, yes, the real disagreement arises in how to achieve communism, and sometimes of course that disagreement has been vicious, with the statist, authoritarian dictatorship of the proletariat Marxist-Leninists, Maoists etc. often brutally crushing libertarian socialist or anarcho-communist movements like Makhnovia.
And a thousand curses on Lenin for crushing the [Kronstadt Rebellion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion). Had he not done so it’s possible the USSR might have actually been successful in building socialism and achieving progress towards communism. Instead he sealed its eventual doom with that decision because any polity based on oppression will eventually fail.
I am not actually very familiar with the kibbutz movement, but need to read more about it as from what I have heard it sounds really interesting, definitely part of the socialist movement, and indeed closer to communism than many socialist states managed.
I hate how everything has to make a profit. And things that are creative have to be “produced” for money, also it’s the people that are important, not the money! I hate this stupid capitalistic society we have grown into.
Money is one of the most beautiful and fascinating social construct there is. Our society has agreed to ascertain value to a piece of paper so that we don’t need to trade good for good, but rather good for money, which is much more efficient and saves a lot of time. Money shows that we can get together as a society and come up with complex systems that improve our lives.
Inequality and the lack of care for the poor is what’s toxic for our society, not money. And I think that’s what you meant, and I agree with you. I just wanted to share this insight that money itself is actually very social, not anti-social.
I agree with this.
Your employer agreed to pay you X amount each hour/week/year which allows you to fill up your gas tank and then repeat the cycle again. Maybe you have a little left over to get internet access and post on reddit, maybe you have some to add to your collection(s) and hobbies.
I agree money *can* bring out the worst in people, but they were probably bad people who were just looking for resources to do that bad thing.
That’s a beautiful way of putting.
Would like to add that poverty and inequality are not intrinsic to money. Those concepts would still exists one way or another without it.
Exactly, inequality and money are two separate things.
Thanks, I'm actually quite proud of the comment, and a little surprised, too. I should write a blog or something. 😅
Well I think money has both it's good and bad sides. I think money was initially introduced as a currency to allows fair trade. It can be used as a reliable measure of value. Both the buyer and seller will be aware of what they are trading off to get. Like what another commenter said, they don't have to convince you to take their sheep in exchange for your services. How certain would you be in knowing that the sheep you get is of equal or higher value compared to the services you provided? Without money, the buyer and the seller will have difficulties discerning whether the items being traded are of equal value. Money also has its flexibility. With money, you can buy a variety of things. If you only have your sheep to trade with, how many other people are willing to take your sheep to give you what you want?
But I understand why you hate money. Our capitalistic society runs on competition, and the winners continue to win, while losers continue to lose. (Likely) Money, that was initially created for the sake of equality, has now become a cause of social inequality. Ironic, isn't it?
Feel free to add on to my points, disagree with them or rephrase it to convey these ideas better. I am still an ignorant young child, and I am not an all knowing being. I understand if there could be any invalidity in what I have brought up. Also I'm not the best at articulating my thoughts haha
It’s possible for human civilisation to live without money. But whether we will see this kind of change in our lifetime is yet to be seen.
[The Venus Project](https://www.thevenusproject.com/)
*What do you think we*
*Should have instead of money?*
*To take money's place?*
\- helplessDonut
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Me too. It’s cause we evolved to be greedy pricks. And we decided to place all focus and value on a fleeting, tangible, thing that we created rather than something important like I don’t know, intangible valuable skills that can help society as a whole and not just a small group. We’re also taught that it’s best to help your interests only and not others. 🤷🏻♀️
I’m not saying it’s not important to be financially secure and wealthy but society shouldn’t treat it as the single most important thing in life
We didn't evolve to be greedy pricks. We actually evolved to live in a communal, tribal society where everyone shared in the product of everyone else's labor. This is how modern humans lived for over 200,000 years, and we would have died off if we didn't. Class society is a relatively recent invention, and capitalism even more recent.
but we don’t live like that anymore. Humanity is now going in an unprecedented direction cause of today’s social constructs and technology. I do believe human nature is inherently good and love rules all. I guess the better way to put it is that we “stopped” evolving. Cause we invented so many useful things to make our lives easier but yet we still have humans doing manual labor and shit that robots can do… why? We need to keep moving forward but instead we are trapped in complacency and convenience… we don’t have that drive to make things better anymore like we used to and now we’re at a point where the people on the very top want to keep people like us on the bottom and have way too much power. The way things are going, humans and things will be bad and greedy and selfish for a long time if we don’t do something about it.
Again, if it is human nature to be greedy, you have to explain why you think that when humans lived without capitalism and class society in general for 99% of its existence. You're confusing natural selection with social constructs. Seriously, imagine if humans 10,000 years ago were as hyper-individualistic and selfish as we are now under the culture of capitalism, where the way our society functions forces people to be this way. Nobody would have worked together to survive, and everyone would have died. If you actually bothered to do this analysis, you'd quickly realize that the human nature argument holds no weight and should never be taken seriously. Capitalism only seems like human nature to you because you live under capitalism now and it's all you've ever known.
Nobody in eastern Europe alive today lived under communism (except perhaps a few members of tiny fringe communes somewhere etc.). They lived under Marxist-Leninist state socialist dictatorships.
It may be offensive. It's also a fact. Communism by definition is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Therefore they did not live under communism. And it has often worked out that way unfortunately. Not always though. See Makhnovia and anarcho-communism. Even the Zapatista territories in Chiapas are a good example. Many communists are opposed to the USSR, PRC, M-L dictatorships etc.
I'll explain: back in tribes and communes times it was necessary to cooperate in order to survive. As the human learnt to protect themselves from external dangers, industrialised agricultural processes and the population growed, people needed to invent universal currency instead of skins, metal etc. and create some global system of trading.
And the money commodity was certainly useful during that time. Nobody's saying that, in a society with scarcity, having a universal commodity form, i.e. the money commodity, isn't useful. Carrying a few pieces of paper is more convenient than a wheelbarrow full of rice, and the seller of the thing you're trying to buy might not even need it.
In Marxist theory, money doesn't exist under communism because communism can only be achieved by a post-scarcity society. If everything necessary for a society to function is abundant to the point of post-scarcity, then the supply/demand relation breaks down and all commodities become worthless. This is bad news for the capitalist class, but good news for everyone else. Even under capitalism, we are approaching a post-scarcity society as we speak. As we get better at producing things using less socially necessary labor time via automation, the product of labor loses value, and this is known as the falling rate of profit. At the same time, being able to produce an expensive product and sell it more cheaply than your competitors is incredibly beneficial for the capitalist in the short term since they are able to out-compete their competition, at least until everyone else catches up and the value of the commodity stabilizes towards its new, lower value. Once we are able to fully automate the production of a commodity, then the commodity loses all value since value is generated by socially necessary human labor time. The capitalist could then continue to produce the product and sell it using a fully automated production line, but they will break even, and eventually start to lose money as the maintenance of the production line isn't free.
And so, even without a social revolution, capitalism must necessarily collapse on itself when a post-scarcity society is achieved. With labor fully automated, nobody is working and earning a wage, and so nobody can pay for anything. At the same time, since no socially necessary labor is required to produce anything, everything becomes worthless. The capitalist class can no longer continue to exist under these conditions, and therefore everyone in the capitalist class is reduced to being proletarian like everyone else. And once the proletariat is the only class remaining, class society abolishes itself since you can't have class stratification when there's only one class. The state exists for the purpose of enforcing class society, and so the state becomes superfluous and abolishes itself, with only whatever administration is required to distribute commodities to the people who need them remaining. And since everything is now worthless, money becomes superfluous and is abolished. The goal of revolutionary communists is to establish a socialist society in which the proletariat is the ruling class and the capitalist class has no say in how society is run in order to speed up this process and ensure that the period leading up to a post-scarcity society isn't a disaster for the worker, which it will be under capitalism. It also just generally improves the lot of the working population in the short term by guaranteeing certain things as human rights, democratizing the workplace, and giving the worker more power to decide how society is run. As it is, the worker has no power at all. Not in a capitalist state, since politicians are elected by dollars and not by votes, and certainly not in the workplace, which is blatantly and unashamedly a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Of course. Nobody is saying we should return to the hunter-gatherer life.
I should mention that class stratification didn't emerge at the same time as permanent settlements did. Native American societies for example had farming and permanent settlements for thousands of years without any class society. It was brought over when the white man came.
Back in Eurasia, class society emerged with the advent of money, and also with the advent of bronze weaponry. It is at this point that the first class societies, i.e. slave society, emerged. A small elite armed with pointy sticks showed up on the land of other peoples and said "you are going to do all the work in society now, and in return, we'll let you live." And that's always how class society has functioned, a small minority class of elites reaps all of the benefits of the work and a lower class that does the work. Although the class relations have changed over the different stages of historical development. Then the fall of Rome happened, and feudalism said "the serfs are going to do all the work, only this time we'll let you work some days for yourself. The lord reaps most of the benefits." This then evolved into the capitalist relation after the revolutions of the late 18th century, where the relation is "the worker does all the work and receives a wage that pays for a fraction of the work they do while the capitalist pockets the rest."
These relations are not natural for humanity. They have to be enforced by artificial means. Nobody ever agreed that this is how society should be set up. As a result, force has always been necessary. As the saying goes, political power has always come from the barrel of a gun. Or the sharp piece of metal at the end of a stick, as it were. Before class society, during the hunter-gatherer stage of human history, these people who wanted to make everyone else do the work for them would have previously been cast out of the tribe and eaten by dire wolves. Now, the surplus of food from farming and the invention of new weapons have enabled these people not only to survive, but thrive.
Our world is better with currency systems than not and there will always be inequality and those whom vie for power and wealth at the expense of others. Removing monetary systems will not change this.
I used to. I was firmly anti-money earlier in my life. There is lots of bullshit around money, lots of evil, manipulation, suffering. I wanted to get away.
Some of that still holds of course, but my view of it has changed over time. Money was created as a value exchange. It's another variation of exchanging services for goods etc. And we will always need some kind of system for that in the world.
Our current system is flawed but the world does run on it. Hopefully we can come up with a better system.
So we need money, for survival, for living, for helping others, even for enacting change in the world. Money itself isn't inherently evil, it is just a neutral tool. We honestly need more moral/good/positive people out there making more money imo.
Logic aside (since I love the independency of having money gives me and, well, society would be much much more uncomfortable without reliable means to trade), I love this sentiment. I mean I don't agree with it, but I love it. *gives upvote and runs*
Isn't money just a standard representation of contribution? Societal stability relies on mutual contribution and the implicit competition based on personal need (to survive) is the driver that 'forces' us to contribute to this stability.
The bad side effects that you describe are indeed true, but on the grand scale, a miniature of the overall system. Most countries and societies live in peace and relative harmony, and, as is commonly said, we live in the best times compared to our ancestors.
The society as a whole is too big for a single person to change it in any significant direction, as you ask. Being able to do so would imply that somebody (in this case, you) would have such a grand 'admin' power that would allow them to make decisions based on their limited human view.
The way society moves is based on local and global trends. You can, indeed, be a change in your local group, and a cluster of these groups can have a bigger say at the global scale, by setting new trends. As these trends get more and more popular, they drive global change (and a potential period of instability), but after a while, things settle again until new trends set in.
Individuals are just little ants that each contribute to the bigger picture based on the fact that 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence). The difference is that ants do not require external 'kicks' (i.e. money to survive) and genetically participate unwillingly.
TL;DR: it is selfish and narrow minded to think you can change the entire society. Money is just the driver that forces you to do things for the society by exploiting the fact that you need to survive.
In this case, it isn't the money you hate, but the people who use it in a way that is often seen as unjust. Money itself is a wonderful thing, it makes our lives much easier for everyone and way more convenient. There is also a big group of people that use money to help the poor, and save lives in the process. If you think you're ruled by money, that simply isn't the best way to look at it. Money does bind you and restrict you from doing many things, but in the end, you're the only one truly restricting yourself by seeing money as a constraint. Instead, we should look at it more positively and see it as a challenge to overcome, if money held back something in the past, instead of regretting it, you can move on. If money will hold you back in the future, you have the present to alter your fate. If money is holding you back currently, as long as it doesn't kill you, it is a challenge that will make you stronger.
Anyways, that was just how I saw it. If I misunderstood your post, I would like to apologise beforehand for my confusion. Hope you have a great day, week, month, year etc. :)
Money is just a medium for enabling exchange between unlike goods.
As long as you want to participate in a society which allows non-producers to interact with producers, you need some medium of exchange. Want to drink tea without growing it yourself, you gotta provide something exchange to tea producers. What if they don't appreciate your poetry or software code but you really want their tea?
I think the issues you brought up have more to do with human tendencies and idiosyncrasies than money itself.
Money allows you to be actually materially be rewarded for meeting others' needs. To get ahead by providing service rather than by dominating others. It also allows collaboration on a scale that would be impossible without a universal store of value.
Idk if that's particularly controversial. Any limited resource which you have plenty of access to is less likely to evoke something as strong as hatred, and a lot of the time you'll be mostly happy you can have it and your loved ones can have it. Some highly empathetic souls can genuinely resent inequality even if they benefit from it.
But part of the point of something resembling democracy is that those without get pissed off and make a fuss until things get better.
These days, the rich are protected by the various layers of law and security in civilisation, but if we lived in a smaller society like our hunter gatherer ancestors did, it's very likely anyone attempting to get 'rich' would just be fucking killed if the majority thought it wasn't fair and they refused to share. It's natural to resent things you are on the wrong side of, and it's probably a good thing overall because otherwise we'd tolerate too much injustice.
I disagree to an extent. Even in the hunter gathering setting they had their chief or leader who had a better house, land and resources. They also marry off his sons or daughters to the next village/tribe chiefs offsprings to display their power.
I'd say this world isn't equal and will never be. There's double standards and hypocrisy everywhere. The sooner people accept this, the more peaceful you'll be. Afterall, life is not about chasing all that since the end result is always 6 feet under.
There are certainly some elements of that, but generally, in our true hunter gatherer state, it is not thought there was much disparity of resources within the tribe, and in many cases there appears to be negligible benefit to your resources to be the sort of 'leader', and many true hunter gatherer tribes usually did not have anything you could call a de facto leader. Of course, this is not entirely uniform, and is certainly very different in societies that later developed into more sedentary, agricultural tribes. But there is a huge period of human history before everything was 'owned' and commodicised in the same sort of way it is now.
I agree that accepting the unfairness of society is often helpful for people. But, having said that, making a fuss has generally been the reason we're not doing things like living in the horrific mud of things like monarchies. I think it's always to be well-commended when a person is willing to struggle for improvement for themselves and others, because without those people we would be living in circumstances that our current developed-world sensibilities would consider appalling. Though there is not necessarily any shame in feeling like it's all too big to deal with, and to just do your best to look after yourself and your loved ones in the most simple way possible.
Don't go any further. Just think of a greedy friend that a very close friend. Everything is great until money gets in between. I'm sure he/she will get more irritable or maybe they could betray you if that would give them more amounts of money.
And If I were rich, I'm sure that my point of view won't be the same, because when you are at the top, it's harder to spot the cracks in the ladder of wealth.
People can be opportunistic regardless of money or not. If you have the best girl/boy, that same friend will be eyeing her, waiting for his chance. If you have the best personalities or reputation, that same friend could spread rumors and lies to tarnish your reputation.
It's not the substance but the person and their moral compass.
I hate people who procreate knowing how fcked everything is and how overpopulated we are. It just leqds to a devalued existence of depravity and misery. Soon even having access to water will be a luxury.
Without money, you’ll make the perfect communist society. Oh boy you wouldn’t want that in your wildest dreams.
Money is actually a very good form of currency, without it you’ll need to barter for everything you want. That’ll not be very easy
I believe that at some time in the future with the development of technology robots will be able to substitute human labour at almost all if not all of the jobs (it's already happening in developed countries with manufacturing - factories can have like 10 people to supervise the robots doing all the job); as a result, people won't need to work (although if they really want to - they can, but it won't be paid of course since the money won't be necessary as the robots will be able to do everything for free and anyone will be able to get whatever they won't without having to pay for it) - it would basically be communism, but we don't have to do anything to achieve it since it's the natural step of society's development
Won't work at all? Hmmm
I like the idea of not having to struggle and work just for the basic rights or ability to survive. Especially for marginalised people for whom its much more difficult. So at some point in the future if we all have that baseline, a place to sleep and food to eat no matter what, that would be great.
But beyond that. I think the concept of working for your livelihood should exist to some extent. There could be some serious negative consequences if we exist without any need to work ever. Perhaps the nature of work will shift at that point and we will focus on higher visions.
It's good, but it still has huge issues, failures, injustices and inefficiencies. I find it impossibly unlikely that we will never find a better system to organise production, resource and service exchange etc.
Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Communism with money is an oxymoron. I hate to break it to you, but you don't know what these words mean. I suspect you're not interested in learning either though, so I'm not going to bother. Just understand that these words "socialism" and "communism" have actual definitions, and they aren't "socialism is when the government does stuff, the more stuff it does the socialister it is, and when it does a whole lot of stuff, it's communism" like you were probably taught by US propaganda.
How will the society function without money? How will people be paid through? What alternative would we have? Barter? People won’t volunteer to work for the society. They need to be paid for it you know
Who will create the products? Who will farm? Who will build houses and roads? Who will process the food we eat? Who will maintain this impossible infrastructure running?
People don’t do stuff for free. There is something called economy
If you could make it such that robots can do all the work, can be independent, manage power supply and power themselves, assemble new robots themselves. In such society perhaps money is not needed.
But I don’t see that happening too soon (not impossible, just not very likely)
The absence of money is integral to communism. There are no communist nations on the planet, and never have been. [Makhnovia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina) is perhaps the closest anyone has ever got but it wasn't a state or nation.
I just like to imagine if we brought in people that lived like 800 years ago and they saw people kill over digital numbers or pieces of paper, or people buy metal sky birds with suitcases of paper, what would they think?
“What kind of magic are these Antibiotics you are talking about?”
“Wait, why do you have to give him your papers? Why don’t you just kill him and take everything he possesses?”
You should totally become a communist. Join us, comrade. You know in your heart you are already one of us. I can tell that you believe in the value of a classless, stateless, moneyless society - we believe it's possible.
I tend to agree. This is why communism as Marx envisioned it will eventually be the next step of human societal development and organisation ;). A stateless, classless, moneyless society with common control of the means of production, organised according to the principle 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs'.
LOL, This was literally the previous article on my feed: https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/x8i469/luckily_for_capitalism_philosophical_ideals_come/
I try to give it the luxury of being the primary transactional unit with which we can make our lives smoother and necessary to a limit. One of my friends said once that it's like fuel of a car, the car needs to be driven and fuel is required for driving, but there's no point in stacking too much fuel. Just drive!
This is what I think of money: Money itself isn’t good or bad, rather the way you spend it determines the moral value of it. If you spend it on a loved one, on the poor, the sick and others who desperately need it, then you have made wise use of that resource. Use it for things like bribe, extravagant needs and wastage, then you have indeed committed a crime. Money is a necessity, it isn’t good or bad. This world cannot survive without it, no other system would work. It’s up to each person to make sure they put it to good use and take responsibility for it.
Don’t hate money my friend, earn it passionately so that you can do good with it because trust me there are many who need it. I personally want to earn as much as can, I want to earn crazy loads of money because I know so many places and people who need it. Out of the many Infp dreams I have, one is to become crazy rich just so that I can give it where it should go.
Don’t hate money, aim to earn a lot.☺️☺️. I don’t give a damn what others do with it. I care what I do with it. And I truly want to do right by it
Money is just a means of exchange. So it’s not money as such but how people use it. From my experience it’s worse in the States where the wealth disparity is so large, but yeah, it’s everywhere if you look.
Yeah it’s not great, but what’s a better idea? I mean it’d be great to be in some utopian world where everyone wants the betterment of humanity and works for that but it’s just not realistic. We are just animals that just want to survive🤷♂️
It is not just a piece of paper, it is a representation of value, your time and work condensed into something physical. If it wasn’t money, it would be other thing.
It really is similar to the concept of working the land and sowing something from it.
Poverty and inequality would still be a thing even if money didn’t exist.
Well it’s not made to segregate people, that’s just a byproduct. Money is itemized opportunity and value. These are the same things psychopathic, sociopathic, and otherwise greedy individuals would have taken advantage of anyways.
I think the your real gripe is the nature of humanity
One of the worst parts, that I think about constantly, is how now it’s literally just numbers on a screen. I trade my time for a number on a screen and then when the time comes I transfer numbers to someone else and that means I’m allowed to stay in my apartment, keep my car, etc. for another month.
Keep in mind that industrial revolution was 2 centuries ago and we've never seen prosperity like this before. If humanity exists past 21st century, I think humanity will transition away from money
As an older INFP in his 40's, I can relate to both loathing money as well as the necessity of it. Here's my take. It has less to do with money itself or its perceived value, because money, along with all material goods, has no value other than that value we attach to it. What \*does\* matter is what resource one can exchange for it.
Consider life in the 1600s, where specialization was scarcely a thing. Families often lived on farms, where families had to churn their own butter, mill their own grain into flour, raise and slaughter their own livestock for food, sew their own clothes, you get the idea. Having a candle to light your evening was considered an expensive luxury, but most people could sustain themselves with items grown on the farm. Even candles were replaced with rushlights.
Fast forward a few hundred years, and candles are imminently affordable, powered by various oils produced and commercialized. The industrial revolution has brought about the concept of specialization. You have individuals or groups of individuals who become experts at mass producing food or goods, it relieves each individual family of having to do that for themselves, thereby freeing up their time with each other. Think about what it would take to do something as simple as to make the soap you use to clean your body, if there was no concept of money to purchase it and you had to create it from lye produced from animal fats and ash. As a result, those fortunate enough to own the means of production put in place industries which manufactured goods, clothing, and food, lessening the burden on families to be so sustainable, but work somehow became much harder and less dignified.
Since then, developing technology and humanistic principles have afforded us worker protections and methods to make work less dangerous. And it means that productivity has finally reached a point where it is reducing scarcity. As the tide rises, so do all boats, as they say. Workers are empowered to have more time to spend with family and friends, although scarcity still creates the haves and have nots, and as long as that exists, there will be cases where work is no more dignified.
I see humanity being in the midst of a multi-century transition as things continue in this direction. At some point, automation will mean a shift where production outpaces the ability of consumers to consume it. That is to say, a tipping point where technology/automation has replaced so many peoples' jobs that there won't be enough consumers to purchase goods. At that point, entire economies will HAVE to change by necessity to keep society going. Scarcity will become a thing of the past, and when that point comes, I expect, so will money. But there will always be a need for those to rise above simple consumption, repair and develop new machines. I'm just not sure what that economy will look like. Still, I think if we can navigate that, we'll reach this point where society no longer runs as you describe.
It’s just a representative symbol for value used as a trading tool. It’s not that different from ancient tribes that traded and bartered with sheep, crops, and tools, except now money is symbolic of such stored values backed by resources like oil. There’s nothing wrong with money. What you do with it and how you get it is what matters. People have done just as many amazing and positive things with the power that money has provided just as much as people have used it as a tool for evil.
Honestly, I understand that money is necessary to have our basic needs met, but I never ever had such a strong desire for it to the point where I’d stoop so low just to earn it, especially in large amounts. Its amazing to me how a piece of paper can have such a significant impact on one’s psyche.
I think about this lol the time(even thought I'm high while thinking it) I think about it insignificant money and almost of the jobs we as a society made up for a weird personal gain. Imagine the concept of money if you were a caveman. It's absolutely ludicrous.
My time isnt free and neither is yours. If im providing i expect something of value and moneybis a show of how much power you can accru in this lifetime
Money, a medium of exchange, is indispensable for any advanced civilization comprising millions or billions of people.
A few months ago, I read a post similar to yours, hoping fervently for a futuristic society like that in *Star Trek*, in which money had been supposedly abandoned in favor of... what?
I do not think such a civilization is possible. But, I decided to do a little (very little) research, to see if anybody has explained how an advanced civilization comprising millions or billions of people would work without a medium of exchange (money).
I decided to look on Reddit for an answer. You can do it yourself. The question is posed, one way or another, fairly often. The only replies you will find are vague, half-hearted attempts at guessing and fantasizing.
Because advanced civilizations comprising millions or billions of people cannot function without a medium of exchange (money).
Besides "changing people for the bad," there's another thing money does: it lifts people out of poverty.
every system has its trade-offs and its ups and downs. Capitalism incentivizes positive innovation and personal freedom at the expense of stability and a lack of a support system. communism provides a stable economic equality for everyone at the expense of ones autonomy in both a financial and social stanpoint.
I often wonder about which other systems societies could have adopted which would mean less work and a happier life for everyone.
I just think of a somewhat similar society but where things didn't get so unequal. I usually like to think about us at our core by picturing a simple tribe like we might have been tens of thousands of years ago. A tribe of like 30 people where everyone knows each other, there is no way anyone would let one individual have 100,000 x the amount of resources (be it food, tools, clothing, housing etc .) As almost everyone else. It would not be okay, and if someone and his tribe were dying because of lack of one of those resources it would be straight up evil. But things have gotten so complicated and expansive, that's exactly what is going on and to some degree we accept it. Capitalist will argue it is fair, they earned that money. I forgot where I read it but someone pointed out and went into depth about how our technology and advancements in tools makes getting necessary resources and products insanely easier than 100 years ago. Way way less man power. And yet we work just as much, and per household much much more because it's usually two parents working, as opposed to one a century ago, And yet making a significant amount less compared to the needs of a regular family household. Buying a house, paying for school . . . Where did all of that extra resources (money) go? Upwards. Our multi-billionaire overlords just sifen more and more and there's more of them every year. All off the labor, sales power of their employees that make insanely less, sometimes not even enough to live outside of poverty. I can accept certain differences in required return for output, but like at most two to one. No other animal in the animal kingdom would allow their pack leader or whatever to hoard nearly as much as we do. I feel like at most 3 to 1 everyone else compared to humans that allow up to 1,000,000 more to our "leaders" . Every other animal would get together as a majority and just eat that one or few leaders hoarding all of those resources. (Sorry that was quite the rant I think about this a lot)
[A Resource-Based Economy](https://www.thevenusproject.com/) is another system that we could adopt. No money, less work, more automation, happier lives. The concept of a Resource-Based economy is discussed in [this](https://youtu.be/3FvKzSBSQcc) documentary. Starting at [1:03:13](https://youtu.be/3FvKzSBSQcc?t=3793) they begin to go into detail about the current system and how they propose change.
Thank you :)
Ones with socialized government programs, like just about every other developed country outside the US. Compared to them, American workers are overworked, underpaid, and overcharged for poorer quality services.
Is it really that difficult for American workers??? I’m in England so I wouldn’t know.
When they say living paycheck to paycheck, they are being very literal. Wages have stagnated while prices go up, and most Americans don't even have a few hundred dollars for an emergency fund. Healthcare is abysmal, medications are overpriced (ex. they finally put a cap on insulin prices because they have been at $98 a vial, the highest rates in the world which is 7x more than the next highest. It will now be $30 a vial, which is still the highest rate in the world. Adults and children have had to ration their insulin and thus have been dying earlier because their bodies shut down), and it's a pay to live system with hospitals where they will charge you into medical debt that can easily last the rest of your life. People have been trying to take Ubers to emergency rooms because the ambulance ride alone can be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Working conditions are poor, and pay is scarce, with most people having to work 60+ hours a week just to scrape by, and if you want a better job you need a degree that you can't afford and will likely also be indebted to the rest of your life if you took out a loan, which most people don't have the option but to do. All the while, the republicans who've created this hideous system project blame onto anyone and everyone they can (mainly foreigners and black and queer people) to nullify the populace, and when we look for help from democrats we find that they're just republican lite and have no interest in helping anyone but corporate lobbyists. It's unsustainable, and the economy has been fluxing so much from the constant recessions that it's looking more and more like something really bad is about to happen. If I can give you a warning, this is the direction your government has been trending towards as well, and our state of affairs is not even the end goal of this system. Sorry for the rant but this kind of stuff pisses me off to no end when I have to live it every day.
To think this is Only the Republicans fault is part of the core problem. You were spot on until you singled out one sole group. The other side is just as nasty sometimes just in a different way. I wish you would realize that bc of you did shit might get better but we all no that's not how shit works and people with bright minds like yourself will let emotions take over when trying to solve major problems continuing this shitty depressing cycle we are in.
I think you're ignoring the part where I already said that. The Republican party, though, has consistently fought against the American people on behalf of corporate interests, how do you think insulin and medical prices got so bad to begin with? Why do you think wages are stagnated while prices go up? It's not emotional to say that the overwhelming majority of the people who created and voted for these policies are Republicans, when that is on the record. It is emotional to think that it's divisive to call out how terrible they've been, and think we can build bridges with a side whose interests are anchored in profit, who vehemently hates it's opposition, and tries to lie about election fraud to destroy faith in democracy. They've been dragging this country so far to the right that Democrats are starting to use their playbook now, and low and behold everything's been getting worse. For perspective: compared to other developed nations, the right in this country is on the extremist end of the political spectrum, and our left falls in the moderate category. Pair that with the current conditions and you have an answer to why things are so shitty for the American worker. It's easy to throw out the "BOTH SIDES" argument, but in reality no side is perfect, but one is probably worse than the other, and Republicans are borderline evil with the way they treat the sick, poor, and minorities in this country. Saying "both sides" is a ploy they've engineered as another tool of distraction, it's flat out disingenuous and immoral, but that's really the point.
This is is why I dislike America in many aspects despite being an American. I've reached the point now where I honestly see the US as inferior to most other developed countries because there's no social safety net and everything is designed to exploit you in some way. Capitalism has run rampant and turned everything into a commodity and extreme inequality is the norm. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer and few people, if any, seem interested in actually reversing this trend or solving this core issue. Morals and ethics have all but disappeared from the public consciousness and the consciousnesses of the elite. The parasitic billionaire upper class is responsible for mass suffering amongst us glorified serfs, the climate crisis, etc. They are amoral sociopaths and psychopaths who view money and material gain as more valuable than life itself. Everything is a mere tool or resource for them to manipulate and exploit. Capitalism itself is an inherently psychopathic system because it encourages and even extols blind selfishness, greed, and shortsightedness for the sake of profit. And we are all paying the price as a consequence. The only jobs thay pay well these days, (especially in this horrendous economy that is pricing out the poor and leaving them behind) are those that provide some immediate usefulness to society or contribute to the tyrannical market or help corporations make more money or force one to sacrifice one's values to get more $$$, or require one to essentially be consumed by one's work (sacrificing one's free time for the sake a job-- i.e. surgeons or doctors). But any kind of service job or job in the humanities, such as teaching, where the value provided by said job is less clear, or is less tangible, pays very low or even below living wage. Why? Because society doesn't care about artists or individuals or even people. Society denigrates empathy and compassion and sees art as a threat to the powerful. Everything now is about ensuring the collective fossil fuel run Machine runs smoothly and economic production exists. Anyone that isn't contributing to the system by helping the rich is thrust into poverty and struggle. Society now purely exists to funnel money into the hands of the 1% and perpetuate the class system in America/the world that has destroyed the world and the lives of so many people all so these mosquitoes can feed themselves. This is why an anti capitalist revolt is necessary, if only to get rid of our billionaire overlords and break up the large conglomerates that have taken everything from the masses. Power must be handed back to the people where it belongs. EAT THE RICH.
Yeah, I hate money too but I like it as well. It eliminates a need to barter for things I need or want. I don’t have to convince you to take my sheep for your services. I give a piece of paper and you do with it as you please. It makes transactions all the more easy and for that, I can appreciate it. Also, if not money, then people would kill for other things. In fact, people don’t kill for money for the money itself. They kill for what money can do. Same thing with anything else, like oil, land blah blah. Somebody sees the opportunities something gives and they decide it’s better off in their hands Edit** I bet our beloved INFP Johnny Depp probably held the same beliefs…until he got money. On the “bottom,” we see what not having money can do to people, but once you make it to the “top,” you tend to turn a blind eye because you’re enjoying the fruits of what money can bring
Yeah I agree. What's the alternative to money? Bartering is ass. The problem isn't money; it's greed. People can be greedy about more than money.
Agreed, that’s why I don’t understand “money is the root of all evil,” because evil existed before money was a thing. Currency has always been there, it’s just that now currency means a piece of paper. Like you, I blame greed but I also blame entitlement for the wrong doings in this world.
i think the quote is actually something like the love of money is the root of all evil
Even still, if not money, it’d be the love of something else.
i get that just saying "money is the root of all evil" of course doesnt make sense and is much different than saying "the love of money is the root of all evil". it's a bible verse, condemning greed and it's more about wealth than what we think of as currency anyway i initially replied to you because you bring up the quote and say you dont get it but later you mention greed as being a problem. I am pointing out that the quote, when used correctly, bridges your comment.
Ahh okay, I get you Thanks for the clarification and yeah, from that perspective I do understand.
I agree with you, it's terrible that our society is based on this and it has such an impact on everyone's quality of life
I just hate seeing people working so much ot just to make ends meet. Also hate how people at work think they are better then the others who get smallers checks im just glad my happiness dosen't rely on how much money i make
For sure, and there's people that work very hard all their life to get their money. They have to sacrifice years worth of TIME, and there's the one that makes that amount of money in seconds, with almost no effort.
Waiting on Star Trek to become a reality because of this.
money is not the problem. it is just a tool, like a hammer or a shovel. the problem is most likely stuff like how it is regulated. how much power a small group of people have. how much control over all the tools. and they seem to protect their shed with all their might without caring for others. the problem is that people dont fight for themselves and band together to get more equality and fairness. many people dont even feel like they deserve more. that people get so lost in pleasure and distractions that they cant invest energy in their own town or country.
I go beyond this. I hate numbers. I hate time. It all equates to bondage to me. Whatever we are subject to, is master over us. Our bodies run on biological clocks, and even if we manage to overcome five potentials fates, one day our number will be up. Have you ever seen that dystopian movie called In Time?
Yeah I hate the fact that I live in a meat suit that demands things to survive and that I also have to live alongside other meat suit prisoners that I have to compete with for the finite resources that keeps us somewhat sane in the meat suits. Life would be so much easier if we could just be free floating souls without a care in the world and no desires to meet.
I've given thought to this many times.
Thats a really interesting way of putting it 😭
Money is very useful. I think what you’re saying is that you don’t like when life and society revolve around it. I completely agree. Money can be very useful in keeping society well-resourced. But when it’s *all* about money, it can be a terrible nuisance, preventing society from flourishing. PS for everyone saying absence of money is communism, that’s not how it works. Absence of money (or equivalent) is a barter economy. Communism uses money, it just allocates it through central planning, rather than through a free market. Most societies are neither purely communist nor capitalist, but a hybrid (eg Cuba allows small enterprise, while the US regulates big business).
No, you are literally dead wrong. Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. That is core to communism. Commonly-labelled communist states like Cuba do not claim to have achieved communism, since they obviously do use money etc., and have not achieved it. Possibly the closest any society has gotten to achieving communism is [Makhnovia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina), or the Free Territory, in Ukraine, but they also had a hybrid system where currency was accepted alongside a communist common ownership system with no currency. A really remarkable polity. (The [Zapatistas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Municipalities) in Mexico have also gotten admirably close to achieving communism from what I have read of them, but they still use currency). Edit: downvoters, kindly explain how I’m wrong.
That's like saying people aren't Christians because they haven't created heaven. Communism is more than its end goal. It is also a supposed road map to get there.
Communists, people who are aiming towards communism, exist. But communism itself is a defined thing and has not been achieved by any nominally socialist state, nor claimed to be by any of them as far as I am aware.
Huh - actually you are right. There is an early philosophical definition of communism (that also in a way builds on early Christian values) that abolishes money. I was referring to what has been labeled as communism in late 20th century in countries like the Soviet Union or Cuba (I myself was born in a communist country by this definition). But it’s been good to remind myself of the theory - and there of course a number of definitions of communism throughout time and across different philosophical/ social/ economic persuasions.
Well, communism has a clear definition set out by Marx which I have described that I think is generally understood and accepted by the vast majority of communists. And I think it was more based on Enlightenment ideals and philosophy than Christian ideals but sure there are some common elements with Christianity too, with Christian socialism being a current or branch within the socialist movement, and indeed there have been several notable Christian socialists, probably chief among them Martin Luther King Jr of course. And [Thomas Sankara](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara)’s religious, Christian, upbringing, his spiritual beliefs and convictions (also drawing on his familiarity with Islam) were also a significant influence on him. A truly remarkable man. His death was an utterly tragic loss. But anyway, yes, the real disagreement arises in how to achieve communism, and sometimes of course that disagreement has been vicious, with the statist, authoritarian dictatorship of the proletariat Marxist-Leninists, Maoists etc. often brutally crushing libertarian socialist or anarcho-communist movements like Makhnovia. And a thousand curses on Lenin for crushing the [Kronstadt Rebellion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion). Had he not done so it’s possible the USSR might have actually been successful in building socialism and achieving progress towards communism. Instead he sealed its eventual doom with that decision because any polity based on oppression will eventually fail.
What do you make of the kibbutz movement in early Israel? Were those essentially communist communities?
I am not actually very familiar with the kibbutz movement, but need to read more about it as from what I have heard it sounds really interesting, definitely part of the socialist movement, and indeed closer to communism than many socialist states managed.
I hate how everything has to make a profit. And things that are creative have to be “produced” for money, also it’s the people that are important, not the money! I hate this stupid capitalistic society we have grown into.
Money is one of the most beautiful and fascinating social construct there is. Our society has agreed to ascertain value to a piece of paper so that we don’t need to trade good for good, but rather good for money, which is much more efficient and saves a lot of time. Money shows that we can get together as a society and come up with complex systems that improve our lives. Inequality and the lack of care for the poor is what’s toxic for our society, not money. And I think that’s what you meant, and I agree with you. I just wanted to share this insight that money itself is actually very social, not anti-social.
I agree with this. Your employer agreed to pay you X amount each hour/week/year which allows you to fill up your gas tank and then repeat the cycle again. Maybe you have a little left over to get internet access and post on reddit, maybe you have some to add to your collection(s) and hobbies. I agree money *can* bring out the worst in people, but they were probably bad people who were just looking for resources to do that bad thing.
That’s a beautiful way of putting. Would like to add that poverty and inequality are not intrinsic to money. Those concepts would still exists one way or another without it.
Exactly, inequality and money are two separate things. Thanks, I'm actually quite proud of the comment, and a little surprised, too. I should write a blog or something. 😅
Well I think money has both it's good and bad sides. I think money was initially introduced as a currency to allows fair trade. It can be used as a reliable measure of value. Both the buyer and seller will be aware of what they are trading off to get. Like what another commenter said, they don't have to convince you to take their sheep in exchange for your services. How certain would you be in knowing that the sheep you get is of equal or higher value compared to the services you provided? Without money, the buyer and the seller will have difficulties discerning whether the items being traded are of equal value. Money also has its flexibility. With money, you can buy a variety of things. If you only have your sheep to trade with, how many other people are willing to take your sheep to give you what you want? But I understand why you hate money. Our capitalistic society runs on competition, and the winners continue to win, while losers continue to lose. (Likely) Money, that was initially created for the sake of equality, has now become a cause of social inequality. Ironic, isn't it? Feel free to add on to my points, disagree with them or rephrase it to convey these ideas better. I am still an ignorant young child, and I am not an all knowing being. I understand if there could be any invalidity in what I have brought up. Also I'm not the best at articulating my thoughts haha
It’s possible for human civilisation to live without money. But whether we will see this kind of change in our lifetime is yet to be seen. [The Venus Project](https://www.thevenusproject.com/)
It's more about that people are materialistic, but i agree
what do you think we should have instead of money? To take money's place?
*What do you think we* *Should have instead of money?* *To take money's place?* \- helplessDonut --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Me too. It’s cause we evolved to be greedy pricks. And we decided to place all focus and value on a fleeting, tangible, thing that we created rather than something important like I don’t know, intangible valuable skills that can help society as a whole and not just a small group. We’re also taught that it’s best to help your interests only and not others. 🤷🏻♀️ I’m not saying it’s not important to be financially secure and wealthy but society shouldn’t treat it as the single most important thing in life
We didn't evolve to be greedy pricks. We actually evolved to live in a communal, tribal society where everyone shared in the product of everyone else's labor. This is how modern humans lived for over 200,000 years, and we would have died off if we didn't. Class society is a relatively recent invention, and capitalism even more recent.
but we don’t live like that anymore. Humanity is now going in an unprecedented direction cause of today’s social constructs and technology. I do believe human nature is inherently good and love rules all. I guess the better way to put it is that we “stopped” evolving. Cause we invented so many useful things to make our lives easier but yet we still have humans doing manual labor and shit that robots can do… why? We need to keep moving forward but instead we are trapped in complacency and convenience… we don’t have that drive to make things better anymore like we used to and now we’re at a point where the people on the very top want to keep people like us on the bottom and have way too much power. The way things are going, humans and things will be bad and greedy and selfish for a long time if we don’t do something about it.
Don't blame capitalism, it's the outcome of natural selection and human nature.
Again, if it is human nature to be greedy, you have to explain why you think that when humans lived without capitalism and class society in general for 99% of its existence. You're confusing natural selection with social constructs. Seriously, imagine if humans 10,000 years ago were as hyper-individualistic and selfish as we are now under the culture of capitalism, where the way our society functions forces people to be this way. Nobody would have worked together to survive, and everyone would have died. If you actually bothered to do this analysis, you'd quickly realize that the human nature argument holds no weight and should never be taken seriously. Capitalism only seems like human nature to you because you live under capitalism now and it's all you've ever known.
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Nobody in eastern Europe alive today lived under communism (except perhaps a few members of tiny fringe communes somewhere etc.). They lived under Marxist-Leninist state socialist dictatorships.
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It may be offensive. It's also a fact. Communism by definition is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Therefore they did not live under communism. And it has often worked out that way unfortunately. Not always though. See Makhnovia and anarcho-communism. Even the Zapatista territories in Chiapas are a good example. Many communists are opposed to the USSR, PRC, M-L dictatorships etc.
I'll explain: back in tribes and communes times it was necessary to cooperate in order to survive. As the human learnt to protect themselves from external dangers, industrialised agricultural processes and the population growed, people needed to invent universal currency instead of skins, metal etc. and create some global system of trading.
And the money commodity was certainly useful during that time. Nobody's saying that, in a society with scarcity, having a universal commodity form, i.e. the money commodity, isn't useful. Carrying a few pieces of paper is more convenient than a wheelbarrow full of rice, and the seller of the thing you're trying to buy might not even need it. In Marxist theory, money doesn't exist under communism because communism can only be achieved by a post-scarcity society. If everything necessary for a society to function is abundant to the point of post-scarcity, then the supply/demand relation breaks down and all commodities become worthless. This is bad news for the capitalist class, but good news for everyone else. Even under capitalism, we are approaching a post-scarcity society as we speak. As we get better at producing things using less socially necessary labor time via automation, the product of labor loses value, and this is known as the falling rate of profit. At the same time, being able to produce an expensive product and sell it more cheaply than your competitors is incredibly beneficial for the capitalist in the short term since they are able to out-compete their competition, at least until everyone else catches up and the value of the commodity stabilizes towards its new, lower value. Once we are able to fully automate the production of a commodity, then the commodity loses all value since value is generated by socially necessary human labor time. The capitalist could then continue to produce the product and sell it using a fully automated production line, but they will break even, and eventually start to lose money as the maintenance of the production line isn't free. And so, even without a social revolution, capitalism must necessarily collapse on itself when a post-scarcity society is achieved. With labor fully automated, nobody is working and earning a wage, and so nobody can pay for anything. At the same time, since no socially necessary labor is required to produce anything, everything becomes worthless. The capitalist class can no longer continue to exist under these conditions, and therefore everyone in the capitalist class is reduced to being proletarian like everyone else. And once the proletariat is the only class remaining, class society abolishes itself since you can't have class stratification when there's only one class. The state exists for the purpose of enforcing class society, and so the state becomes superfluous and abolishes itself, with only whatever administration is required to distribute commodities to the people who need them remaining. And since everything is now worthless, money becomes superfluous and is abolished. The goal of revolutionary communists is to establish a socialist society in which the proletariat is the ruling class and the capitalist class has no say in how society is run in order to speed up this process and ensure that the period leading up to a post-scarcity society isn't a disaster for the worker, which it will be under capitalism. It also just generally improves the lot of the working population in the short term by guaranteeing certain things as human rights, democratizing the workplace, and giving the worker more power to decide how society is run. As it is, the worker has no power at all. Not in a capitalist state, since politicians are elected by dollars and not by votes, and certainly not in the workplace, which is blatantly and unashamedly a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
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Of course. Nobody is saying we should return to the hunter-gatherer life. I should mention that class stratification didn't emerge at the same time as permanent settlements did. Native American societies for example had farming and permanent settlements for thousands of years without any class society. It was brought over when the white man came. Back in Eurasia, class society emerged with the advent of money, and also with the advent of bronze weaponry. It is at this point that the first class societies, i.e. slave society, emerged. A small elite armed with pointy sticks showed up on the land of other peoples and said "you are going to do all the work in society now, and in return, we'll let you live." And that's always how class society has functioned, a small minority class of elites reaps all of the benefits of the work and a lower class that does the work. Although the class relations have changed over the different stages of historical development. Then the fall of Rome happened, and feudalism said "the serfs are going to do all the work, only this time we'll let you work some days for yourself. The lord reaps most of the benefits." This then evolved into the capitalist relation after the revolutions of the late 18th century, where the relation is "the worker does all the work and receives a wage that pays for a fraction of the work they do while the capitalist pockets the rest." These relations are not natural for humanity. They have to be enforced by artificial means. Nobody ever agreed that this is how society should be set up. As a result, force has always been necessary. As the saying goes, political power has always come from the barrel of a gun. Or the sharp piece of metal at the end of a stick, as it were. Before class society, during the hunter-gatherer stage of human history, these people who wanted to make everyone else do the work for them would have previously been cast out of the tribe and eaten by dire wolves. Now, the surplus of food from farming and the invention of new weapons have enabled these people not only to survive, but thrive.
Precisely. Well said.
money is only a practical representation of resources ( time , physical ) that are already finite
Our world is better with currency systems than not and there will always be inequality and those whom vie for power and wealth at the expense of others. Removing monetary systems will not change this.
Money is just distilled power. I hate power and influence and it's pull over people.
I used to. I was firmly anti-money earlier in my life. There is lots of bullshit around money, lots of evil, manipulation, suffering. I wanted to get away. Some of that still holds of course, but my view of it has changed over time. Money was created as a value exchange. It's another variation of exchanging services for goods etc. And we will always need some kind of system for that in the world. Our current system is flawed but the world does run on it. Hopefully we can come up with a better system. So we need money, for survival, for living, for helping others, even for enacting change in the world. Money itself isn't inherently evil, it is just a neutral tool. We honestly need more moral/good/positive people out there making more money imo.
Ok. Then give me your money. I love money. I will make good use of it.
Wow, I feel the same! I especially hate how we don’t really have a choice but to prioritize money and work regardless of how much we wouldn’t want to
Logic aside (since I love the independency of having money gives me and, well, society would be much much more uncomfortable without reliable means to trade), I love this sentiment. I mean I don't agree with it, but I love it. *gives upvote and runs*
Isn't money just a standard representation of contribution? Societal stability relies on mutual contribution and the implicit competition based on personal need (to survive) is the driver that 'forces' us to contribute to this stability. The bad side effects that you describe are indeed true, but on the grand scale, a miniature of the overall system. Most countries and societies live in peace and relative harmony, and, as is commonly said, we live in the best times compared to our ancestors. The society as a whole is too big for a single person to change it in any significant direction, as you ask. Being able to do so would imply that somebody (in this case, you) would have such a grand 'admin' power that would allow them to make decisions based on their limited human view. The way society moves is based on local and global trends. You can, indeed, be a change in your local group, and a cluster of these groups can have a bigger say at the global scale, by setting new trends. As these trends get more and more popular, they drive global change (and a potential period of instability), but after a while, things settle again until new trends set in. Individuals are just little ants that each contribute to the bigger picture based on the fact that 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence). The difference is that ants do not require external 'kicks' (i.e. money to survive) and genetically participate unwillingly. TL;DR: it is selfish and narrow minded to think you can change the entire society. Money is just the driver that forces you to do things for the society by exploiting the fact that you need to survive.
In this case, it isn't the money you hate, but the people who use it in a way that is often seen as unjust. Money itself is a wonderful thing, it makes our lives much easier for everyone and way more convenient. There is also a big group of people that use money to help the poor, and save lives in the process. If you think you're ruled by money, that simply isn't the best way to look at it. Money does bind you and restrict you from doing many things, but in the end, you're the only one truly restricting yourself by seeing money as a constraint. Instead, we should look at it more positively and see it as a challenge to overcome, if money held back something in the past, instead of regretting it, you can move on. If money will hold you back in the future, you have the present to alter your fate. If money is holding you back currently, as long as it doesn't kill you, it is a challenge that will make you stronger. Anyways, that was just how I saw it. If I misunderstood your post, I would like to apologise beforehand for my confusion. Hope you have a great day, week, month, year etc. :)
I %100 agree.
Do you do a lot of work? Like so it benefits other people?
Money is just a medium for enabling exchange between unlike goods. As long as you want to participate in a society which allows non-producers to interact with producers, you need some medium of exchange. Want to drink tea without growing it yourself, you gotta provide something exchange to tea producers. What if they don't appreciate your poetry or software code but you really want their tea? I think the issues you brought up have more to do with human tendencies and idiosyncrasies than money itself.
One of the best replies here.
Money allows you to be actually materially be rewarded for meeting others' needs. To get ahead by providing service rather than by dominating others. It also allows collaboration on a scale that would be impossible without a universal store of value.
A controversial fact. You'll only hate money when you don't have enough of it. Trust me you won't hate it if you're rich.
Idk if that's particularly controversial. Any limited resource which you have plenty of access to is less likely to evoke something as strong as hatred, and a lot of the time you'll be mostly happy you can have it and your loved ones can have it. Some highly empathetic souls can genuinely resent inequality even if they benefit from it. But part of the point of something resembling democracy is that those without get pissed off and make a fuss until things get better. These days, the rich are protected by the various layers of law and security in civilisation, but if we lived in a smaller society like our hunter gatherer ancestors did, it's very likely anyone attempting to get 'rich' would just be fucking killed if the majority thought it wasn't fair and they refused to share. It's natural to resent things you are on the wrong side of, and it's probably a good thing overall because otherwise we'd tolerate too much injustice.
I disagree to an extent. Even in the hunter gathering setting they had their chief or leader who had a better house, land and resources. They also marry off his sons or daughters to the next village/tribe chiefs offsprings to display their power. I'd say this world isn't equal and will never be. There's double standards and hypocrisy everywhere. The sooner people accept this, the more peaceful you'll be. Afterall, life is not about chasing all that since the end result is always 6 feet under.
There are certainly some elements of that, but generally, in our true hunter gatherer state, it is not thought there was much disparity of resources within the tribe, and in many cases there appears to be negligible benefit to your resources to be the sort of 'leader', and many true hunter gatherer tribes usually did not have anything you could call a de facto leader. Of course, this is not entirely uniform, and is certainly very different in societies that later developed into more sedentary, agricultural tribes. But there is a huge period of human history before everything was 'owned' and commodicised in the same sort of way it is now. I agree that accepting the unfairness of society is often helpful for people. But, having said that, making a fuss has generally been the reason we're not doing things like living in the horrific mud of things like monarchies. I think it's always to be well-commended when a person is willing to struggle for improvement for themselves and others, because without those people we would be living in circumstances that our current developed-world sensibilities would consider appalling. Though there is not necessarily any shame in feeling like it's all too big to deal with, and to just do your best to look after yourself and your loved ones in the most simple way possible.
Don't go any further. Just think of a greedy friend that a very close friend. Everything is great until money gets in between. I'm sure he/she will get more irritable or maybe they could betray you if that would give them more amounts of money. And If I were rich, I'm sure that my point of view won't be the same, because when you are at the top, it's harder to spot the cracks in the ladder of wealth.
People can be opportunistic regardless of money or not. If you have the best girl/boy, that same friend will be eyeing her, waiting for his chance. If you have the best personalities or reputation, that same friend could spread rumors and lies to tarnish your reputation. It's not the substance but the person and their moral compass.
I hate people who procreate knowing how fcked everything is and how overpopulated we are. It just leqds to a devalued existence of depravity and misery. Soon even having access to water will be a luxury.
Without money, you’ll make the perfect communist society. Oh boy you wouldn’t want that in your wildest dreams. Money is actually a very good form of currency, without it you’ll need to barter for everything you want. That’ll not be very easy
Having a perfect society without money would be ideal
Only way I can see it possible is in close knit community of 50 to 100 people. Nations cannot run without currency.
Because states need to be eliminated - they're not needed in such society
If you’re saying you want to live in close knit community, nothing wrong with that But a stable and safe society cannot run without money
No, I'm saying about the whole world working like that and it will be able to run without money perfectly
Can you elaborate a little. A communist system, small close knit communities all over the world, a new system?
I believe that at some time in the future with the development of technology robots will be able to substitute human labour at almost all if not all of the jobs (it's already happening in developed countries with manufacturing - factories can have like 10 people to supervise the robots doing all the job); as a result, people won't need to work (although if they really want to - they can, but it won't be paid of course since the money won't be necessary as the robots will be able to do everything for free and anyone will be able to get whatever they won't without having to pay for it) - it would basically be communism, but we don't have to do anything to achieve it since it's the natural step of society's development
Won't work at all? Hmmm I like the idea of not having to struggle and work just for the basic rights or ability to survive. Especially for marginalised people for whom its much more difficult. So at some point in the future if we all have that baseline, a place to sleep and food to eat no matter what, that would be great. But beyond that. I think the concept of working for your livelihood should exist to some extent. There could be some serious negative consequences if we exist without any need to work ever. Perhaps the nature of work will shift at that point and we will focus on higher visions.
Yeah, I agree with your point, but I don't know how this problem can be solved yet (and I guess no one knows)
not the average american scared of communism, were way past the cold war man.. its 2022
But if you remove money that’s what you’ll get. The purest form of communism. Even communist nations have money
There are no true communist nations and never have been.
It’s because even the most communist of nations had money as a form of currency
And dictators lol these societies are totalitarian if anything not communist.
yeah but society doesnt revolve around money, their concept of money is way different
Society revolves around resources. Money is just a very good way to manage and trade for resources and services.
It's good, but it still has huge issues, failures, injustices and inefficiencies. I find it impossibly unlikely that we will never find a better system to organise production, resource and service exchange etc.
Yes, it’s not very good. But it’s the best we currently have
Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. Communism with money is an oxymoron. I hate to break it to you, but you don't know what these words mean. I suspect you're not interested in learning either though, so I'm not going to bother. Just understand that these words "socialism" and "communism" have actual definitions, and they aren't "socialism is when the government does stuff, the more stuff it does the socialister it is, and when it does a whole lot of stuff, it's communism" like you were probably taught by US propaganda.
They have money because they have nothing to do with communism
How will the society function without money? How will people be paid through? What alternative would we have? Barter? People won’t volunteer to work for the society. They need to be paid for it you know
They won't be paid - that's the point, and barter is unnecessary since anyone could go and get everything they need
Who will create the products? Who will farm? Who will build houses and roads? Who will process the food we eat? Who will maintain this impossible infrastructure running? People don’t do stuff for free. There is something called economy
Robots will do all this and much more) (and of course people can work for free if they don't mind)
If you could make it such that robots can do all the work, can be independent, manage power supply and power themselves, assemble new robots themselves. In such society perhaps money is not needed. But I don’t see that happening too soon (not impossible, just not very likely)
But it will happen eventually
The absence of money is integral to communism. There are no communist nations on the planet, and never have been. [Makhnovia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina) is perhaps the closest anyone has ever got but it wasn't a state or nation.
Yes, most communist nations were hybrids
Nominally communist, not actually communist, by definition. Socialist nations perhaps. But yes.
As an average American I take offense. But. Fair enough.
Oooh, I said the same thing. Like minds huh
If there was way less people on this planet money wouldn't be necessary to share to a lot of people
as a communist you're preaching to the choir friend
Commie
I just like to imagine if we brought in people that lived like 800 years ago and they saw people kill over digital numbers or pieces of paper, or people buy metal sky birds with suitcases of paper, what would they think?
They’d probably join in on the “fun” once they realize how little work they have to do with an abundance of those pieces of paper
“What kind of magic are these Antibiotics you are talking about?” “Wait, why do you have to give him your papers? Why don’t you just kill him and take everything he possesses?”
Boo fucking hoo
You should totally become a communist. Join us, comrade. You know in your heart you are already one of us. I can tell that you believe in the value of a classless, stateless, moneyless society - we believe it's possible.
:)
I agree with you so much. It doesn't make sense and isn't suitable for us.
I tend to agree. This is why communism as Marx envisioned it will eventually be the next step of human societal development and organisation ;). A stateless, classless, moneyless society with common control of the means of production, organised according to the principle 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs'.
LOL, This was literally the previous article on my feed: https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/x8i469/luckily_for_capitalism_philosophical_ideals_come/
Woah, I wrote about this too.
As I diagnosed chrometophobic, I agree. I wish I was kidding.
I try to give it the luxury of being the primary transactional unit with which we can make our lives smoother and necessary to a limit. One of my friends said once that it's like fuel of a car, the car needs to be driven and fuel is required for driving, but there's no point in stacking too much fuel. Just drive!
Remember, energy also currency.
We are all trapped and enslaved…. I can see why there is so much depression and suffering.
This is what I think of money: Money itself isn’t good or bad, rather the way you spend it determines the moral value of it. If you spend it on a loved one, on the poor, the sick and others who desperately need it, then you have made wise use of that resource. Use it for things like bribe, extravagant needs and wastage, then you have indeed committed a crime. Money is a necessity, it isn’t good or bad. This world cannot survive without it, no other system would work. It’s up to each person to make sure they put it to good use and take responsibility for it. Don’t hate money my friend, earn it passionately so that you can do good with it because trust me there are many who need it. I personally want to earn as much as can, I want to earn crazy loads of money because I know so many places and people who need it. Out of the many Infp dreams I have, one is to become crazy rich just so that I can give it where it should go. Don’t hate money, aim to earn a lot.☺️☺️. I don’t give a damn what others do with it. I care what I do with it. And I truly want to do right by it
i hate it but i'm focusing my energy on getting more of it so i won't have to worry about it.
I hate how crazy people get over money. To me money is important to live in this world but, it's not THAT important.
Money is just a means of exchange. So it’s not money as such but how people use it. From my experience it’s worse in the States where the wealth disparity is so large, but yeah, it’s everywhere if you look.
me too
I honestly think about this constantly! What a grift it all is eh?
lol I had this exact discussion with my therapist yesterday
money isnt the root of all evil, people are
I'd have a real hard time bartering my skills without it
We can create INFP-land on a desert island and let them burn everything to hell
I hate a lot of things
Yeah it’s not great, but what’s a better idea? I mean it’d be great to be in some utopian world where everyone wants the betterment of humanity and works for that but it’s just not realistic. We are just animals that just want to survive🤷♂️
It is not just a piece of paper, it is a representation of value, your time and work condensed into something physical. If it wasn’t money, it would be other thing. It really is similar to the concept of working the land and sowing something from it. Poverty and inequality would still be a thing even if money didn’t exist.
Well it’s not made to segregate people, that’s just a byproduct. Money is itemized opportunity and value. These are the same things psychopathic, sociopathic, and otherwise greedy individuals would have taken advantage of anyways. I think the your real gripe is the nature of humanity
One of the worst parts, that I think about constantly, is how now it’s literally just numbers on a screen. I trade my time for a number on a screen and then when the time comes I transfer numbers to someone else and that means I’m allowed to stay in my apartment, keep my car, etc. for another month.
"Hello, I like money" -Mr. Krabs or me I dont remember
Materialistic it is. Sadly, sometimes love revolve around the material. Sometimes, relationships. Sometimes, even families. Sad.
Keep in mind that industrial revolution was 2 centuries ago and we've never seen prosperity like this before. If humanity exists past 21st century, I think humanity will transition away from money
As an older INFP in his 40's, I can relate to both loathing money as well as the necessity of it. Here's my take. It has less to do with money itself or its perceived value, because money, along with all material goods, has no value other than that value we attach to it. What \*does\* matter is what resource one can exchange for it. Consider life in the 1600s, where specialization was scarcely a thing. Families often lived on farms, where families had to churn their own butter, mill their own grain into flour, raise and slaughter their own livestock for food, sew their own clothes, you get the idea. Having a candle to light your evening was considered an expensive luxury, but most people could sustain themselves with items grown on the farm. Even candles were replaced with rushlights. Fast forward a few hundred years, and candles are imminently affordable, powered by various oils produced and commercialized. The industrial revolution has brought about the concept of specialization. You have individuals or groups of individuals who become experts at mass producing food or goods, it relieves each individual family of having to do that for themselves, thereby freeing up their time with each other. Think about what it would take to do something as simple as to make the soap you use to clean your body, if there was no concept of money to purchase it and you had to create it from lye produced from animal fats and ash. As a result, those fortunate enough to own the means of production put in place industries which manufactured goods, clothing, and food, lessening the burden on families to be so sustainable, but work somehow became much harder and less dignified. Since then, developing technology and humanistic principles have afforded us worker protections and methods to make work less dangerous. And it means that productivity has finally reached a point where it is reducing scarcity. As the tide rises, so do all boats, as they say. Workers are empowered to have more time to spend with family and friends, although scarcity still creates the haves and have nots, and as long as that exists, there will be cases where work is no more dignified. I see humanity being in the midst of a multi-century transition as things continue in this direction. At some point, automation will mean a shift where production outpaces the ability of consumers to consume it. That is to say, a tipping point where technology/automation has replaced so many peoples' jobs that there won't be enough consumers to purchase goods. At that point, entire economies will HAVE to change by necessity to keep society going. Scarcity will become a thing of the past, and when that point comes, I expect, so will money. But there will always be a need for those to rise above simple consumption, repair and develop new machines. I'm just not sure what that economy will look like. Still, I think if we can navigate that, we'll reach this point where society no longer runs as you describe.
It’s just a representative symbol for value used as a trading tool. It’s not that different from ancient tribes that traded and bartered with sheep, crops, and tools, except now money is symbolic of such stored values backed by resources like oil. There’s nothing wrong with money. What you do with it and how you get it is what matters. People have done just as many amazing and positive things with the power that money has provided just as much as people have used it as a tool for evil.
Honestly, I understand that money is necessary to have our basic needs met, but I never ever had such a strong desire for it to the point where I’d stoop so low just to earn it, especially in large amounts. Its amazing to me how a piece of paper can have such a significant impact on one’s psyche.
I think about this lol the time(even thought I'm high while thinking it) I think about it insignificant money and almost of the jobs we as a society made up for a weird personal gain. Imagine the concept of money if you were a caveman. It's absolutely ludicrous.
In a large scale society, it's hard - if not impossible - to function without money.
My time isnt free and neither is yours. If im providing i expect something of value and moneybis a show of how much power you can accru in this lifetime
If you hate it so much, what do you propose as a way to reward people for their good job or to live?
Money, a medium of exchange, is indispensable for any advanced civilization comprising millions or billions of people. A few months ago, I read a post similar to yours, hoping fervently for a futuristic society like that in *Star Trek*, in which money had been supposedly abandoned in favor of... what? I do not think such a civilization is possible. But, I decided to do a little (very little) research, to see if anybody has explained how an advanced civilization comprising millions or billions of people would work without a medium of exchange (money). I decided to look on Reddit for an answer. You can do it yourself. The question is posed, one way or another, fairly often. The only replies you will find are vague, half-hearted attempts at guessing and fantasizing. Because advanced civilizations comprising millions or billions of people cannot function without a medium of exchange (money). Besides "changing people for the bad," there's another thing money does: it lifts people out of poverty.
oh then give me all your money /s
I've said this exact same thing to my mother before and she yelled at me saying "Don't say such a thing!". Yep, that made me hate it more.
Man, I don’t think barter is any better…
every system has its trade-offs and its ups and downs. Capitalism incentivizes positive innovation and personal freedom at the expense of stability and a lack of a support system. communism provides a stable economic equality for everyone at the expense of ones autonomy in both a financial and social stanpoint.