Moneyless society : Would it benefit society?

[Michaelangelica]

Seed: 2009 Will Be a Year of Panic

[irockhrdface]

A moneyless society is indeed possible. Of course it will not be perfect, but it would be a whole lot better than what we have now.
whats wrong?
We can feed the world, we have the resources but we don't, all because of money. People around the world kill each other over money. Technology is slowed down because of money (think alternative energy or giant corporations destroying a good idea). Money is primitive and used to be needed, but not so much anymore and someday I hope it will not be used.
guidelines
Eventually, technology will run mostly everything. Of course engineers and scientists will always be needed, but thats all. The service industry can all be automated, transportation can be provided along with healthcare and energy. Pretty much a self sustaining world, a world which no money is needed to live and no jobs needed to fill.

[TheBigDog]

Originally Posted by irockhrdface

Eventually, technology will run mostly everything. Of course engineers and scientists will always be needed, but thats all. The service industry can all be automated, transportation can be provided along with healthcare and energy. Pretty much a self sustaining world, a world which no money is needed to live and no jobs needed to fill.

Automated maintenance of the automation? Automated maintenance of the automated maintenance of the automation? Demand decides what needs to be supplied. People want jobs. People want to deal with people. The world you describe is as unlikely as perpetual motion.

Bill

[ABRanger375]

People make a lot of valid points in how to get such a society to work or why it wouldn't work. But lets look at the benefits of having it work and then we can decide weather or not it's worth trying. We could eliminate 90% of all crime as we know it today. We could greatly ruduce criminal gangs. We could ensure that no one goes hungry cause they can't afford to feed thier children. We could almost eliminate drugs. We could greatly reduce stress in the nuclear family and improve the way of life for families. We could provide a better educational system based on merit and achievement for all. We could improve the health care system immensely. We could focus eduactional requiremnets on the sciences thus improving mankind rather then focusing on financial careers. These are just a few but worthy reasons in my opinion to find away to incorperate a moneyless society into our lives.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by ABRanger375

People make a lot of valid points in how to get such a society to work or why it wouldn't work. But lets look at the benefits of having it work and then we can decide weather or not it's worth trying...

Well, you're making the rather offensive argument that the people who state objections about why it won't work don't want it to work.

Everyone would love to have peace and love and goodwill toward men, and the folks who are arguing in the negative here don't question it's *value*, but they are arguing that the claimed benefits are impossible to achieve, thus meaning that no progress could be achieved, in fact many of the arguments are that the attempt would make things worse.

You're welcome to try to provide ways to solve these objections in a way that does not result in costs that simply can't be borne by society, but realize that that comes *first*, not some argument about the abstract "value" of a perfect society: that simply becomes a way to unjustifiably support even the most preposterous costs.

Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well,
Buffy

[E-Maither]

Hi,
I have just stumbled upon this website, and to my great joy I find many like minded people. I have been proposing a moneyless society for years, but always come up against the same objections from people who while they hate the present system, or are indifferent to it, will not even consider any alternative.
They know that money lies at the bottom of all poverty, greed, most crime, wars, hardship, and suffering. They are aware that it is used as the ultimate means of control by the few over the many. They even realise that it is a totally man made concept, and has nothing to do with nature's plan--you don;t see the animal kingdom hurting, abusing, and controlling one another for the love of money.
They come out with the old lines like, 'Yes I know it's bad, but better the devil you know...' or ' How can we possibly change the status quo, it's always been there...' (That one from the school of the bloody obvious!)
But by far the most common objection is 'it CAN'T work! How would you get anyone to work if there was no money?'
What a blinkered short-sighted response! Like there is nothing in life worth doing unless it's for monetary gain. These people don;t seem to understand that (A) this greed based attitude is BORN of a monetary based economy, and (B) Believe it or not, people do have a sense of vocation--look at the lifeboatmen for an example of people instinctively doing something just because it's the right thing to do. Given the chance to be rewarded in other ways than by means of filthy lucre, most of us would be happy to work for the good of all, including ourselves, instead of working for money that can and is so easily taken away from us.
OK, so how do we persuade people to do the less attractive, but equally important things necessary for society to function?
I got the anser from a little book I read called Windfall of the Wise, by Max Speed. In it the author suggests that everyone works for no more than twenty years and becuse they work they are entitled to everything they need to enjoy a fulfilled and contented life. And EVERYONE does the menial/boring/unpleasant jobs for one day of their working week. In other words, if you work, it is noted (electronically) and you get anything you need from a bowl of soup to a house to live in. If you don't work, you get nothing. Quite simple really.
Greed is greatly frowned upon, no one is allowed to take more than they need otherwise they risk enduring public distain--much like drink driving is viewed with great distain by many people, and apart from the legal consequences, people find that distain a deterrent in itself.
You retire at forty, because without money, everyone can afford to do so, and that allows young people to step into the workboots of the older generation of retirees. There would be 100% full employment.
Children are brought up learning these new values.
I can see that the biggest problem would be first of all convincing people to change things, and overcoming their fear of the unknown would probably be the biggest challenge to creating the new society, and that aspect is not very clearly emphasised in the book. It seems to look at the successful working of the new system at some point in the future when those hurdles have been jumped.
Maybe this set up is not perfect, and no doubt someone could spend a little time highlighting a few more problems with it, but to dismiss it in favour of keeping the venal old system that we all presently endure would surely be great folly, and will I'm sure, lead to our eventual demise.
It may be an utopian ideal, but apart from the authors arguments being a very good starting point for debating reform, it has GOT to be better than what we have now.
Has anyone else out there read this book? I would be keen to hear your views on it.

[Zythryn]

E-Maither, and others. You are working from a premise that money causes greed.
I do not believe that is valid, I think greed was the cause of money.
If that is the case, your entire argument falls apart.
Why do you believe money causes greed?

[Buffy]

Think about it this way: all the "bad" things that we point to in our own societies that have money exist in "moneyless" ones as well.

Do the anthropological research and in primitive societies you will still find hierarchies, discrimination, outcasts, "poor", wars, fighting for survival. etc.

I find that folks who have dreamy visions of what a Moneyless Society would be like are very much like the Conservatives who think that the 1950's or the 1800's or whatever represents "traditional values where everyone was moral and upright" were a perfect ideal to "go back to."

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,
Buffy

[Boerseun]

Money the cause of greed?

Now that's just wrong.

Money is just a placeholder. If you want to trade a leg of mutton for my nice string of beads, you can give me a leg of mutton - if I'm willing to take you up on the deal. If I do not want a leg of mutton for my beads, or you don't happen to have one handy at the time, we invent money, and the money acts as a proxy mutton leg, to be swapped for a leg of fresh mutton at my convenience with anybody else who's in on the "money" system at a later date.

The real question is why you wanted a string of beads in the first place.

Is it because your neighbour has got one, and your wife now thinks him more powerful than you? Envy and greed springs from the same source, and predates money.

Beads? Trinkets? This planet was colonised and opened up based on greed - and not necessarily only the greed of the colonists.

Money is not the cause of greed. If anything, money is a symptom of greed, and just makes it easier to satisfy our evil greedy human nature.

[lawcat]

Money, according to one of the most brilliant economists, is the measure of production--namely labor and resources. Labor to extract resources and provide a product has cost. The cost of me doing the labor and providing a product, is abstaining from reading my favorite book, running, or sleeping. To produce, I need to be moved to produce. That is done through economic incentive or through forced labor.

Moneyless society is a society of forced labor and slavery, because labor is not rewarded except to the extent deemed necessary by the administrative authorites for sustenance of life. Now, we can talk about profitless society, and how that should be defined, which is essentially communism, because to Adam Smith profit is the third part of output, in addition to labor and resources. We can talk about what is reasonable profit. But let's not be enthusiastic about moneyless society. It's not only unreasonable and foolish, but dangerous as well.

It is one of the fundamental principles of liberty that a person is entitled to the fruits of her labor. Implicit in that is that a person is entitled to produce as much as they are able to and be rewarded accordingly for that industry. Whereas, a not industrious person is entitled to her labor as well, to the extent of that labor. I prefer that freedom over dependence and slavery.

The mechanism we use to reward the output fairly is the free market economy--capitalism--a system of free bargaining in the market for the determination of value of the output. Here, we can talk about whether the reward system has some unfair characteristics and what to do to make it more fair. Whether the government or a cartel controls the field and individuals are not fairly compensated; or, whether individual output is not fairly incentivized to produced greatest societal good.

Our system may need fixing in some areas, but it is a shallow inquiry in a complex field of politics, commerce and economy to say moneyless society is the answer.