What if money did not exist?

[Noctix 73]

When people were not driven by greed but just lived alongside minding their own business doing what they do best and what they like to do in their life.

 

In my opinion, we, humanity, need to take a step back and think to ourselves what we're doing this all for. Why we get up at 8 am every morning to go to work, to earn some money and eventually doing things you may consider to be fun, but not your dreams since you'll never be able to earn the money for it? Why are we as a species circling down this drain of doing stuff you don't want to do because 'that's the way it's always been'? Who says we can't live without money?

 

The questions that annoys me most is this:

 

How did we get from a biological life-form whose only interests were shelter above our head and a nice warm meal, to a workaholic civilization in which each and every individual is being taught that nothing is possible without money and just a few among us can afford chasing their dreams?

 

This world is full of good people, and I sincerely believe that we could live like ants do, everyone contributing to the greater whole. A bit like communism, but then without money and dictators and everyone does what he or she would like to do. The same thing happens right now doesn't it? Children grow up saying they really WANT to be astronauts, or firefighters, or doctors and they have absolutely NO idea how much each of those professions would earn them.

 

The future like I see it is that everyone gets basic education and is made aware of the fact that there are certain buildings where you can learn anything you want, whenever you want, free of charge. I imagine people saying: "Let's go to Mars!" and then devote all of their lives to that goal because they simply want and can. The way I see life in the future is like an extended version of Minecraft. Everyone can do whatever they want to do, simply because they want to do something.

 

The sad truth is that this will probably never happen. Money has been woven so deep into our existence that nobody can even understand or remember why we invented it anyway. All we know is that we need it, as much as we can. People are dying out there because somebody invented money. If humanitarian organisations don't get enough money, they will not be able to help people in Africa or wherever. If money were to vanish, they could help everyone they wanted. We would already been living on Mars and in outer space. We wouldn't have hunger in 3rd world countries or wars over things like land or wealth.

 

Please, give me your opinion since this topic is bugging the hell out of me .

[ping111 124]

Welcome to the club. This thought of capitalism ruining a lot of things and corrupting pure human imagination has been a common fear amongst us Legitimate Communists (not Soviet, that's not Communism).

[MelancholicMemory 2,025]

Money is not in inherently bad. In fact it is probably good. It is a medium of exchange to facilitate trade. The problem comes from greed, which would exist even if we were trading with chickens. Sadly there never was a time, even before money when we all just got along. Also,money is part of how our society functions. The only way to disregard it is be like the guy from Into the Wild and go live in the wilderness. If money is evil, it is an evil we all must live with.

[longgone 873]

I can get paid for my dreams, my dream is to educate people about the American Civil War XP. I think it would make sense to have a free education. Free college! And then people would have more money to spend. Taxes are what supports the schools/government yes? So I really don't understand why schools need the money. Education should be a given free opportunity, however if you choose to use it or not is your decision. But even if money did go away, there would still be some sort of currency. Before money, people would trade livestock for food or livestock for other livestock. And people would just become greedy over how many goats they have :/. I don't think simply taking away money would solve. And if you mean taking away all money, that's pretty much impossible. Just about anything can be made into currency and traded.

[JeanHover 326]

People survived simply on barter for a pretty long time, I'm pretty sure. Do you think that using School House Rock as a source a good idea?

[Pix3M 607]

If money doesn't exist, it will be invented again. Imagine the silly mess we'd get if I was a corn farmer having to put up with people offering me crap I don't want because there isn't a commodity that's universally accepted to have value.

[Sunbro 4 Lyfe 939]

you give the money to that guy for some steak, he spends the money on a cow to breed, which came from somwehere who will use the money to help improve his buissness, thus building the world a tiny bit more.

or as i like to put it, why cant we go back to trading goats for evrything?

[Batbrony 16,055]

Money exists because people require incentives in order to be compelled to do an activity for another, and it works very efficiently as a universal medium of exchange. As others have said, even before money was invented, people exchanged/traded goods and services as incentives and pay for other goods and services in return. While it's certainly a nice sentiment to think that we could all just get along without any need for incentives, it's also naive, idealistic, and unrealistic. All historical efforts at a utopian communist society have ended in failure, and I am not just referring to the Soviet Union (which was at one point a legitimate effort at communism).

 

In fact, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, Plymoth Plantation, where the Pilgrims settled, actually tried a socialist experiment in its first year of existence. All the land was held in common by the rulers of Plymoth Plantation, no private property whatsoever; and ya know what happened? The entire plantation almost starved to death in its first year of existence; nobody, even people as morally upright and religious as the Separatist Pilgrims, wanted to put in hard work when they wouldn't get to keep any of the fruits of their labor, or own any land as their own. So what did William Bradford and the Pilgrim elders do instead? In the second year, they divided Plymoth Plantation into privately owned parcels of land, one for each family. What happened this time? The settlement began to flourish; each family, including the women in the families even (keep in mind, this is in 1620!!!), worked their hearts out since now, they would get to keep the fruits of their labor. They had true incentives to compel them to work hard and build a flourishing society.

 

This has been the case throughout world history. Societies that have whole-heartedly adapted capitalism have historically made the greatest political, technological, and social advancements in human history. Why else do you think a nation such as the United States, which by every sensible opinion in 1800 should never have even succeeded, was able to rise within a century after its inception to being the leading industrial and agricultural power in the world? Is it perhaps morally disappointing that men require incentives? Perhaps. But whenever people accept that they require incentives for productive activities, capitalist systems in turn generally work out better, and can even produce fantastic projects for the community as well, such as charitable endeavors, which are much more intimately handled and personal (and so more likely to succeed) than government stimulus money or economic projects tend to be.

Edited November 20, 2012 by Batbrony

[Betez 1,734]

I do feel like it would be easier if we all just lived like ants. But then, what would we live for?

 

We all have different goals in life, luxuries make life better. Civilizations before us have used some form of currency, because it works as an alternative to trade.

 

The reason why America is in so much debt is because we no longer use gold to make it worth anything. Money is basically paper, which is why it's so invaluable. So I guess in a way I agree with you that life would be better if we went back to just trade.

Edited November 20, 2012 by Betez

[Zygen 6,066]

I thought about this before, and I think it really wouldn't be that different. I mean if we didn't have money we'd have barter. And people still can be greedy about bartering. Money just gives a proper and easy to use medium of exchange. It doesn't matter what we use. Yes people get greedy, but no matter what you do some people will be greedy with something. There isn't a way to fix it.

If it isn't money it just becomes something else. It doesn't necessarily fix it to remove money from the world, it just moves the problem elsewhere.

[Pinkazoid 3,493]

If money didn't exist?

 

I'd be trading some Chickens for a Pony Plushie on ebay,

 

-Kidding aside

 

Money is necessary, even if there wasn't money, there'd still be greedy people. Money is just a simple way to measure someone's currency.

[H.P. Lance 138]

Thank you, I'm so glad I'm not the only one who's spent a possibly unhealthy amount of time lamenting how flimsy pieces of paper and numbers on a page, disguised as what we should all aspire to gain, are in reality meaningless figures and the cause of the vast majority of suffering for every person on the planet, directly or indirectly.

 

How did we get from a biological life-form whose only interests were shelter above our head and a nice warm meal, to a workaholic civilization in which each and every individual is being taught that nothing is possible without money and just a few among us can afford chasing their dreams?

 

This part connected with me in particular - I think problems must have begun when we became almost too intelligent, or at least intelligent enough to lie and decieve each other. It's natural to want more, instinctive to take in order to survive, but as we grew in number as a species, some people's greed and manipulation must have called for some sort of solution.

 

So we created systems which everyone had to follow. Who actually had the authority to decide how we all live is a different matter, but eventually someone somewhere obviously come up with the concept of money. It must have seemed like a fantastic idea at the time, and seeing as it's still in use today in every single country's society it must have been a miracle solution back then.

 

But it just doesn't work anymore, and in a way it never did. The rules of every system always sway in favour of the people who have the luxury of a lot of money, who only get more, while those with nothing sink ever lower. Nowadays everyone knows the plight of unfair distribution of wealth, yet most of us turn a blind eye hoping someone else will resolve the problem - I'm guilty of this myself.

 

I honestly think there is a way to change our ways so everyone has an equal opportunity in life, and if that means burning every last dollar bill and scrapping every last pound coin then that's what we should be prepared to do. The problem is discovering the solution.

 

And even if we do devise an absolutely fair system, everyone will be frightened of what the differences will mean for them. Drastic change will breed uncertainty within us all, including in those who invented the idea in the first place. Whatever the case, it's almost certainly not going to be an issue resolved (or perhaps even acknowledged) in our lifetimes - we've forgotten that our family and friends are the most important things in life.

 

I hope that one day someone with a kind heart and a brilliant mind will bring us back to our senses.

[Neikos 968]

When people were not driven by greed but just lived alongside minding their own business doing what they do best and what they like to do in their life.

 

There are 7 billion people out there, firstly not everyone of them is driven by greed.

A society that is anarchistic cannot sustain itself.

 

In my opinion, we, humanity, need to take a step back and think to ourselves what we're doing this all for. Why we get up at 8 am every morning to go to work, to earn some money and eventually doing things you may consider to be fun, but not your dreams since you'll never be able to earn the money for it? Why are we as a species circling down this drain of doing stuff you don't want to do because 'that's the way it's always been'? Who says we can't live without money?

There is no 'we' when talking about humanity. It is 'it' and nothing more or less. Being able to fulfill your dreams is nice obviously. But so is a century spanning lifetime. Turns out, most of the time you have neither. I will address the money issue a bit later.

 

The questions that annoys me most is this:

 

How did we get from a biological life-form whose only interests were shelter above our head and a nice warm meal, to a workaholic civilization in which each and every individual is being taught that nothing is possible without money and just a few among us can afford chasing their dreams?

 

This world is full of good people, and I sincerely believe that we could live like ants do, everyone contributing to the greater whole. A bit like communism, but then without money and dictators and everyone does what he or she would like to do. The same thing happens right now doesn't it? Children grow up saying they really WANT to be astronauts, or firefighters, or doctors and they have absolutely NO idea how much each of those professions would earn them.

 

You can't compare humans to animals in this way. Money is something that requires higher-thinking, something that animals do not possess (at all). Then, as stated earlier the whole dream thing is just an illusion, you are free to follow your dreams, but you can't always fulfill them. Also, 'good people' means nothing on a species' level, are they good at surviving? At caring for others? Both? Something else?

 

 

The future like I see it is that everyone gets basic education and is made aware of the fact that there are certain buildings where you can learn anything you want, whenever you want, free of charge. I imagine people saying: "Let's go to Mars!" and then devote all of their lives to that goal because they simply want and can. The way I see life in the future is like an extended version of Minecraft. Everyone can do whatever they want to do, simply because they want to do something.

 

The sad truth is that this will probably never happen. Money has been woven so deep into our existence that nobody can even understand or remember why we invented it anyway. All we know is that we need it, as much as we can. People are dying out there because somebody invented money. If humanitarian organisations don't get enough money, they will not be able to help people in Africa or wherever. If money were to vanish, they could help everyone they wanted. We would already been living on Mars and in outer space. We wouldn't have hunger in 3rd world countries or wars over things like land or wealth.

 

Please, give me your opinion since this topic is bugging the hell out of me .

 

So, now that I cleared up a few things I believe should be cleared up here comes my opinion on money.

 

 

'Money' is an abstract mean of giving something more value than it has. Thanks to RMoney we can have a piece of woven tissue be worth the equivalent several kilograms of pasta or other food. Most of the time the process is reversible, which means it is a form of 'trade'. I'm not going to go into economics and will stay with the philosophical questions.

 

 

So your question is, "What if money did not exist?". The question already supposes that something would happen, which is quite true as I wouldn't be able to feed myself in about a week as all my money disappeared. but joke aside. Questions like this are silly and most of the time just show a misunderstanding of the concept at hand. "Money" is not the cause of anything, it is just a mere consequence. The consequence of wanting to be treated equally.

If you buy a piece of bread worth 1 euro, you pay for the ingredients as well the time it took to prepare it and any auxiliary investments needed to make that piece of bread. Now without money we would still trade in what ever we have. So I guess I would not exchange a piece of bread, but several, and trade these several breads for a piece of leather. But this piece of leather, I had to work quite hard to get it as the dude who gave it to me was quite demanding. So for me this was a fair trade at first. But right after me comes a tanner. He can easily trade the same as he is the one making the pieces of leather. So the amount of work I put in and the amount of work he put in is not the same. Yet we gave the same thing! So in reality, my piece of leather was more worth to me than the the piece of leather from the tanner.

 

Money solves a few of these problems, first. It unifies the currency. You no longer trade in leather and empty soda bottles but with money. You work X hours of Y job and get Z amount of money. Somebody else who works X₁ hours of Y₁ job gets Z₁ amount of money. Obviously the relation is not linear, and most of the time depends on where you live. But it unifies it for quite a large part of the population.

 

 

Now, do you see why we cannot get past, so far, the concept of money?

 

 

 

---

 

For your suggestions about being a hive-mind and working towards a single goal.

That is obviously an awesome vision, seeing everyone working towards a single thing, but we are not animals! Nobody wants to be part of 'just a big picture' and with right! We all have our individuality and most of the time work better when confronted with a challenge than with just working together.

[null1 606]

If we could have that place that let us be whatever we wanted, it would be cool. It looks great on paper, but the less interesting jobs would be ignored, overtasked with too few people as the fun jobs of being an astronaut take in alot of people. It all has to be tough in life, otherwise you aren't living. Someone has to play a part in some area of the process.

 

Though a barter system with no money would be interesting, I could trade corn with someone for stuff like lightbulbs, or tools. Trade a box of Twinkies for soemthing like a tractor (Twikies might become rare in time perhaps, so I make that assumption).

 

In general, the whole topic of this is going to get really complicated real fast.

Edited November 20, 2012 by DeltaTangent

[SrFrog 927]

Even if with no currency, we would still find a way to fuck everything up. It's happened before, those who always want more will find a way to place themselves at the top and set the rules. Money is not inherently evil, it's how people use it that ultimately dictates that.

[khaine21x3 789]

There are different kinds of voluntary communist communities in the world including the US so I don't think you need to imagine what they're like when you could just find out.

 

The communist villages where I come from seems to be what you describe, communities helping each other out for free without the use of $ which includes building houses, furnitures, farming, food, transfer of knowledge/skills, etc.However, the younger generation seem to prefer being exploited by capitalists like me just so they can buy a new iphone instead of staying in their communist villages.

[Harmonic Revelations 8,835]

We would still be driven by greed we'd just use the barter system. Really all money did was make greed global, it didn't create greed.

[khaine21x3 789]

We would still be driven by greed we'd just use the barter system. Really all money did was make greed global, it didn't create greed.

 

The concept of greed arose from the abrahamic religions, it's just a perfectly natural process and other systems like socialism and charity causes more deaths than greed ever will.There would be no starving kids in africa if people stop donating to the them and invest the money on giving them jobs instead, they would be making sweet profits in the process too.

Edited November 21, 2012 by khaine21x3

[Harmonic Revelations 8,835]

The concept of greed arose from the abrahamic religions, it's just a perfectly natural process and other systems like socialism and charity causes more deaths than greed ever will.There would be no starving kids in africa if people stop donating to the them and invest the money on giving them jobs instead, they would be making sweet profits in the process too.

 

I disagree, I believe the concept of greed came into being the first time sentient beings came into existence. From then on, greed has run rampant throughout all of the known world.

[khaine21x3 789]

I disagree, I believe the concept of greed came into being the first time sentient beings came into existence. From then on, greed has run rampant throughout all of the known world.

 

Which is a good thing since all attempts of equality has resulted in poverty and death, I bet you won't voluntarily move to a communist village even thought you claim to be exploited.

[Harmonic Revelations 8,835]

Which is a good thing since all attempts of equality has resulted in poverty and death, I bet you won't voluntarily move to a comimunist village even thought you claim to be exploited.

 

I don't claim to be exploited. I'm just as much of a perpatrator as I am a victim, same for you and every other human who has ever lived. We all have greed and thus no one is perfect.

[Fridge 382]

How did we get from a biological life-form whose only interests were shelter above our head and a nice warm meal, to a workaholic civilization in which each and every individual is being taught that nothing is possible without bits and just a few among us can afford chasing their dreams?

Well money came about because of the barter system. It made life easier to be able to say that pig is worth 10 coins rather than try and do a trade with items that might not be considered of equal value.

The reason money became such a driving force is because banks were originally able to store it and mint it. This gave them a lot of power over others and sadly the human race hasn't evolved that far past monkeys to not want to become the 'dominant' one.

Its also in the now established monitary systems interest to make you believe that you need money, to some degree they are sadly right. Now that they have monitized pretty much every aspect of life you kind of do need money to get on. BUT there is light at the end of the tunnel, if you diligent enough you can use the very money itself to counteract the system.

A great example is a little commune in Wales called Teepee Valley, they are a moneyless society. The one who owns the land asks for no rent from others who live there, he only asks that you look after the plot you live in.

 

A good qoute (which is often misqouted) is 'The love of money is the root of all evil'. We humans as I said just aren't so highly evolved that the desire to be the dominant one has gone. Thankfully we have got to the point where we are at least aware that that is why we horde money and property so much. Meaning that should one wish to they can do something about it, although only on an individual level, good luck trying to get a government to rid itself of money and therefore power.

 

I would love it if we could become a more like an ant colony (although keeping individualism etc). But we are a very very very long way from that as a race.

[khaine21x3 789]

I don't claim to be exploited. I'm just as much of a perpatrator as I am a victim, same for you and every other human who has ever lived. We all have greed and thus no one is perfect.

 

Then why are you even claiming that it's greed? that seems to be a concept that's being pushed by socialists and religious organizations.Those who are blessed with "greed" are perfect and will help humanity more by "exploiting" the poor than those who preach equality so we need to resist their marxist BS and be proud of our greed.

 

"no one is more inferior than those who claim to be equal" - friedrich nietzsche

Edited November 21, 2012 by khaine21x3

[Evilshy 5,090]

The concept of greed arose from the abrahamic religions, it's just a perfectly natural process and other systems like socialism and charity causes more deaths than greed ever will.There would be no starving kids in africa if people stop donating to the them and invest the money on giving them jobs instead, they would be making sweet profits in the process too.

 

Greed arose from the moment a cave man consciously thought "I have meat, and I want more meat". Religion has nothing to do with it.

 

As has been said, money makes trade efficient. Under a barter system, you have to deal with all sorts of problems, such as differing values of things, and the very big problem of everybody not wanting everything. Say you had corn, and wanted steak. Well, you could go to the local cattle farmer and try to trade, but what if he doesn't want any corn? Now you have to go find a new cattle farmer, or find somebody with something he wants who also wants your corn. Bartering is nice and simple on the surface, but when you actually try to trade things, it's a lot worse than a monetary system. People still place different values on different things, but at least they all agree that your money has value, too.

 

 

As for people coming together and being communist, I do not agree with any system where everybody is expected to be happy with the same stuff regardless of how much they actually work for it. If I work hard, than I want to reap the benefits. If I get the same stuff as everybody else, what incentive is there for me to work hard? If I can still get a house and food by doing the bare minimum required of me, why would I want to spend extra time and energy going above and beyond? You end up with a society where a lot of people half ass everything they do.

 

Why do you think we have powerful computers, reliable cars, and tasty food? Why do our sewer systems work, our water is hot and cold when we want it to, and our house powered by electricity?

Because some guy started selling a good or service, and people paid for it. Another guy saw it and said "hey, I can do that better for the same price" and people started going to him instead. Now the first guy has to either up his game or find something else to do. The competition inherent in the capitalist system forces people to constantly try to 1-up each other in quality and affordability, meaning that not only do consumers have a wide variety of options, all of them are either high quality or really cheap. Any compnay who tries to sell junk for high prices will go out of business, thus keeping overpriced bullshit MOSTLY off the market (it's not perfect, Apple is still around).

 

It's not a perfect system, and sometimes people get lucky or unlucky. But life isn't fair; it never has been and never will be.

I'd rather live in a system where I at least have an opportunity to advance rather than one where I stay at the same level my whole life.

 

 

Also, ants are a hive mind, so that analogy doesn't really work all that well :/

[DusK 1,264]

There was a time when money didn't exist. It didn't work. That's why money was created. You can't have a modern economy without some sort of widely-accepted currency. It's impossible.