Are you talking socialism?

i don’t think i could honestly i know it’s bad but i love to shop

Could it be like this?

A world of haves and ok with not having.

Even Captian Kirk had a cabin in the woods.

@janbb Not really (= More of like , imagine how will the world be like if the worth of something is not measured by monetary value .

@RareDenver That is something interesting , and yes , something along that line . But just trying to see how this question will work with people’s imagination . (=

@ChazMaz Wow I like that !

@lovemypits86 HAHA oh well .

Everybody would be uninspired to accomplish, nothing would ever get done. If stuff does get done, and someone wants what another has, money would just be replaced by a bartering system not regulated by anything except for those involved in the trade. I hope you know how to cut trees, mill lumber, and build your own house because good luck in trying to get someone else to do it for you without any compensation on their part.

We could revert back to the old western days in America. back then, the gold diggers would take their gold findings to an assayer. the assayer would weigh the gold and place it in a safe with the finders name on it. then, the assayer would give the gold digger a piece of paper stating the amount of money he had on file at the office(like a bank). the gold digger then would go about the town making purchases based on the assayers receipt. at the end of the day, the store merchants would visit the assayers office and retrieve their part of the gold diggers gold, from gold diggers gold account. even today, this is the same principle used by banks to collect and distribute money. this system worked back in the old west days and something similar could take the place of paper money, today. the only problem is that someone had better discover a new gold vein somewhere.

I can’t imagine a world without value set for certain things by their rarity or whatever. It is in our natures to assign value to our work.

I think a society without money (in some form) would not be very human.

We would all still be living in the bronze age wearing animal skins and living in caves.

I would turn the world into a musical madness MUAHAHAH! but that is unlikely…..oh well lol

I do not think it is an issue of value as much as our desire to enjoy something equally as others do.
Having to work harder to acquire what others putting in less effort would gain, would always be an issue.

Rank, status and social upbringing does have its rewards. Are we willing to, and will we ever be willing to, give that up.

I keep thinking of Star Trek. If we can understand the benefit of being a Captain in comparison to being an Enson.
How can we devoid that from our personal life?
Can we come to a point of contention accepting what we are capable of doing instead of what we can become?
And, who decides that?

See, I want more. That is the crux.

It wouldnt be much different than it is today for me – I got none!

But if we lived in a utopian society where everyone had what they needed, poverty was banished, etc etc etc, Well, think about it, there would still be people out there trying to take it off you, people wanting what YOU have rather than what they have. and we’d turn into a rather Dull people IMO.
In Startrek, even they had the Ferrengi (thieves and villains) and surely one of the the things we value about something is how hard we had to work, or save, or do without to earn that something, would’nt we lose that too?
If we COULD live in the Startrek universe, I’d wanna be Will Riker!

If we live a life where we all had the same things.
There would still need to be a structure of control.

Leader to follower. The followers wanting to one day be a leader. THAT is the downfall.

Some commentators have said that when “Peak Oil” really begins to kick in round about 2012 then money will lose its value. In Britain we’re already paying about 9 dollars for a gallon of petrol ( gas to Americans )
We’re in for a very interesting few years !!

I think it’s a silly fantasy to even imagine. You may as well imagine “what would life be like if we had gills and could live in the sea?” or “what would life be like if we had angel wings (and temperaments)?”

The fact is that money—or something just like it to serve as a store of value and a medium of exchange—is the best way we’ve been able to establish as a way to most efficiently communicate information on how we value nearly everything (at least everything that can be mined, farmed, produced, built, destroyed or buried—anything that can be exchanged, in other words).

Since it’s unlikely that you and I want exactly the same things, or produce exactly the same things, how else do I communicate to you what it is that I value, want or need to induce you to produce the things that I want, and can’t provide for myself? And vice versa. Without money, what would be our incentive to get up in the morning and do anything other than for ourselves and our immediate families? Surely not our good nature? I’m pretty good-natured, but I’m not that much of a sap.

Okay, I could go off on the reality, but since you want to play with imagination…

How about this? Every kid wants to be something like a movie star, astronaut, fireman, or archaeologist when they grow up. Since they would be totally willing to do those to help out, I imagine that we’d have a plethora of those kinds of people with not enough jobs open for them. Meanwhile, the garbage fills up the streets, nobody cleans the toilets, and the only teachers are the poets and sensitive souls who completed an English major because they love the language.

After our archaeologist gets back from a rough day in the field and kicks the garbage out of his way to the door, he realizes he can’t cook dinner because the people in Chinese factories didn’t want to work in a sweatshop “just to help” make him some pots and pans, oven, potholders, and it’s awfully cold because he doesn’t have any sweatshop clothes. His kids are crying because there are no cheap toys, but everybody seemed willing to work at making kids so he has quite a few.

There’s a knock on the door. It’s the landlord, coming to say that he has to get out! It seems that our landlord didn’t want him living there without rent income, and it wasn’t enough that he was kindly willing to live there for free in exchange for living there for free. He’d be willing to barter his skills as an archaeologist, but the landlord has no use for them. Landlord’s gonna burn the place down instead, since his friends are all firemen who need a job. There won’t be any insurance money to collect, because there’s no need for money and nobody wanted to be an insurance salesman anyway. Unfortunately, there are only a few homebuilders, so our archaeologist will be on the street (which is falling apart because no one wants to fix them for fun), naked, with ten kids and nowhere to go.

As he rounds up his family and heads off naked into the sunset, he faces down the zealot enemy army in the streets. It appears they were too many and too motivated to lose to the really all-volunteer American army, the very few and very proud…

@laureth, ‘zackly.

I rather like the Star Trek/Futurama world. You do the job you’re best at. While you may not like the job that you’re best at, at least it’s not too difficult.

Also I believe there was some line in Star Trek along the lines of ‘You’re rewarded by your contributions’ or something to that effect. Which seems similar to a concept of money, but it’s more like ‘You do your job, and we’ll give you cool shit’.

To achieve a Star Trek like Utopia, we would first have to vanquish the problem of the scarcity of ressources, which essentially means we will have to invent something that takes the part of the replicator. But once that is achieved, there is extreme potential for excellence, for people would do work they hate to survive, but do what they are good at and what they like doing, which in the end means that the products they make will be of higher quality, and the people will both be more motivated and happier.

No, I can’t imagine a world without money. The problem is not money. As the Bible says, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil.

I can, however, imagine a far kinder and gentler world. Imagine that everyone is assured of minimal food, shelter and medical care. Imagine large corporations banished and replaced by local small industries and farms. Sprawling suburbs are replaced by small towns having low cost public transport. Cars are not permitted in the towns. The towns are surrounded by nature preserves. Because of the attractiveness of the streets, people put down roots and spend their lives living in one place. They get to know their neighbors and as a result street crime is extremely rare. Yeah, imagine.

Humans have lived without money before, and we could do it again. In some nooks and crannies of the world, this still happens. The society would have to have certain understandings on the way things would work, but it could work. Its members would have to be there voluntarily and agree to live according to the understood rules.

Even a simple barter economy eventually requires some unit of exchange and recordkeeping. You are right back to a currency system.

Perhaps the best compromise is a fixed value currency that is controlled by any government or single private entity. Remember that banks used to issue their own currency and merchants had to calculate complex discounts based on distance, reputation, etc.

B.F. Skinner describes a decent community-based system in “Walden Two”.

Judging by what we have seen in past experiments, there would be famines, secret police, show trials, networks of concentration camps, censorship, loss of individuality, squelching of creativity, persecution, international belligerence, falsified science, pogroms, the cult of personality, privilege at the highest ranks, rampant corruption, widespread alcoholism, grossly distorted markets, a high suicide rate, and individual apathy.

@pdworkin what past experiments are these you talk of?

China from 1949 to about 1990, the USSR from 1917 to 1989, North Korea from 1956 to the present, for three examples. But I believe you knew that.

@pdworkin
Nazi Germany was no country without a currency (Reichsmark). And neither was the Soviet Union (rubel) or any other of the “examples” you brought forth. All of them had currencies, a.k.a. money.

@pdworkin I think you are confusing a society without a need for money and communism, although I’m struggling to see how anyone with an iota of intelligence could get the two confused so I’ll put it down to a bit of hysterical anti-communist trolling

Edit my previous statement; “not controlled by any nation…”

@RareDenver You make a lot of assumptions, but since we don’t know one another I forgive you.

@ragingloli While it is true that these experiments did not succeed, it was the intention to create a currency-less society in China, the USSR and North Korea, to name but three. I’m not optimistic about future experiments succeeding, either. People want a market place (going way back before wampum).

@pdworkin
I must contest that. While that was true during the revolutions in these respective countries, the experiments did not fail, they were stopped, were abandoned, as soon as they turned into dictatorships and from that point onwards, it was not about creating classless and currencyless societies, but solely about power, personal cults and political posturing. You may base your assumptions on the propaganda that came over the curtain, but it was just that; propaganda.

@ragingloli Can you point to a successful example in the last 100,000 years of human history? I come from a family of Communists, which as you may know, was a very dangerous thing to be in the US during the 1950s particularly, but even later, so I was raised to be sympathetic to the possibility. I just haven’t seen it.

This pages lists some examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_communism
and this page asserts that communism was pretty much standard in hunter gatherer societies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism.

You are correct that small nomadic groups did not require currency. We no longer live under those conditions. I also agree that very small, well-organized religious communities managed to live without internal trade, but they were still forced to manage inter-group trade when necessity demanded, so while you are absolutely correct, I do not believe you have addressed the issue fairly.

It’s a mistake to say that “Communism never works”, because we actually see it work every day and in nearly every society and over all history. But once you get outside “the family unit” (where it isn’t ‘pure’ Communism anyway, because the ‘parent class’ nearly always outranks and overrules the ‘child class’ in some form of autocracy) ... or the kids grow up… then it fails when attempting to apply it to larger and larger social units. And there it always fails, eventually.

I’d love to barter. Say Oprahs’ house for 10 pigs.

@pdworkin
What it shows is that Communism is, at least on a small scale, a perfectly viable system. The challenge is implementing it on a national or even global scale. It is complicated because the more members in that group the more pressing the matter of managing the use and distribution of resources, tools and products. What is even more important is that Communism must be adopted voluntarily by the population, people must override their greed and urge for possessions in favour of shared ownership for the benefit of all.
And that is why the systems of the Soviet Union, China, the GDR, etc, could not work, not for a long time and definitely not indefinitely.
In my estimation, they failed because of two major factors. The first is the political systems employed: They were all dictatorships, which by their very nature, because they are being thrust upon the population, require force to be maintained and sooner or later, such regimes will be overthrown.
The second is planned economy. Every product, including their price and amount, developed and produced, every company established, every shop and outlet being built was being determined by one single unified entity. While this might work in a small to medium sized unit, such as a family or a small/medium company, it starts to fail once the unit becomes too big. The people tasked with controlling it are simply overwhelmed by the sheer amount of required management and the intricacies of all the factors involved. This results in incredibly long product cycles, slow development and because of that outdated technology. This is for example also, why GM almost went to hell. All their products were determined by one single bureaucracy which had insufficient expertise in assessing the engineering and the requirements of the marques and their respective customers. In contrast, VW owns Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Skôda, Seat, Lamborghini and as of recently, Porsche as well. But in contrast to GM, all those marques are independent companies, each with their own management and development apparata which can make independent strategic decisions and which also have to compete amongst each other, while having access to all the technology of the entire VW group.—And the results show: While GM almost went bust and had to close down several marques (They kept Opel/Vauxhall because GM needs their engineering), VW has instead bought Porsche and acquired 20% of Suzuki for $2.5 billion—
But here is the thing: these 2 factors, dictatorship and planned economy, are not inherent, or even welcomed or intended, parts of either socialism or communism.
In fact, both systems favour democracy, as shared ownership implies just that, democratic control over the means of production. This is also why in my estimation, none of these self proclaimed socialist/communist nations ever even made the step to being actually socialist, let alone communist. They all slid right into totalitarianism.
And neither is a planned economy a necessary part of either system. There is nothing wrong with having internal competition to drive innovation, quality, and reasonable prices. It works for VW.
All that the system would cull is the unhealthy quest for more and more profits and the resulting abuse of both customers and employees.

And I would like to end my rant with a final comparison between VW and GM.
GM, before its barely averted demise, was closer to Soviet Totalitarianism than VW.
VW, however, is closer to being Socialist/Communist.

@ragingloli As usual, you are thoughtful and thorough. I wish I were as optimistic.

People think removing currency will alleviate greed, gluttony and miserliness but it’s not true. Whatever has been before, be it shells, beads, herds of livestock, weapons, etc. to barter and horde, humans have been the same about acquiring “wealth”. What I imagine instead is a focus on living rather than consuming, taking the stigma off of discipline and moderation.

Hmmm. What’s the point of getting rid of money? That’s kind of like saying, what would the world be like if humans didn’t have hearts? Well, gee, I guess we’d all be dead, unless we had some kind of heart substitute. If I am to imagine a world without money, I imagine a vast, desolate world, where humans decline into barbarism and there are huge die-offs. There is nothing good about getting rid of money.

So what can the OP be thinking? He or she imagines a simpler world, where people are willing to help. This implies that he or she thinks the current world is too complicated and that too few people are willing to help each other.

I can’t help but think this is about a sort of personal experience. I remember when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was some kind of socialist or communist. I believed that people should be kinder to each other. I thought we should all have a guaranteed job—employment that used our skills the best (and in those days, fresh out of college, I actually did think I was hot stuff, skill-wise—my how the worm has turned). I believed that the state should protect us if we had no job, and keep us from falling into poverty. Hmmm. Actually, I still believe some of these things.

I realize now that I believed a lot of that stuff because I was an unemployed or underemployed person. I also believed it because I truly had little idea how the economy worked, and I certainly had no idea what the role of money is.

Money is just a metaphor for value. It’s a placeholder for the esteem we put into various goods and services. If we don’t have a way of balancing the relative value of all that we do, then we can’t exchange anything, and then no one can get what they want or need, except in very crude, dehumanizing ways. The world descends into depravity.

So, OP wants a less complicated and more cooperative world. The first thing to understand is that we have an enormously cooperative world. Businesses are some of the most efficient forms of cooperation there is. They organize people to work together to build or provide all kinds of things. In fact, that’s what a business is: a group of cooperative people. The people cooperate to create value, and that’s where money comes in. We need a way to establish the relative value of what this group of cooperators does compared to what all the other groups create.

It’s complicated, getting people to work together—dare I say, to help each other? It just is. Complication will never go away, whether you have money, or nothing, or beads, or shells, or barter, or whatever.

So, what about helping each other? Well, remember my story of my youth? I wanted society to help each other more, and I wanted to be one of the beneficiaries of that help. To be sure, there were millions of other people I thought should be given a leg up by government, but in the back of my mind was my need.

Fortunately, I found a job—shit job, but still, a job. I saved my money, never spent much, and although the market has not recognized my value, I’m pretty secure.

So that’s the other hidden thing here: how well does money reflect the value of things? The more efficient our markets are, the more we can say that people are making choices and through those gazillions of choices, the relative value of goods and services are accurately measured via money.

But money does have a weakness. It doesn’t measure good will, or status, or social networks very well. For example, I have helped one or two people on fluther (to judge by their thanks), and in doing so, I have developed a little reputation—a positive one, I think. I’ve been told I’m an important part of the community. Now maybe the founders of fluther tell everyone that, but at the moment, let’s just assume that I actually am special in some way.

I don’t get paid for what I do. I do it because I enjoy doing it, and I enjoy being thanked occasionally. I enjoy being part of a community, and I enjoy the feeling (whether it is true or not) that some people actually care about what I say.

Money is not measuring my presumed value here. Money can not measure my relationships. Money can not measure emotional support. Yet all of these things are very important to the health and well-being of humans. Crucial, perhaps. These are the kinds of things that money is terrible at measuring. And these are the thing, I believe, that the OP is bemoaning, when he or she wants to imagine a world without money.

What would it be like in a world where people’s emotional and social worth was measured in addition to their resource producing worth? I think that is what the OP is inviting us to imagine. What would a world be like where people were valued according to how much they were loved instead of how many widgets they could build in an hour? How can we measure the relative social importance of individuals, and what would it be like if that became more apparent to all others? Would people start working to build love? Would people become more caring and helpful? What would happen?

I hate to say it, but I’m thinking ‘Now, there’s a question!’ It’s one I can’t answer right now.

@daloon, hot damn, what an essay. You even described my early thoughts. I recall arguing with my dad as a teenager (we had a lot of friendly arguments) that “Communism could really really work… if only it could be controlled by people who really cared! From each according to his ability, and to each according to his need. Surely there would be enough for all!”

His counter was, “Who decides?” In other words, who gets to decide what your “ability” is? Who gets to decide what your “needs” are? And that’s when I finally started to understand capitalism: We set our own values. My ability is such that I can command the salary I do command, and if my employer doesn’t agree, I’m free to shop my services elsewhere. If he doesn’t meet my needs, then I’m gone. And my needs aren’t the same as my brother’s needs. I have cousins who are twins, and their needs differ. They’ve both gotten set up in situations that work out just fine for them. Because they found ways to work this complicated system to their advantage. And they haven’t hurt anyone by doing it. Nor have I, or you, I suppose.

I think @ragingloli might be at the point that you and I were at when we were younger. I suppose that she’ll outgrow that idealistic view of humans someday, and realize that you can’t have a large economic system that depends only on people being kind, and good, and sharing because “it’s the right thing to do”. People want the most they can get for the least amount of exchange; that’s human nature—and that’s with people of good will. Some like to take what they can without exchanging at all.

But, @daloon, you forgot another important role that money plays in the system that we have. It affords us a certain amount of leisure time (and a computer, and Internet access) to do exactly what we’re doing now. So a world with money can actually be… kind of a nice and friendly place—even for those with less money.

Very well said, sir.

@CyanoticWasp Thank you very much.

Your point is interesting, because leisure is a consumption item. So essentially we are paying to be here. We are paying to have an opportunity to create a social network and to help others. My idealistic side says that we are creating value, so shouldn’t the flow of value signifiers go the other way? Alas, I don’t expect it ever will.

@daloon, well, if you tell me that you are here only to help others, then you have a point, I suppose. And frankly, I do enjoy helping others… but I get more out of the process myself, or I flat wouldn’t be here. The community itself is valuable, in my eyes, and I share in that value, even if I don’t ask many questions or (appear to) need much help, myself.

I didn’t start to really learn Microsoft Excel, for instance, until I started to participate in an Excel forum on the Web and… attempt to help others with their questions about that software. It introduced me to thinking about whole areas of the program that I had never even considered before, and exploring things (and sharpening my own skills) in ways I never imagined.

This place does that to me—for me, and about my own life—sometimes, as well.

When the United Federation of Planets gave up money, the Ferengi came along and demanded gold-pressed latinum.

@CyanoticWasp Now that I think about it, leisure is both a consumption and a production item. Often times, people will start just having fun, as you did with Excel, and then develop sufficient skill that people pay them to teach them or to just do what they are good at, even if they have fun doing it.

Like you, helping others is a pleasure in part, or perhaps wholly because other people seem to appreciate it. I have a great need to be appreciated (although, perversely, I try to push it away when people offer it—I used to see the logic of that, but now, not so much). I suppose I am willing to spend a lot of time and effort to fill my need. Because I need it so much, I tend to devalue my efforts, for they do not come from an altruistic motive.

I am convinced that people would totally forget me if I were gone for a month. Well, maybe not forget me, but certainly not be interested in figuring out what happened to me. That’s just the way it is. I’ve seen it happen with a really valuable member of the community as well as (much more often) with people who are not as famous, so to speak.

Anyway, my point is that my participation here is selfish, even if I do help people. That devalues my efforts, I think. Maybe I shouldn’t think that. Maybe it doesn’t matter why I do something, just that I do it. I think it matters why because should I ever be satisfied, I might stop doing it. Of course, no one would know that up until I quit, and even if they asked afterwards, I could offer some other excuse that wouldn’t make me look so bad. But, knowing me, I’d be too uncomfortable doing that.

It would be weird…

Perhaps there is a flaw in the premise that it is because we have money, humanity does not experience Utopian existence.

As a modicum of exchange money is a great enabler.

Without money, specialized skills collapse, sophisticated manufacturing stops.
Information workers are mocked on the streets as they try to trade spreadsheets for bread. Your iPod is whatever tunes you can remember.

People had specialized skills before money,and they also had them in times when money was rarely used.

@laureth No doubt, I suppose I was answering from a view of today’s economy suddenly without money.
How were specialists compensated when money was not common? It’s tough to barter some specializations. But, true, folks like a blacksmith were employed by the army for board and a tent over their heads. Or one might be a slave making intricate jewelry for the pharoah.

If someone has a skill and needs food and shelter, and someone else has that to offer but wants a skill, folks usually work out some way of making sure everyone gets what they need. Money is very, very convenient, but we did without for a long time. ;)

You mean with the banks making money and charging interest on each and every transaction? OH, yeah, that will go over like a fart in church!