Okay... This job you're doing... would u do it 4 free? Okay. Imagine everything you wanted was free. What about now? Then, you've gotta think... would this job be necessary in a money-free society? The internet is great and it will change the world... far more profoundly than it has so far. Basically, you have a questionnaire (only once, but it's updatable) and on it you put in, first of all, your post-code (i.e. zip code for u USians out there), narrowing down your location to a street. Then u put in everthing you have on offer and everything you want, from a cuppa tea and a chat to guitar lessons. This part is about skills exchange and doesn't offer benefits over capitalism except for tax-evasion and advertising but later who knows - could goods be exchanged in this manner? Imagine this... Imagine factory owners and farmers and truck drivers took up the questionnaire. The skills on offer are limited but they've got the capital. Food is plentiful, each farmer on a modern commu7nal farm produces enough food for how many thousands of people? And the farmer, in exchange, wants virtually nothing to such an extent that you get the perverse situation where food is burnt to keep prices high or farmers are paid to keep there lands bare. Farmers are so efficient that it costs more to haul what they produce than it does to buy it so food (under our govts.) has to be wasted. In a country that pays it's farmers to keep their lands free of crops it's not a fallacy to say that food is cheaper than air... you just don't have to distribute air. Most farmers would prefer to see their food eaten rather than dumped on grain mountains or otherwise wasted and all they want is everything they need.... They want a tv - a tv worker somewhere wants some food; they want some clothes - a clothing designer somewhere wants some food, etc. Everyone wants food so all the farmer has to do is grow it and put on his questionnaire how much he has and what he wants, then the lorry driver (who can also teach you to drive a lorry if you bring him a little something) has to drop off what he's got and pick up the food. The lorry driver then has the power to take the food wherever he wants. If he holds onto more than he and his family can eat it will spoil so why would he? Instead, he looks on his questionnaire database, which has been converted to a colour coded map of areas that want or have particular goods. He then takes the food to an area that needs food but has other goods - clothes, stereo equipment, whatever and swaps his food for some of that - looking up his next destination on the database map and picking up accordingly. His food has been deposited at the local depot (as frequent as, say a supermarket) but it hasnt cost then more than what the driver has picked up which is something that they produce or are rich in. He then takes this to the next depot, factory or farm and the whole thing continues. this would happen on a huge scale (huge amounts of the excess food would go to the airports for the third world to eat). And a tiny scale (kids delivering the papers to their street in exchange for toys and lessons). it's simple and it's easy and it should work, it eliminates the need for stockbrokers, accountants, bailiffs. Eventually the majority of the government could be done away with, thereby massively reducing the cost of living for everyone. what the government fails to understand is that, although simple keynesian economics tells us that producing work is good for the economy, it doesnt tell us that which common sense tells us ie, unless that work achieved something we were better off as a whole without it.
But unfortunately it's a utopian ideal, and as such, it depends on people's better nature in order to function. At our current level of development in society, it's nothing more than a dream. Give it a few more thousand years and I'll get back to ya
But surely we have to give it a chance now! If we give it a few more thousand years we will have evolved into a society driven by capitalism entirely! Horrible horrible horrible. I'm scared of what we could become, and hopeful for it at the same time.
Heh, sort of like IRC for life. But, like DA said, it's an ideal utopia that can't really exist the way things are now. People are greedy, so the ones in power would abuse that power. Who decides what goods get produces and how much is made? Saying that one province produces "stereo equipment" is easy, but how many different types are there, and which ones will be most popular? It would be an economy driven totally by supply and demand. If a territory has to rely on one product (let's say stereo equipment) to generate it's revenue, what happens when that product become obsolete or is replaced by something better, anfd the exchange rate plummets? People would end up trading 1,000 stereos in exchange for a loaf of bread. Just because you eliminate money dosen't mean you eliminate economic principle. And people will always be basically the same no matter what - greedy and self centered. Individuals will see power, and when they get that power they will exploit it. In theory it would work, but as soon as you add a pinch of human nature, the plan goes awry. The best we can do is socialism in my opinion, where at least you have to be smart or capable in order to be well-off.
If I could while somehow supporting myself and my family. Either for my current employer or someone else. That's the value of enjoying what you do for a living. Absolutely. Just sitting on my ass all day would get boring REAL fast. I would think so. I work for an R+D lab, building instruments for scientific research. As long as science is still around searching for answers, scientists will need equipment to perform experiments. And in a broader context, electromechanical design/fabrication skills will always be needed unless your "money-free" society is going to revert to a pre-industrial age. As far as using the internet to coordinate a widespread barter/exchange system, it would probably be the best way to do it, but how would you arrange for participation by people without access to computers? Definitely an interesting thread. Moving to a different forum, where it will get a wider range of responses....
It is a nice thought. Funny even. But you don't solve the overpopulation problem by saying that we should live just like we do now except on Jupiter.
I agree with OSF, this scenario might be more plausable if the world's population was about 1/15th of its current size..
There you have it, we have to kill alot of people to make it work. Now get your guns and baseball bats and make me proud.
Well, you don't exactly elim inate economic principle but who's gonna want 1000 stereo's, what good could that possibly do you? And who's gonna begrudge someone a loaf of bread if they're obviously hungry?
I promise you there is no overpopulation problem. The world produces enough grain to feed the world with ease. That's not including meat, fish, other vegetables and vege-type food (like fruit and fungus), just grain. With all t hose other products as well there is a huge surplus. It's just under-distributed.
First off, I know there is no overpopulation problem. Second, what the hell does the production of food have to do with overpopulation? It seems more like an answer to the world hunger/food distribution question [that no one has asked]. Maybe I am missing something. It seems my post has been taken the wrong way. I meant to show the absurdity of the suggestion by showing a parallel "problem" and an equally absurd response to the "problem".
No. I am studying to become a nurse, and I will hopefully end up traveling around the world delivering free medical care--but I would never do it in mainstream America. Why? Because to volunteer to those who truly need it is something they will appreciate. If I volunteered to a wealthier society, eventually everyone would grow to expect it and I would no longer feel appreciated; I would feel taken for granted. That is the danger for doing things without pay. Also, I don't see how this system would improve the standards of living for countries that are currently so poor. In the end, the solution to poverty is education, pure and simple. This system you are talking about assumes that everyone will have the internet (so that it works fairly). There are currently 6.18 billion people in this world...which translates into roughly 2 billion households. Do you expect the limited number of internet installers in the world to jump up and volunteer their internet services for 2 billion households? Yours is an old idea--you just added in the internet, but the idea itself has been tried and failed. There will always be greed and corruption in this world, all you can do is fight it at your own level. -Kate
What, so there are no poor people in the USA? You have the poorest paid workforce in the industrialised world. Your country is rich because the rich are very rich. Then you don't know much about money. If you have lots of money (like USA and the west), you can invariably make a lot more. If you have no money you will find yourself getting worse off. The third world has to run very fast to stand still with their interest on debt repayments. It doesn't. It will obviously only work for people who have access to the internet but I didn't say that it would help everyone, just that it would help. Not being able to help everyone is no reason not to help anyone. I didn't claim to invent the politic of sharing and being nice to each other. Who invented that? Marx? Jesus? It's been around a while anyway. All I did was, like you say, added the internet but the internet is the most revolutionary thing to happen to the world in a long time. It's an extremely powerful tool and yes, I want to use it. I don't think this is an idealistic idea. I don't think everyone will use it or it will solve all our worries, I just think it will help.
sounds like you're just talking about the elimination of money, of going back to a trade and barter system. It isn't going to fix the world, because people will still collect things that are considered to be of value, for whatever reason, that aren't perishable. And your'e assuming that the garbage collectors would stay garbage collectors if they didn't want to, that the food service people would stay there if they weren't being paid with money... that the people who are treated like shit because of their jobs would stay with those shitty dead-end jobs that are necessary in society. yeah, that's gonna happen.
If no one was forced to do these jobs then we would all have to do our fair share. A lot of people enjoy cooking (is that what you mean by food service people? cooks?) I personally respect garbage men and, if they let it get bad for a bit I'm sure we would all respect them a lot more when they finally decided to clean up. It's a dirty job but it get's you fit. How many people can one crew of dustmen clean up after? Quite a few, so if it was on rotation each person would only have to do it a few times a year, if that. It's not about trade and barter, it's about sharing. The only reason there are poor people in the world is that there are ridiculously rich people. Money makes money, whilst goods, if you hang on to them, devalue. I wouldn't need pretty looking useless things so I wouldn't mind if poeple wanted to hoard them. The only thing you can do with a thing is use it - there's no point saving it up for a rainy day. That whole post just seems like a bunch of disjointed sentances but I hope you get my drift.
