Money is an organizational tool

All the goods and services offered to us in our society are produced by the workers alone, no one else. With the help of a monetary system, all these goods and services are taken away from the hands that produce them. In exchange for their work they get a little access to what they produce, but not to all. Only the ones who do not work, who do not produce anything for us, the managers and the defenders of that monetary system have access to everything, to all the goods and services that the real workers produce. Is it really a fair system?
Can't we between mature human share with equity all the wealth we produce?

 

Yes, I have come to realize this as well...
Not only is money of ficticious value, but it (and state-ism) causes all crime in the world...yes, all crime, even sociological byproducts like murderers and rapists are bred by the same system that creates the CEO or the investment banker. but communism or anything else that has been thought up to this point in history is not the answer. what we need is something like capitalism without the dollar. A (truly) free market without this forced sharing and no property bullshit that commies have.
its too much for me to get into now but ive been plotting and writing solutions to society's problems and this is a huge issue. im glad to see other people know what a load of crap the whole monetary system is (especially if you know who runs the money and what the real deal is: federal reserve, etc)
money is bogus.
i fucking hate it.
and its destroying us.

 

by the way logging into this place is a pain in the ass

 

oh and thank god somebody mentioned the Grove.
I was wondering why nobody else talks about that stuff here.

 

I was suggesting one should not hate money any more than one should hate a hammer

people attach a need to horde it, they attach mythical values to things (paying more for something than it's actually worth because of a brand name) if everything was actually priced as it was worth and people didn't have to think about such things as shopping around and how a dress with a tag in it is worth 2400 dollars even though it is identical to one that costs 24 dollars, Gasoline only really has one value and then it may vary dependant upon additives, but since most gasoline is totally identical why does it cost 30 cents more at a station across the street?

and why do people go there?


are we so foolish that we allow ourselves to be ruled by our own machinations? that is insanity, if I were to describe a person who's entire life wascontrolled by something that only existed truly in his mind and it's only protrusion into the real world was a piece of paper than I would be told that man was insane


we need it to trade in such a massive system, but we allow it and machinations of "better" control us when truly something may not be better at all.....




Why can't people get enlightened?

 

dude yeah but enlighten to this, that trade in the massive system, the system itself, makes poverty, greed, false power, shitty soulless corporations rather than unique, talent-crafted original product, hurtful competition amongst one people, unnecessary stress, bank loans, mortgages, credit scores, your supposed "worth"...bah

 

I like money. If I work hard, I can get it, and use it to get other things I want. Having money makes things easier than they would be if I had to trade physical objects. Money is:

a) Compact and carryable. Imagine having to bring a cow up to Best Buy to trade for a new computer.

b) Versatile. Your trading partner might not want or need five bushels of wheat, but money has universal, flexible appeal.

c) Able to be manipulated. Anyone can make a fortune in just a few years by playing the stock market. Accumulating the same amount wealth under a traditional bartering system would take years, if not generations.

Money is a shortcut. And it's nice as long as you've got it.

 

We at the Utopia Movement do not promote trading but giving. Everything we, humans produce, we should give it to ourselves instead of trading and selling. Without money in our societies we would not produce so much junk, so much garbage, no more warfare, therefore we would not be forced to work so hard to get so little. Just try to imagine that in exchange for the little work you would do, that we would do, everything offered on the market would be available to anyone. Of course you need imagination and good will to understand.

 

b) Versatile. Your trading partner might not want or need five bushels of wheat, but money has universal, flexible appeal.


Thank you

although that sounded like an infomercial this is the entire point I was trying to make with this thread


barter = difficult and slow
money = streamlined

it doesn't create poverty, when there was barter there was poverty, poverty is caused by all sorts of factors money if anything makes it easier to alleviate it


give the guy wiyh the salvation army bucket a bushel of wheat nex t time, see how far it gets you....

 

Utopian, yes! you seem to know whats up. it wouldnt be "trading", but more of a collective market where all peoples willing input their "work" and take from it as well, so their is no rich and poor, everyone is even and unique, focusing on their interaction with the world rather than this rat-race-work your way up the ladder-play the system "economy". Money may be compact and carryable, but is this small luxury worth all the poverty and starvation in existence? and about playing the system, the system is playing us.
money was once a shortcut, but now it its more of a hinderance. why dont we explore space? oh, a rocket costs a lot. well why dont we grow a bunch of food and send it to the poor countries? well, they dont have enough money to buy that food.
stuff like that shapes my view that this entity "currency" we've created is screwing us over. but i easily understand how integrated in our lives it is so i can see how itd be difficult picturing a situtation without it. the right idea has yet to come along.

 

I have a simple idea that could move us towards such a situation.

A website, right? People who register on the site will enter the skills and goods they need and offer. These will be displayed on a map. I'm thinking 3 frames. One along the top with 5 drop down menus for; personal details, skills offered and wanted, and goods offered and wanted. When you first enter the site, every registered user will be displayed on the map (the second frame) as a blob. If you click on a user their info will come up along the side (third frame).

The other way to use it will be to select a skill or a thing from the drop down menus and then everyone offering that skill (or thing) will come up on the map. Again, you can just click on a user to find out what other skills and goods they want and offer.

The world is so rich these days that, like some of you have said, there really is no need to keep track of who owes what to who anymore. Starvation, with all the advances we've made is no longer necessary, noe is going without necessities. We just need to get things and poeple to where they can do the most good.

 

exactly, dude. i was picturing something totally similar to your website idea, like an employment index. yeah imagine the world without the bind of money, everything would progess at speeds as yet unimagined.
but to pull it off would take government remakes (more like demake) and environmental renovations, because i think we can move past the car, too, i could picture a highway like a fairway on a golf course to drive treaded all terrain mulch-fuled vehicles or something.
tangent.

 

p.s. i find it funny how currency is so integrated in people's minds that they can't even imagine a system where there is some collective market that all give and take from, instead of focusing on some sort of trade or barter, thats because with the no-money market, its like everyone has infinite money. you wouldnt have to exchange bushels of wheat or that shit, unless you like growing wheat and are offering it to society.

 

Learn website design man, we'll corroborate (is that a real word? it looks strangely alien. I mean work together) to build it. I've started already.

 

kickass, dude; post the link! i started some junk on geocities and then decided i should take a class on it and make a page of decent quality.

 

I think you all are thinking a bit too hard. We need to realize that the problem is not money. The problem is people.

You are absolutely right. But unfortunately that's not the problem. The purpose of money is to offer a versatile, reliable, and durable item that you may exchange your bulky, inversatile goods for.

Bingo. This is the point I'm trying to make. The problem is not with the money, but with the people. There's going to be poverty either way. Just because money creates a bit more poverty doesn't mean we should completely drop all of the upsides of money that Major Peacenik mentioned (compact, versatile, durable, etc.) and go back to the unsteady, slow, less reliable system of bartering. I like being able to get a paycheck and spend it on whatever I want. I'd rather not discuss with my boss which things I need for the next week. Money just makes sense, and if people are going to use it for evil purposes, if people are going to use it to raise themselves in class and keep other classes low, if people are going to use it to gain power, then our first move should be to change the people, not money.

This all doesn't mean I don't think there's a problem with money. There is definitely a huge problem with money and it lies (like most things) with our government. Back when America was created, we used real money. It was all backed up by precious metals (gold and silver). Then came fiat money, and later, The Federal Reserve. Now, the government can create an inflation or depression whenever they please, the same power Thomas Jefferson warned heavily about years ago. If anybody is causing a seperation between the poor and the rich, the entity to point the finger at is the Federal Government. It's time to destroy the Federal Reserve and start backing up our money with precious metals so that our money actually has true value.

That's what I have to say about money. Basically, money isn't the problem. The problem are the people who get turned on by it and utilize the system (Federal Reserve) that changes the value of our money.

Yours truly,
Edward.

 

Need I say more?

 

Yeah, explain this "infinite money" idea that is spoken about. There has always been a market. Taking away money will not remove the market. Whenever there is scarcity, there will be a market. There has always been scarcity and there always will be. Removing money will not remove the scarcity, it will only bring about a new scarcity that's harder to deal with.

Remember that before there was currency people did need to barter. It wasn't a "give to society" thing it was a "I only raise cows, but I need a widget that I don't produce, so give me x amount of widgets and I will give you x amount cows" type of thing. You can't say that getting rid of money gives everyone everything. It makes no sense.

If by collective market you're talking about socialism, then that's a totally different discussion and completely irrelevant to money.

I just don't understand the reasoning of the "no money, infinite everything" thought. Please point out the flaw in my logic.

 

okay
(deep breath)
without "thinking too hard" you will never achieve progress.
furthermore, the idea is not to get rid of the market, that is impossible. the idea is to free the market from it's final bind, money, the universal trade item. To get rid of the idea of trade or barter. they worked for humanity back in the day up till now, because people were still expanding across the planet.
now there needs to be another jump in the degree of freedom, and i don't mean just money, i'm also against (what I call) seperate government, having some entity over you that has authority over you, because, simply stated, its fiction. just like money is only green paper, or whatever color yours is, government is merely words scribbled in ink on a paper; no law or document ever really controls anyone; it's merely a concept. believe it or not, it is you who has been controlling yourself your whole life, so lets get rid of this nagging nanny we call government and move on to teaching personall responsabilty, aka, self-government.
So, when Earth has no borders and no official ruling body but the people themselves, the market must also be freed of the greed-breeding virus that is money. You say it is people? That is true. But the people would not be in that situation if we were in The Total Free Market.
More to come...this subject is so huge and theres so many interlocking issues i have to think a little

 

I'm definitely with you 100% on the self-government aspect let me tell you that much. That's the type of government we were given by our founding fathers (in America). A government that just protects the rights of the people. Yes. I am completely with you on that.

And I agree that it's stupid to worship money.

But I still don't understand the Total Free Market. I'll be looking forward to the next response on that one because I am interested and open-minded to all ideas.