A Resource Based Economy

[Cryddit]

I understood, but it's irrelevant in the face of our impending fate if we don't shift away from this system.

You're probably right that the current system is heading for destruction. That doesn't change the fact that there is no way to change it until there is something that provides the same or better advantages that can stand as a replacement. Believing that the current system is bad will not provide a way for the believer to pay the bills and feed the family.

Even if you convince people of the coming and current destruction, they will need a way to interact with those who aren't convinced. And it has to be a way that doesn't diminish their power,or they will soon be eliminated. So if you don't have something like that, you may as well stop talking. Because if you don't,you can have no effect.

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[LightRider]

That's the kind of reasoning and defeatest attitude that will be our undoing. Where will you live on an uninhabitable planet? What will your children eat when we over consume the earth's resources for profit? Talking engaging and educating is all we have right now but saying nothing won't inspire people to seek and demand change.

[Cryddit]

My point is that when you demand change you have to demand change to something, and the something must work just as well, in both the long-term and the immediate senses, both to the society at large *AND* to the individual, as what you're changing from. 

That isn't defeatism; that's just acknowledging that the set of ideas that has competitive and practical advantages,  will, in the long run, win.

So develop an alternate proposal and show why it's in the self-interest of individuals in the middle of a capitalist society to switch to it.  Then show why it's also in the self-interest of family-size units in the middle of a capitalist society to change to it.  Then show why a whole society that changes to it will work more effectively than a society that doesn't, in such a way that the society that doesn't will progressively be disempowered relative to the one organized on the new paradigm. 

That is the absolute minimum requirement for a new idea to replace the idea of money.  It must first be a better idea than money.

Money is the most horrible way to manage anything - except for all the other ways we, as a global civilization, have ever attempted.

[Rassah]

I guess in your view it's a choice between structural violence and authoritarian physical violence, and you prefer the authoritarian physical violence?

Oh no! You have trapped me in a false dilemma! What am I to do?! I can only agree with either terrible option...

But wait! I can think of another choice! What about a system that doesn't require violence, in which all human needs are provided for and the mindless drive to pointless competition and dominance is not focused on but instead avoided. Let's do that instead! What do you think?

I have a better system, where everyone has $10 million dollars, and can buy everything they might ever need. That way no one will ever need to work or starve, because everyone will be rich.
What do you think?

[Rassah]

Who holds the authority in a capitalist society? If you're intellectually honest, it's the monied interests that use capitalism to exploit and destroy the community and environment in order to make profits.

Because the way capitalists businesses make profits is by using guns to threaten people and take their money and resources. Profits have nothing to do with actually working to earn people's money.

[Rassah]

Capitalism isn't dying you guys. It's still good! It's still good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guSdjsctrUQ

TWO hours now, instead of one and a half!? No thank you!

Can we at least get a summary? Or is it more lists of how the government fucked everyone over, and calling it capitalism because the government isn't full-on communist?

[Rassah]

As every magician knows, "Money" is probably the most powerful spell ever cast. Whoever invented it, whether he (or she) realized it or not, thereby made himself (or herself) one of the most potent magicians in history.  Along with all the other magicians who cast it, in whatever places and at whatever times they did.

Like most magic, It is an idea.  Nothing more than that.  It happens purely inside people's heads, with absolutely no basis in physics or the world.   But its existence provides an organizing principle for all resource allocation, trade, and economics.   And therefore an organizing principle for many people's lives and a telling influence on all lives that have any contact with it.

What if instead of thinking of money as an idea - basically a mass delusion where we think there is value in something that doesn't actually have value - you think of money as a contract of an IOU, given to you by the whole world in return for giving something to the world. I give the world an hour of my labor, and thus make the world better off. In return, the world gives me an IOU that I am able to call back to get something else. And the more I contribute to the world, the more IOUs the world gives me. Does that change the magic idea any?

[Rassah]

There is a plan to develop a model city that proves the fundamental designs of an rbe, but without popular support, it will likely not be built in time.

I bet I can guess what this plan is short on, and needs, to be completed! 

[mobodick]

I understood, but it's irrelevant in the face of our impending fate if we don't shift away from this system. There is a plan to develop a model city that proves the fundamental designs of an rbe, but without popular support of a fully functioning normal society that needs to support this nugget of rbe, it will likely not be built in time never be sustainable as it depends on so many things that only this particular setup with factories and cars to get people to the factories offers.

Fixed that for you.
Of course,  you can now try to argue how your rbe will produce all the technological artefacts it needs to sustain itself. But you won't because an rbe can't.
And what about the (nesseary) birthcontrol? Do you go for the chinese model or do you think of something more creative like work accidents to keep your population in check? It's funny how you never hear rbe people say "Well, we've got this wonderfull idea, but we need 70% off you to die off to make it work".

And what will happen when you have all these rbe cities but the ones with the most vital resources stops sharing?

RBE doesn't solve anything, it just changes to something different which is much much harder to balance, if it can be kept balanced at all.
Saying that the computer will fix everything is just bullshit because we would need to program it first and we can't because we don't know how. It's magical thinking.
Saying that people will just share their resources is also bullshit, they won't. Your RBE is without a chance to become booted in this society yet it is the only place it can be booted from.

It  is  a  failed  idea.

[SeanArce]

I've recently woke up to the idea of god being replaced by bitcoin or money

[ajax3592]

You have to also understand that this is happening worldwide. It's not just traded in US dollars.

What you are really seeing is the birth of the first international, decentralized currency. Right now it's a little baby learning to walk.

[LightRider]

https://medium.com/quinn-norton/f3db7e13e6e3

[Impaler]

LightRider:  I'm not going to defend Capitalism to you, it is a horribly brutal system.  But your Zeitgeist movement is hopelessly misguided in it's diagnosis of what the central flaw in Capitalism IS.  Zeitgeist argues that Fractional Reserve Banking is the means by which Capitalism exploits the working classes, but this is incorrect.  The central problem with Capitalism, indeed the CORE of Capitalism is INTEREST on Money.  Without Interest their would be no profit to even leverage (aka multiply) by fractional lending because the lender isn't able to enrich themselves through the interest, where as WITH interest but without Fractional Reserves the borrower is still going to be paying interest, their will just be less total borrowers and less borrowable funds because the lender must hold more capitol.  Now consider that the reduced amount of loanable funds in a Full reserve environment will raise interest rates considerably, such that the lenders may actually make just as much profit from interest, they will just make more from a smaller group of borrowers.  Thus we can see that Full Reserve lending rules do not solve the problem of interest, indeed the Zeitgeist movement is completely ignorant of where Interest comes from or how to stop it.

Capitol means money and Capitalism is a system in which you can make money from money alone.  The reason we can do this is that money is LIQUID and HARD.  Liquid means that it can be converted to any other asset with ease, and HARD means that as a token (in the past a non rusting metal) it can be held without nominal loss indefinably unlike any real good which decays with time.  Liquidity has a value, it is like a Joker up your sleeve, it can become anything, fix any unforeseen problem, take advantage of any unforeseen opportunity, we are always on the cusp of the unforeseen future so this wild-card nature of Money is a value over-time that the holder of a Hard money is reaping by just holding money.  It is an unearned subsidy to everyone who holds money, a subsidy that the public in it's willingness to use anything as money and not use inefficient Barter is providing, but the benefit is privatized in that it accrues to holders of money alone.  When a money holder sells the liquidity of money we call this Interest and it is an unearned transfer of wealth from the public to private hands.  The solution is to make money SOFT in direct proportion to it's liquidity, this sterilizes the money of it's unearned profit and returns the public liquidity to all users of money rather then just it's holders.

Marx was completely ignorant of the interest problem and instead blamed Free-Markets and Private Property and lead the political left on a hundred year wild-goose-chase trying to destroy these two institutions.  Fortunately we in the West only got the milder Socialist institutions that Marx advocated like Universal Public Education and Elderly Pensions which have been unparallelled successes, but where ever Free-Markets have been replaced by central planning their has been devastation.  And the Venus project is just central planning with a techno-makeover.

The correct solution is an economy that is still a Free-market but without the evil of interest payments (aka Capitalism) that insidiously suck up the wealth of the working class.  This is the 'Natural' economic order that Silvio Gesell advocates, an economy which is anti-Capitalist AND anti-Communist, a true third way that rejects the evils in each of the two Titanic ideologies of the 20th Century.  The Great tragedy of the 20th Century is that everyone things of these two ideologies as the only options and that they are monolithic.  Capitalism has convinced everyone that one must have Interest on Money in order to have Markets in which individuals choose what and how much to produce and what to sell it for, but their is no link what so ever.  And Communist has convinced us that we must have the elimination of private property to end exploitation of the working class, again this is a false dichotomy.

I urge you to read Gesell's works they are 100 years old but still relevant.  https://www.community-exchange.org/docs/Gesell/en/neo/

[kjj]

blah blah

LOL.  You should really limit yourself to no more than one rock before posting.  People holding money get a subsidy?  Or is it people lending money?  And why do you continue to show no evidence of understanding the difference between money and wealth?  If I explain it to you for a tenth time, will it sink in?

[Impaler]

blah blah

LOL.  You should really limit yourself to no more than one rock before posting.  People holding money get a subsidy?  Or is it people lending money?  And why do you continue to show no evidence of understanding the difference between money and wealth?  If I explain it to you for a tenth time, will it sink in?

My Post is directed at LightRider and concerns His beliefs regarding the Zeitgeist movement and Venus Projects. 

Your question clearly shows do not comprehend what I am saying, a person holding money is receiving a subsidy of liquidity, they can monetize that subsidy by lending.  This is not a difficult concept, a subsidy can come in the form of a privilege and can then be rented out for a payment.  But Regardless of if a person keeps the subsidy in it's original form or sells it they are still receiving the benefit of the subsidy.  A person who is a borrower of money at interest is getting liquidity but paying for it, thus their is no subsidy to them.

As for the difference between Wealth and Money I am quite familiar with the difference and fail to see how it is remotely relevant to what I have said as I never said or implied that wealth and money are the same.  Your so called explanation is neither needed nor welcome as you will simply be cluttering the thread, I have debated much smarter Austrians then yourself who have the decency to actually quote me.

[kjj]

blah blah

When quoting you, I use an advanced lossless compression format.  Your post can be reconstructed from my summary with no loss of content.

Is there some special limit where liquidity becomes a privilege?  Does my jar of quarters earn a subsidy?  If so, where do I sign up for it?

Money is half of a transaction involving wealth.  One side has given up wealth and received an IOU.  In aggregate, the world is holding wealth claimable by that person and is making productive use of it.  This is why money gains value over time.

Oh, wait!  Inflation.  Money loses value over time, in the real world.  Shit, my jar of quarters is actually a cost, not a savings.

Damn.  Those evil capitalists must be really stupid if they've set up two ways to exploit the poor that tend to cancel each other out.

[LightRider]

Impaler, nothing in what you have said speaks to real human needs and the preservation of the environment on which we all depend and share. Moreover, money cannot possibly fix all problems as you suggest. Money will not purchase us a new planet, provide clean air or produce more food. Money cannot fix the problems that money creates. Money seeks to push balance to imbalance, order to chaos and life to death. As for your understanding of the Zeitgeist Movement and a resource based economy, you lack the most basic comprehension of our grasp of the problems we highlight and the potential solutions we propose.

[Rassah]

The central problem with Capitalism, indeed the CORE of Capitalism is INTEREST on Money.  Without Interest their would be no profit to even leverage (aka multiply) by fractional lending because the lender isn't able to enrich themselves through the interest

So, if we ban interest on borrowing money, can we also ban fees for renting cars, or ban rent for borrowing a place to live?



By the way, I finally forced myself to sit through the 2.5 hour Zeitgeist movie. All the science about brains and learning was ok, but then when those guys went into economics, omg were they making mistakes left and right. I was thinking

Survey the entirety of the earth's resources: $200 billion dollars
Build out infrastructure such as power and water to support globaly dispersed cities: $10 trillion dollars
Build the cities on top of the infrastructure, and add things like automatic transportation and manufacturing systems: $60 trillion dollars.
Lifing in a world where everything has already been paid for: Priceless.

And the company that will bring it to you, ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

The ending was rather hilarious. As if the people standing around, doing nothing but protesting, would actually have bags of money to throw at the banks in protest

Now that I know what the Zeitgeist movement is proposing, according to Peter Joseph, the biggest and stupidest mistake it keeps making is by saying we need to set up some method to survey the planet and ask opinion pols of people, to figure out how what people make, and how to make it as efficiently as possible, without seeing that people vote for what they want with their money, and efficiency is driven by money, where companies that are the most efficient in their resource use are the ones with the lowest costs and highest profits. Gah.

[ltc_foundry]

The "Free Market" belongs in the same category as unicorns and leprechauns, and is similarly useful as a reference point in any purportedly serious discussion.

[Impaler]

The central problem with Capitalism, indeed the CORE of Capitalism is INTEREST on Money.  Without Interest their would be no profit to even leverage (aka multiply) by fractional lending because the lender isn't able to enrich themselves through the interest

So, if we ban interest on borrowing money, can we also ban fees for renting cars, or ban rent for borrowing a place to live?

Straw-man much?  First I did not say interest is 'Banned' that is the Islamic Banking solution, it tries to block interest by directly regulating the financial marketplace, this will always fail, either the market will subvert the rules (Catholic ban on Usury) or you will grind the economy to a halt.  I'm describing money which by it's nature causes nominal interest rates to reach zero.  No additional intervention or interference in the financial market place is then required.  Second where on Earth do you get the notion that non-monetary assets can not be rented if interest rates are zero, do you seriously think this follows or are you just being cute?