Money is an imaginary concept, but humanity is enslaved by it

[Mr Moustache]

Will you live without money? I think the answer will be "No". It is a big problem to resolve and I think it will pass a lot of years maybe centuries before that there will be a real "change". We need a real revolution, that has to start from the citizen (maybe better to call it not citizen but human).

Money is always going to be used and its actually a great concept and can work well. What doesn't work well is how it is corruptly issued by a central authority and I think that is one thing bitcoin solves with its decentralization. Maybe one day and over time we could transition away from fiat to a decentralized currency whether that is bitcoin or something else.

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[Amph]

funny thing is that humanity created the problem called "money"(they did it by giving value to something useless), and now they need it to be happy

this is why human stupidity is endless

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

funny thing is that humanity created the problem called "money"(they did it by giving value to something useless), and now they need it to be happy

this is why human stupidity is endless

Money was created to solve problems... it was unevitable to not create money, capitalism has given us the most development ever in history, the question is if money will start being a problem more than a solution once machines take over most of the jobs.

[Possum577]

funny thing is that humanity created the problem called "money"(they did it by giving value to something useless), and now they need it to be happy

this is why human stupidity is endless

I don't think that "money" is the problem. It's how people use it or exploit it that's the problem - and that misuse comes from government and regular people alike. Both can get into too much debt, both can spend too much, but can be careless.

The ability to use currency as a means to buy goods and services has allowed the world to go from subsistence living (i.e., creating what we need to survive, each of us individually) to more productive, specialized living. It's given us the advancements of science, math, industry, etc, that make the world such a brilliant place to live in.

Don't blame the tool that is money, blame the people that abuse it. And I'm not talking about the 1% or the 99%, I'm talking about irresponsibility.

[dothebeats]

Money isn't really the problem, it is how people tend to overvalue it over any other things. It is the greed of people that enslaves his kind, and money is just a medium on where Man can exhibit his greed.

[Fineius]

I have the impression that you don't understand what is fiat money. The problem is not the fiat, but who controls the fiat.

And this is not just a small problem, it is fundamental! People should understand, that as long as discrimination and rasism exists, we will be enslaived by others. And money will be just a tool to maintain our control!

[AZwarel]

Money or types of currency have been used since 700 BC.  Since then it has been a way for people to fall into a certain social class and also so that everyone would not own a $500,000 house.

That is not correct.
Read Nick Szabo's groundbreaking paper about the origin of money (it is not that long, and it is a fascinating reading really!) http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html.

In this anthropologists, archeologists, evolutionary psychologist presents the facts that money, or money like instruments - they call them collectibles - were used no less than 70.000 BC AT LEAST, waaay before bartering or trading itself emerged from exactly the new possibilities money enabled. Without money (collectibles, - the ability to hoard and communicate wealth and "favors" among humans, THROUGH SPACE and TIME with moderate or no TRUST), so without money abstract there would be no civilization !!!!

Homo sapiens sapiens is the only species on Earth capable of wealth transfer between descendans and ancients through using money/collectibles/titles/deeds to pass on to their children.

Also, there are no "classes". Having 100$ per year as an income or 10000000$ is not a qualitative difference, it is a quantitative one, in principle they still have the same societal boundaries (right to own property given they trade it/laws to be obeyed by everyone), just less or more wealth doesn't create classes (you could not separate them anyway, a poor lower class citizen in the U.S. is probably still in the top richest 3% of the Earth's population. Good luck with classification and marxism

Slavery was the last "class society", where we had "zero income, no right to property (as the ground zero property right is to own one's own body!) at all" class (slaves) and "non-zero income with the right to have property" class (everyone else). That one is a qualitative difference!

About the 0.5M$ house: there are cheap and expensive houses because of scarcity of supply against huge demand, or vice versa.. Example. There is a fixed amount of housing that can be built looking at Central Park/Eiffel Tower. So those going to be more expensive ones because they can only facilitate a fixed amount of tenants which is a smaller number than how many would like to live there, price goes up etc etc. Supply/Demand.

In this example it shows perfectly why you CAN NOT eradicate money. Why? Because without it -aka it is free, how o you decide which 500 of those 62670 people who want to move in next to Eiffel tower actually does? Lottery? Violence? Would pure luck or strongest  surviving ethically superior to voluntary exchange of marginal utilities?

No answer i guess, because money is just a conflict avoiding solution to a a physical fact that: time,space, and resources ARE scarce, and if demand>supply, somehow humans need to solve this equation (preferably non violent).

[abyrnes81]

Money isn't really the problem, it is how people tend to overvalue it over any other things. It is the greed of people that enslaves his kind, and money is just a medium on where Man can exhibit his greed.

Like George Carlin says << the World are fine, the people are fuc**ed>> and I think he has right. The problem here isn't the money but the people and for the moment there isn't a valid solution.

[johnyj]

Money isn't really the problem, it is how people tend to overvalue it over any other things. It is the greed of people that enslaves his kind, and money is just a medium on where Man can exhibit his greed.

Like George Carlin says << the World are fine, the people are fuc**ed>> and I think he has right. The problem here isn't the money but the people and for the moment there isn't a valid solution.

It was people who invented the idea of money - a universal exchange medium that can exchange anything, and when that ability holds over time, it also becomes a store of value

The problem comes when some economists look at the fact that money is never consumed, and regard it as merely a token of exchange, then they had the idea of producing this token out of thin air to just meet the demand for exchange. This in turn gives the purchasing power of newly created money to money creator for free, thus the money creator step by step becomes the largest slaveholder, and they try to create any crisis that can make them print more money

It is the fact that some of the people can get money for free created slavery. If money creator need to pay equal amount of value to create money, just like a gold miner or bitcoin miner do, then there is no slavery, producing money will be the same as any other business

[oblivi]

Money isn't really the problem, it is how people tend to overvalue it over any other things. It is the greed of people that enslaves his kind, and money is just a medium on where Man can exhibit his greed.

Like George Carlin says << the World are fine, the people are fuc**ed>> and I think he has right. The problem here isn't the money but the people and for the moment there isn't a valid solution.

Nah, if people had their basic needs meet and a decent life, most of the criminal rates would go down. Of course not all would be fixed, but the main cause of violence would. The fact that some guy can park 5 jets on his backyard while others have to work life draining 9-5's + 2 hours of public transportation daily is a form of violence, you can't complain if some of these guys eventually snap.

[Hazir]

Money is an imaginary concept, but humanity is enslaved by it - while this is generally the truth is is also not the whole truth. Humans needs some form of easy exchange tool. Money is that tool. Bitcoin and gold, and any other precious metals and minerals are too. The only difference is the level of acceptance of certain payment method. While you can't pay for your grocery shopping with your gold ring, you can sell it in specialized shop. And that is the difference of acceptance.

[johnyj]

Money is an imaginary concept, but humanity is enslaved by it - while this is generally the truth is is also not the whole truth. Humans needs some form of easy exchange tool. Money is that tool. Bitcoin and gold, and any other precious metals and minerals are too. The only difference is the level of acceptance of certain payment method. While you can't pay for your grocery shopping with your gold ring, you can sell it in specialized shop. And that is the difference of acceptance.

Sure, universal acceptance is the prerequisite for a medium of exchange, and that is most easily done by government making a law or announcement. It is also easy to see why central bank won't use bitcoin as national currency, they just need to pass a law then they could start to print money for themselves. If they use gold or bitcoin, they will lose all that previlege

And there is a requirement for universal acceptance: It must actively flow in the economy. Crypto currencies might be superior, but if people have to convert their own currency into another currency and then spend, they need some strong motivation to do that on a daily basis. In this regard, the first mover advantage of fiat money as a medium of transaction is very clear

Luckily, with bitcoin you have that motivation: If every bitcoin investor first buy bitcoin and then spend on daily consumptions, then the increased monetary activities in bitcoin economy will raise the demand thus raise its value. Of course another motivation is to escape the fiat money robbery, but I guess few really have the urge to do that since the robbery is almost invisible and almost can not be felt

[Somekindabitcoin]

Fiat literally changes because of supply and demand. This is why we have forex.

Now to answer the thread title, money was created in the place of trades. Remember when people used to trade animals for other food or jewelry and such? That's basically now, but instead through a piece of paper with a number on it.

[johnyj]

The idea of money being an illusion used to be a major economic concept until the 1970s when it was replaced after criticism from Milton Friedman. He argued that you can fool people once, but not all the time. He argued that people would catch on to the government’s scheme. So if inflation was 5% they would demand a wage rise of 5%. This would nullify any government action.

That is the theory, in reality, if workers demand a 5% wage rise, they will be fired. They would still be fired if they do not accept a wage cut 

[vrm86]

The idea of money being an illusion used to be a major economic concept until the 1970s when it was replaced after criticism from Milton Friedman. He argued that you can fool people once, but not all the time. He argued that people would catch on to the government’s scheme. So if inflation was 5% they would demand a wage rise of 5%. This would nullify any government action.

That is the theory, in reality, if workers demand a 5% wage rise, they will be fired. They would still be fired if they do not accept a wage cut 

It depends. Sometimes 5% of wage is less than cost of coaching for an unexperienced labourer.

[johnyj]

The idea of money being an illusion used to be a major economic concept until the 1970s when it was replaced after criticism from Milton Friedman. He argued that you can fool people once, but not all the time. He argued that people would catch on to the government’s scheme. So if inflation was 5% they would demand a wage rise of 5%. This would nullify any government action.

That is the theory, in reality, if workers demand a 5% wage rise, they will be fired. They would still be fired if they do not accept a wage cut  

It depends. Sometimes 5% of wage is less than cost of coaching for an inexperienced laborer.

The wage do not rise because there are so many skilled workers out there

The dilemma is: If a worker is outstandingly smart and creative, then he would be creating his own business and not working for anyone else. But if a worker is just like many others and do the routine work, then he will replaced by machines and robots

This is a little bit off-topic, this thread is about money's slavery effect. Of course automation and AI is a even more severe problem, it is not about slavery, but annihilation of work. You still got some money under money's slavery, but with the arriving of AI you might not get slavery even if you asked for it, you are totally out

[SargeR33]

Lets just say if some people did not have money, they would be as useful as a wet tissue.

If I didn't have money, I could offer my skills to barter for other goods or services. This is what money fixes, it creates a field where everyone can play on.

[Q7]

It is lucky that we now have bitcoin where the supply no matter what can't be artificially created. I agree with your analogy, every time when fiat get printed, that is generally robbery because banks actually dilute the value of each individual's holding and they don't ask your permission or agreement to do that. And when that happens the same amount of fiat which can buy you that amount of goods will one day require higher amount of fiat to get back the same amount. And that is what we call inflation versus bitcoin's core principle which is deflationary

[futureofbitcoin]

Lets just say if some people did not have money, they would be as useful as a wet tissue.

If I didn't have money, I could offer my skills to barter for other goods or services. This is what money fixes, it creates a field where everyone can play on.

If a basketball player didn't have a basketball, he couldn't do much. If you didn't have your arms and legs, you probably couldn't offer your skills.

Some people, like Venture capitalists, are good at using money to improve the world. That's the thing they're good at. They might not be good at fixing computers or cleaning toilets, but they're good at managing money.

[BillyBobZorton]

Lets just say if some people did not have money, they would be as useful as a wet tissue.

If I didn't have money, I could offer my skills to barter for other goods or services. This is what money fixes, it creates a field where everyone can play on.

The problem is when all your skills and what you have to offer gets automated by machines that are 100000% more efficient and cheaper than you.