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

[johnyj]

In most of the people's mind, money is a standard unit of value. Just like using meter to measure length and using kilogram to measure weight, people use money to measure value

Based on proven economy theory, value is decided by supply and demand: More supply and less demand will decrease the value, vice versa. However, this does not apply to money: Money can be used to purchase anything, the demand for money can be regarded as infinite. When demand is close to infinite, the supply will not change its value in any significant way. So for average household, the money's value feels the same for them regardless of money supply

So there is a strange phenomenon: Banks create money to dilute the wealth of the whole society, but when average people are becoming poorer, they need banks to create more money to rob them so that they could get a little bit more income. As a result, banks create 100$ of money but give them 1$ so that they can hang on for a while

If everyone's money suddenly increase by 1000 times, then money's value will crash right away. The art to maintain money's value is to keep majority of people's demand for money at close to infinite. So increased money supply should be used to buy assets and debts, to increase average people's living cost, make sure that they never have enough money. Only through this way, the money's value will be stable

The amazing thing is: Such a system seems to be formed naturally over time. It is the demand for money that enslaved majority of human. And the more they are enslaved, they demand more money, thus make the money more valuable

Of course the money I'm talking here is fiat money

[Ghostface]

In most of the people's mind, money is a standard unit of value. Just like using meter to measure length and using kilogram to measure weight, people use money to measure value

Based on proven economy theory, value is decided by supply and demand: More supply and less demand will decrease the value, vice versa. However, this does not apply to money: Money can be used to purchase anything, the demand for money can be regarded as infinite. When demand is close to infinite, the supply will not change its value in any significant way. So for average household, the money's value feels the same for them regardless of money supply

Money is a means to get wealth but not wealth itself. I'd buy some property with that cash and turn it into intrinsic wealth. Obviously most people don't understand the economics or ethics of money, but if they did they'd probably be outraged.

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

You could also say the same about god/religion.

[V for Varoufakis]

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

[johnyj]

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

It does not matter who controls fiat, the creation of fiat money is essentially a double spending, see this post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=947040.0

[V for Varoufakis]

We dont need banks to create fiat but only a software and mathematics.

[redsn0w]

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).

[johnyj]

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).

Great, that's the purpose of this thread: I want to research, what kind of thing can be used as a standard unit of value universally?

I have thought about many different candidates like air/water/food/time/energy to use as currency, but later I found out that value is all subjective, once you get enough of the currency, their value will drop for you

So the way to make currency's value stable is to make the demand infinite, e.g. make most of the people poor, then the currency will become stable

Or the other way: To make the supply side extremely constrained, thus no matter how small the demand is, the value never drops, just like those art paints and antiques

Another consideration: It may not be important to be stable, it just need to be predictable. For example, with bitcoin as currency, a long term appreciation against other things is guaranteed due to limited supply, thus people could easily reach a consensus about this character, then it can be used as a benchmark to measure value, since everyone knows that the value of this benchmark itself increase at a predictable rate

[desertfox470]

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. If everything was free would you want to work? Almost everyone would say no. Money used to be backed up by gold (at least in the US). Since then the dollar is based on the governments supply of money instead of it's actual backing in gold. If you look at Germany after WW1 they printed tons of money to pay back the countries that they owed and the citizens money was almost worthless because of the extreme inflation rate.

[Bit_Happy]

In most of the people's mind, money is a standard unit of value. Just like using meter to measure length and using kilogram to measure weight, people use money to measure value

Based on proven economy theory, value is decided by supply and demand: More supply and less demand will decrease the value, vice versa. However, this does not apply to money: Money can be used to purchase anything, the demand for money can be regarded as infinite. When demand is close to infinite, the supply will not change its value in any significant way. So for average household, the money's value feels the same for them regardless of money supply

So there is a strange phenomenon: Banks create money to dilute the wealth of the whole society, but when average people are becoming poorer, they need banks to create more money to rob them so that they could get a little bit more income. As a result, banks create 100$ of money but give them 1$ so that they can hang on for a while

If everyone's money suddenly increase by 1000 times, then money's value will crash right away. The art to maintain money's value is to keep majority of people's demand for money at close to infinite. So increased money supply should be used to buy assets and debts, to increase average people's living cost, make sure that they never have enough money. Only through this way, the money's value will be stable

The amazing thing is: Such a system seems to be formed naturally over time. It is the demand for money that enslaved majority of human. And the more they are enslaved, they demand more money, thus make the money more valuable

Of course the money I'm talking here is fiat money

We are not all slaves. Some of us choose to like the idea of collecting a big pile of money. 

[johnyj]

We are not all slaves. Some of us choose to like the idea of collecting a big pile of money. 

The big pile of money that you collected are just some numbers banks write on their book, the original ownership of these purchasing power belongs to banks who wrote it out of nothing. The more you collect those money (by doing various work or business activity), the more they write, that is the slavery

[futureofbitcoin]

We are not all slaves. Some of us choose to like the idea of collecting a big pile of money. 

The big pile of money that you collected are just some numbers banks write on their book, the original ownership of these purchasing power belongs to banks who wrote it out of nothing. The more you collect those money (by doing various work or business activity), the more they write, that is the slavery

Uh... not really.

For example, I play a MMORPG, where literally all game money is created by the creators of the game at will. I play the game to earn game currency, does that mean I'm a slave of the game creators?

And real life isn't like that. Banks/government doesn't have 100% control like you think they do. If they print too much, they end up breaking a delicate balance, and harming themselves along with everyone else.

[sidhujag]

John nash said that ideal money would have some standard predictable and stable measurement backing supply of the currency token.. Something like an energy cpi or something maybe even amount of joules it takes to mine a bitcoin? It encompasses everything from harvesting the energy src to using it in the most efficient manor.
In this way it cant be hacked like the central banks do with inflation targeting.

[futureofbitcoin]

John nash said that ideal money would have some standard predictable and stable measurement backing supply of the currency token.. Something like an energy cpi or something maybe even amount of joules it takes to mine a bitcoin? It encompasses everything from harvesting the energy src to using it in the most efficient manor.
In this way it cant be hacked like the central banks do with inflation targeting.

I've always thought that in the far, far future, when we can literally form matter into whatever we want, (i.e alchemy) the only currencies would be matter and energy, and whatever other basic component of physics that I'm not aware of.


Since those are the only things that matter, and you can make anything physically possible with those components. There would be no need for a token to represent values, since everything can have their values accurately measured by their worth in terms of amount of matter/energy etc spent on making it.

[sidhujag]

John nash said that ideal money would have some standard predictable and stable measurement backing supply of the currency token.. Something like an energy cpi or something maybe even amount of joules it takes to mine a bitcoin? It encompasses everything from harvesting the energy src to using it in the most efficient manor.
In this way it cant be hacked like the central banks do with inflation targeting.

I've always thought that in the far, far future, when we can literally form matter into whatever we want, (i.e alchemy) the only currencies would be matter and energy, and whatever other basic component of physics that I'm not aware of.


Since those are the only things that matter, and you can make anything physically possible with those components. There would be no need for a token to represent values, since everything can have their values accurately measured by their worth in terms of amount of matter/energy etc spent on making it.

Only thing stopping utopian society is greed... Thus you need concentrations of wealth to avoid complete collapse.. It may come slowly though..

[johnyj]

We are not all slaves. Some of us choose to like the idea of collecting a big pile of money.  

The big pile of money that you collected are just some numbers banks write on their book, the original ownership of these purchasing power belongs to banks who wrote it out of nothing. The more you collect those money (by doing various work or business activity), the more they write, that is the slavery

Uh... not really.

For example, I play a MMORPG, where literally all game money is created by the creators of the game at will. I play the game to earn game currency, does that mean I'm a slave of the game creators?

And real life isn't like that. Banks/government doesn't have 100% control like you think they do. If they print too much, they end up breaking a delicate balance, and harming themselves along with everyone else.

In a sense yes, you are the slave of the game designer when you play the game, since all your time and labor is used to exchange some tokens he can create infinitely, but you get some fun in the game environment as exchange (you typically get enough coins to buy super nice things that you can't find in real life), and you can give up playing the game anytime at will

But in reality, you don't have a choice, you are forced to play this game "life", and the designer of the monetary system decided that you have to use this token called fiat money. You work to earn some 100 dollar every day, and they print trillions to buy anything they want, and all those things are manufactured by people like you. Of course they have a limit to not cause heavy inflation, but give me the right to create money and I will invent hundreds of ways to put inflation under control without limit the money that I can print for myself

[Possum577]

It's the demand for things that enslaves people to money.

Banks make money to...well...to make money, not to dilute the wealth of others! If I borrow money to buy a home or an education it likely increases my wealth.  I only dilute my wealth if I make bad money decisions or fall to the risk I've decided to take.

[kOLElEVI]

In most of the people's mind, money is a standard unit of value. Just like using meter to measure length and using kilogram to measure weight, people use money to measure value

Based on proven economy theory, value is decided by supply and demand: More supply and less demand will decrease the value, vice versa. However, this does not apply to money: Money can be used to purchase anything, the demand for money can be regarded as infinite. When demand is close to infinite, the supply will not change its value in any significant way. So for average household, the money's value feels the same for them regardless of money supply

Money is a means to get wealth but not wealth itself. I'd buy some property with that cash and turn it into intrinsic wealth. Obviously most people don't understand the economics or ethics of money, but if they did they'd probably be outraged.

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

You could also say the same about god/religion.

exactly!

[redsn0w]

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).

Great, that's the purpose of this thread: I want to research, what kind of thing can be used as a standard unit of value universally?

I have thought about many different candidates like air/water/food/time/energy to use as currency, but later I found out that value is all subjective, once you get enough of the currency, their value will drop for you

So the way to make currency's value stable is to make the demand infinite, e.g. make most of the people poor, then the currency will become stable

Or the other way: To make the supply side extremely constrained, thus no matter how small the demand is, the value never drops, just like those art paints and antiques

Another consideration: It may not be important to be stable, it just need to be predictable. For example, with bitcoin as currency, a long term appreciation against other things is guaranteed due to limited supply, thus people could easily reach a consensus about this character, then it can be used as a benchmark to measure value, since everyone knows that the value of this benchmark itself increase at a predictable rate

We can use whatever we want as a standard & universally unit of value. Remember that everyone has the right to issue his own money, I'm not obligated to accept euros, dollars, yen, etcc for my "service" o for buy and selling things ; this is the craziest thing in the state, you were born and you have accepted automatically all the rules of the state contained in the "social contract" this is not "democratic".

However I haven't a valid answer yet, but I have already explained my thought. Thanks for the attention.

[countryfree]

In most of the people's mind, money is a standard unit of value. Just like using meter to measure length and using kilogram to measure weight, people use money to measure value

Many of us use money to measure work and we need money to measure that. One hour of a cleaner's work is worth less than one hour of a doctor. We need money for this use.

[Lauda]

Sadly we live in such a world. This is why money needs to be separated from the Banks and government. This is where Bitcoin comes in handy.
One can get a pretty clear view of the situation if you take a look at how much money the richest people have combined.