The outdated system we still use today; Money.

[Journeyman H. [UK]]

Today, we're living a system that is no longer functioning, debt is at its highest, the rift of poor and rich is getting bigger, poverty still occurs, technology is advancing slowly and unneeded wars.
What is causing this? Money, of course. Every root problem is monetary related.
Sounds crazy of course, but it's true, no matter how much you deny it, it is always money that gives a negative impact to the world today.

Money is a vast topic, which makes it hard to understand why money is the degenerate for humans today.
First and foremost, poverty.
As Gandhi said "Poverty is the worst form of violence." and it is true. Poverty causes hunger, depression, diseases, and more, because people simply cannot afford anything. If someone wants clean water, you have to pay to get clean water. If you want food, you have to buy it. If you want medical treatment, you have to buy it. It goes on for everything you need to do.
Poverty will increase the common issue we have; Crime.

People in poverty will resort to crime, a lot of the crimes we see today is monetary related. Mugging, burglary, drug trafficking, shoplifting, anything that people can do, to earn a living. So they can feed themselves and live the highest standards they can possibly get, as it is human survival to get what they need to survive, and society reinforces that people with more money, have higher standards of living.

You can consider war as a crime as well. For that it requires soldiers, who are trained to be killing machines, in order to forcefully capture the resources and the power that the government needs, history will tell you that most of the wars are about resources and power, they're never about liberating people or saving a particular group of people, they make it seem that way so people would believe that we're fighting for a noble cause.


Money only functions, providing that there is resources or anything valuable that is backed by the country. If the United States printed money, but they had no oil, gold, or anything worth of value. The US dollar would be worth nothing.
For the country to have a good economy, you need people circulating the money, how do you do that? Simple, get people to consume, this creates GDP, so you need more people to spend as much money as they can, in order to keep the cycle of money going.
So, how do you get people to spend more? You need 3 things:

"Mass producing" - In order for it to keep it cheap enough for you to afford it you need to create a vast amount of goods regardless of the quality of the material that is being used in order for it to be cheap.
"Planned obsolescence" - Goods that become useless after a certain period of time or gets no longer supported by the manufacturers. This  is a strategic way for businesses to make money, for that it creates repeated customers, which creates consumption, these goods are never made at their highest quality, unless you want to be charged ridiculous sums of cash. They also make newer versions of said products to make the older one seem inferior, encouraging people to purchase more.
"Problems" - Anything, for example; if you have a car that has mechanical problems, you have to pay for replacement parts. This includes other problems, social problems that is. For instance, crime, it's important for the economy, for that crimes create more jobs for the police, prison officers, and spend more money to build new prison sites.

Obviously the good old media becomes so happy when they find there is economic growth because the GDP raised by 1% for that month.

Growth always occurs, this happens especially when a country is being given money from the banks. Banks do this specific kind of loan that is given to the government, when the government receives that money (Which is obviously, going to be a very large sum of cash), the banks will create money out of thin air, when that money is produced, they have to add the percentage of debt on top of it.
If a bank produces $1 billion, they might have to add the debt on top, if that debt percentage is 10%, the country would be $10 billion in debt.

How would this affect us? Well, simple, depending on the resources the country owns, will make your money worth less than it would have originally been.
If an island had a bank and it owned 1 gold bar worth $2000 to the US, the island can produce £2,000 of their own currency before it becomes worth less.
Conversion rates would, theoretically be;
£1000 printed, 1 gold bar - £1 = $1.25
£2000 printed, 1 gold bar - £1 = $1
£4000 printed, 1 gold bar - £1 = $0.50

Which means, if the country's central bank, at any time, was ordered to print more money, your will suffer the consequences, whether you like it or not.

Money being printed increases at such immense rates when war occurs, for that the government requires borrowing the money to pay the soldiers, defence contractors, oil, and more.
Petroleum companies normally back the government financially to go to war with country that have a lot of oil.

At the end of the day, you, and everyone around you, suffers the consequences, these things only pleases the select few, not for the people.

Remember, money only functions on growth and circulation, nothing more and nothing less.

At the end of the day, you're constantly facing debt, and you're forced to pay that debt as well, through tax, regardless of the hardship you may face in society, you're forced to pay that tax, if you don't, they'll rob your possessions or throw you in jail. Simple as that.

Remember, money serves as an invisible barrier for everyone.
If you want high standards of living - Money is needed.
If you want to be fed - Money is needed.
If you need clean water - Money is needed.
If you are ill or need medical treatment - Money is needed.
Education, hygiene, fitness, entertainment, enjoyment, pretty much everything essential, requires money.

I advocate a resource based economy, creating an abundant of resources, nutritious food, clean water, highest technological advancement and highest medical care. We have plenty of these, we can do this for the entire world, but we're being stopped because the imaginary system that we call "Money" exists. Paper with numbers on it, nothing more.

(Inb4 TL;DR)

[StingsVolgin]

I really do see what you mean, and I definitely don't disagree that such a society would be a wonderful thing.

However, what would be done about those who have an innate and inexplicable need to simply have more than everyone else does?
And also surely there would be seperate issues with a resource based economy, when it comes to working to generate the resources required?
Very few are going to want to take the workload simply for the sake of bettering society, and I feel like it'd be hard to put a fair and effective system into place to deal with this.

Also, when it comes to developement in many fields, I really think that competition breeds innovation, and you could very much argue that capitalism breeds competition.

Would it really be such a good thing for everyone to say 'we should be happy with what we've got?'

[Journeyman H. [UK]]

Well, to change the society from using money to not using the monetary system, you'd need to do small phases, that educates people how such a system is viable and the best direction to go for human survival.
Small phases allows people to become comfortable with the new ways of living, rather than changing it straight away.

The first phase should be this: Create an environment that focuses on sustainable living.
This means, we should build houses that maximises the comfort for everyone, yet building it in the most simplest way possible, and producing the highest quality goods at the highest efficiency, and creating abundance of energy.

Building houses using materials that are abundant, pre-fabricated and efficient. This means that we will consume less power, and less materials but at the highest quality and efficiency.
Making an abundance of energy by using renewable power, it's no challenge for mankind, we can achieve it without the use of gas or fossil fuels. When you create an abundant of energy, it would be cheaper to tax.


The second phase would be: Technological production.
Using technology today, we can create an abundant of resources without the need of human labour, this means that humans do not need to do dangerous, repetitive, boring jobs. This allows humans to work less, which allows them to have more free time.
Creating less working hours does not make humans lazy. Laziness actually happens when humans are forced to do repetitive, long and boring jobs.
We can eliminate a lot of jobs in the world by just using technology alone.
When humans are given the ability to have more free time, they can educate themselves in what they want to learn, or do what they really want to do, rather than being given restrictions.


The final phase would be: Cleaning up the inefficient ways of living.
With humans being educated, machines doing mundane work for us, and having highest standards of living, humans are free to do what they need to do, and they'd be educated enough to solve problems without the need of politics, war, or the like.
The money system would be eliminated, simply because people have loads of paper on them, they can't do anything with it, because having an abundant of any goods would be worth nothing.
There'd be so much resources there would be absolutely no need of paying for anything.



The thing is though, people would raise questions such as ownership, and stealing.
Well, first of all, ownership may still exist, such as if you created an ornament for your house, that would be yours.
How to stop stealing? Stealing would not exist, at all. For that no one owns anything, there'd be no value of stealing it in the first place, for that you don't gain anything.
It would be like stealing from a library, what would be the point? There are plenty of books, and you can borrow it at any amount of time you want to borrow it for, providing you keep it at a good condition. This can by applied to vehicles, or anything you would like to use for that day and for a certain amount of time.

We need to remember though, we're human beings and the resources we have on this planet is common heritage. Food, water, air, materials, everything is common heritage.
What we need to understand is that we don't look at the obstacles, we focus on the goal. But obviously such a change won't be from A to B, it would require many stages and transitions to successfully adapt to our society.
I simply believe that we can easily create such a system with the technology available and the resources we still have left on this planet, we're fully capable of creating such a change.

[EmperorDisasster]

What I don't get is, if we print this crap, how do we run out?

[Journeyman H. [UK]]

What I don't get is, if we print this crap, how do we run out?

What do you mean? Could you rephrase what you mean?

[Technical Abbreviations]

What I don't get is, if we print this crap, how do we run out?

What do you mean? Could you rephrase what you mean?

Since money is really nothing but paper that represents value that is never seen...

[SoapANator]

The first thing when I saw this topic: Communism or it's suck

[Penguin]

Communism and suck or just suck its your decision.

[Journeyman H. [UK]]

Oh right, misread.
But yeah, every time we print money, we have to add debt.

I can literally say, once we began printing money we were at debt. Simply because the money system would not work without debt, if no one was in debt, money would simply be paper with numbers on it, a cruel game we have made.

We need to remember that communism won't work for that it uses the monetary system. Using any specific ideology, will not work.
 
We need to remember, every solution to a problem that we can use to get rid of all of our major problems, does not matter whether it's a communist or capitalist approach. If it works. Then it works.

The system we should adopt, should not have a set ideology or way of living, we adopt ideas that are practical for modern society, for that it makes us flexible, calling ourselves; capitalist, communist, or the like, will simply divide us up.
There is no such thing as a communist solution, capitalist solution, fascist, socialist, democratic, republican, or any of that kind. If it's a solution, then we implement it to the system, if it's not practical, we use an alternative solutions, we will keep trying until it's considered practical for our way of living.

95% of the problems we currently face in society are human problems, and we use intelligent solutions, by applying science and technology into it.
It should be our job to create realistic and practical solutions, if what we're doing is detrimental to us and the future, we need to find a solution.

We need to learn that at the end of the day, we are one, we have a common heritage, all of our contributions to humanity are equal.

[Somone77]

ITT: People who don't understand currency.

What I don't get is, if we print this crap, how do we run out?

Well, lets take the US dollar in this example, as we are the nation with the highest debt in the world. At the end of this exercise, I want you guys to come up with ideas on how we could get rid of the United States' debt.

Now, according to usdeptclock.org as of March 3rd, 2012 we have roughly $15,465,072,700,000 in debt (that's 15.4 trillion). That means, for every citizen (man, woman, and child) we would need to pay $49,361 to the states at which we owe this money to remove our dept (the US hasn't been out of dept since its founding in 1791) and is, at this point, considered impossible to remove unless we default on our loans, declare national bankruptcy, and liquidate the nation, selling off everything to countries such as the UK and China.

Now, first, what is money? Well, money isn't the actual physical paper that we play with, that is just the physical embodiment of currency. Currency, in and of itself, is a man made, theoretical, construct. We determine its worth by how much we work.

So, if we determine how much money is worth, why don't we just print more and make it worth more? Well, currency doesn't work like that. If we print more, what we get is a term we call "inflation". Inflation is the devaluation of currency due to less demand of that currency, i.e. there being more physical money, than there is currency. Lets think of currency as pieces of cake on plates. If we cut a cake into 8 pieces and put each piece on a plate, we have a 1:1 currency. Now, what if, we have more plates, we need to have enough cake to equally fill those plates, so, we need to take an equal part of each plate to compensate for the added plate. This will make the ratio 8:9 devaluing a single plate, each person getting less cake, but there is more plates available for people to have cake.

I know that example may be a bit hard to follow but currency is not simple. The United State's currency is, in essence, based on the fact that we have an enormous amount of gold in Fort Knox. People have speculated that Fort Knox (the United States' Gold Repository) is completely empty. If this were true, the US Dollar would drop to almost a 0:1 ratio currency, making it completely worthless. Of course, that is speculation and currency is nothing you can predict, just guess at. It all depends on the consumer and what currency gets them the best goods.

Right now, the US Dollar stand pretty high in the global currency system, outweighing most countries. However, that could quickly change.

Now, with all of that said, how do YOU think we could get rid of the US' dept? We can't print more, that ruins the value of a dollar. We can't declare bankruptcy, that causes us to fail as a nation and lose everything we have to other nations. We can't talk our way out of this one, so, what do we do?

Please, do not respond to any of this until you've read all of it. I don't want answers with things I already addressed.

EDIT: Oh yea, and I don't think I addressed exactly what this thread was asking.

If we get rid of currency, we get rid of something that causes people to work for others. In a perfect world, empathy would cause people to help everyone, however, that is not the case. We are still a species effected by Darwinian evolution, and there is a lot of value in someone cheating to get ahead. In essence, you could think of currency as a way to allow everyone to cheat, without going ahead of anyone else. We need rich people, we need debt, we need currency. Without them, we are not society, we are a bunch of monkeys playing on a rock flying millions of miles through space.

[Journeyman H. [UK]]

You have explained the money system well. But there's 1 major flaw. You did not provide why it's good, and to be honest, you can't.
(I will provide a solution after explaining the flaw)

You claim that if there is no money, people won't work. You're claiming that money gives people incentive to work and become advanced.
This is where I am not convinced that money is helpful to any modern society.
An example would be; Open source projects, like Wikipedia for example. Wikipedia is free for everyone, everyone can contribute to information without forcing you to pay a single dime.

Now, you would say something like "Who would make food for us?". The machines would.
We're fully capable of eliminating every single repetitive jobs, and more complex jobs, such as construction and warehouse storage and deliveries.

This means that humans would have to work for a lot less time, rather than spending 7 hours a day working at repetitive jobs, you might work for 1 hour, just to ensure the machines are working fine. But then you'd eventually have machines that can repair itself, and identify any faults it will encounter.
Lets take a look at a primitive system, the natives in America. They didn't use a currency system, they simply had a chief who is deemed wise by his fellow tribesman, but they didn't work for money, they worked to survive, they shared resources amongst one another.

This then means that we can easily be an abundance of materials with minimal, or no need of human labour.


I might be going off course, but let's say this;

We use machines to do work that is repetitive, boring, and dangerous. Humans can then focus on educating themselves in technical or scientific work. This then does not make humans lazy, it makes us far ahead of our time.
You go on to say that money creates an incentive to work. It does not. Humans are not like that, we've been educated to become that way.
When humans rose up and began using tools to hunt animals, they didn't say "I want to be paid". Their only form of payment was food that they shared amongst their fellow tribesman, they allocated the resource that's gathered and distributed it, so everyone survived.
To answer your question, yes we can easily make a system that does not rely on artificial values to keep humans being productive, it will, in fact, be counter-productive, for that humans will only work to survive. Not to work on improving ourselves. Which is a major difference.
Money creates an invisible barrier to people who are not fortunate enough to afford simple things, such as education, food, water, medical treatment.
Rich people only became rich because they're forced to take advantage of someone in order to gain something, so at the end of the day, it creates an aggressive competition amongst each other. Not a competition that improves everyone, but a competition to become "The best".

Links below

There was a study on children and babies, found that they're a lot more likely to share their belongings to their fellow human species.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110211095551.htm
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/babies-know-whats-fair.html#hide

Presenting artificial values into the system, whilst reinforcing it with a social structure can generate serious problem for us, as a species.
They also found that upper classes are more likely to make bad decisions, and would lie and deceive people to get richer.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March10/GilovichHappy.html
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-upper-class-people.html
http://www.physorg.com/news201364510.html
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-power-cloud-ability-good-decisions.html

Humans are never aggressive, or solitary, we're social beings with common goals. If we never had values such as cooperation in the beginning, we'd never survive, or become technologically advanced.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-09/wuis-hnc090811.php
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-science-overturns-view-humans-naturally.html

I present this question; Does creating a social class structure and using the monetary system to enforce that, would be wise on humans?
We need to remember that humans have a brain, and the brain is one of the most malleable organs, for that they change depending on their experience, their way of living and so on.
How can we still believe that the money system will still work?
If humans can easily educate themselves into making the money system unimportant or worthless, then I am pretty damn sure we have plenty of alternatives of living.

Yeah sure, knowing about how the money system works and saying why it's useful and all that, but when you actually look into it, do you honestly believe that the monetary system is really working?
Poverty - No matter where you are in the world, if you don't have money, you're going to suffer poor quality of living and no proper way of surviving.
War - Profitable... for the rich people and the people who invest/fund the government.
Crime - plenty of the crime revolves around money, either they're poor and want to get what they can't afford, or that they simply want to get richer to afford more things.

[Somone77]

What you're looking for is this:


I'm not saying why currency is good, just why it's necessary in a human civilization. I don't feel like typing more because, I'll be it, I'm tired right now.

But you brought up the point of Native Americans living in tribes all working to survive, but that's the keyword, 'survive'. Humans, at this point in civilization, aren't content with surviving, we want to thrive. Sure, we 'could' return to the primitive 'work every day for your meal' attitude, but do YOU want to? Do YOU want to give up your computer, your internet, your phones, and live in the jungle in a tent? Yea, you won't need money, but you won't have all these luxuries that we have today.

And I know your going to say that, that was the extreme example to prove a point and you more mean having robots and machines do the mundane work. Well, as I crudely pointed out with the included picture, after generation, this would be what you get. People have all this technology that runs by itself, why do anything?

You have to see that currency isn't just there to make people do stuff to help society, but they need it for themselves. "Oh, people will just go to the gym." Will they? Really? Unless they are body builders, they won't. After a few generations, that's just not the norm anymore.

[Journeyman H. [UK]]

I believe you have failed to see where I am getting at.

What you need to realise is that technology serves as an extension for human beings. A life improvement, instead of spending 10 hours on manufacturing a complex object, you can spend 1 hour, simply observing the machinery. That means it requires you to work less, so you can go home early and spend time with your family and friends.
If you are forced to work 10 hours every day up until the weekend, you only have 2 days to spend with your friends or do whatever you want (Most of that time revolves around maintaining your house in staying clean and whatever chores people do.)
Those 10 hours you spend at the working days, all you can do is sit at home, and watch television for the rest of the evening.
Do you honestly think that my idea of a system would promote more laziness, compared to this system we're living in?

You given me a picture of people being lazy and doing nothing but sitting down and blindly consume food, then you start asking me if I am willing to give up on something.

I was giving an example that natives were not selfish and actually worked as a group together. They didn't give up on anything, they in fact, enjoyed what they did. Because it was their culture. However their culture was not about them consuming food and earning money to buy something they wanted unlike the "modern" civilisation.

Would you like to prove to me that we'd end up being lazy people by changing our way of thinking?
Don't use films as evidence either, use modern facts.

When you're forced to work. Every day. For long hours. You become mentally tired, therefore you lose your ability to motivate yourself to do anything that involves creativity and learning.

We know the common causes of laziness. Right?
Lack of motivation.

I have observed and asked questions to people, in college, home and the internet, I always find the same pattern. "I worked long hours as usual" then they move onto say "I need to have some time to do <Insert what they need to do>" then normally lead by "I can't be bothered to do this". I am pretty damn sure how laziness occurs. You have proven it yourself.
(By the way, laziness =/= fat people, and laziness does not just apply to physical activity, it applies to the mind as well.)
 
Keep that in mind.

It won't surprise me if this was not read.
Oh before you ask, I wanted to go to the gym. But cannot afford it. When I could afford it, I took that opportunity and went to the gym.
So yes, I do observe laziness by looking at myself as well and what provokes laziness. I don't resort to blaming, I actually look at the answer and find solutions.

[Orange - Cisco Certified]

Money is a promise of payment for services in precious metals. What you suggest is unrealistic for the world we live in.

This entire argument is null and basically only an imaginary way of living.

Would you like to tell those people who had their jobs taken from them that a robot will now be doing their work?

[Journeyman H. [UK]]

Money is a promise of payment for services in precious metals. What you suggest is unrealistic for the world we live in.

This entire argument is null and basically only an imaginary way of living.

Would you like to tell those people who had their jobs taken from them that a robot will now be doing their work?

Let's face it; Most of the repetitive jobs people have they don't enjoy it. Before you ask, yes I talk to people in real life about it.

Money is only backed by the precious resources that a country has. If it does not have it, money is worth nothing. Ontop of that, the amount of money that is printed is ridiculous. Oh for the record, money = interest + debt.

I'd like to see you prove me wrong about the idea, or provide a realistic solution to the problem that we actually face. If you fail to prove anything that I will consider your argument invalid.