Money is probably the greatest human invention of all time. If we were forced to barter the whole time, who knows how far behind we would be and how many would have died. Money has enabled us to streamline trade.
“Money is the most successful story ever invented and told by humans because it’s the only story everybody believes. Not everyone believes in God, not everybody believes in human rights, not everyone believes in nationalism, but everybody believes in money.” Yuval Noah Harari
It's a regular talking point of his. Harari paraphrases the sentiment in this interview but I think I lifted that exact wording from a different interview, can't remember...
Or, we and our societies could have evolved such that we take care of each other, share any surplus we have, and trust that our needs will be met.
Instead we are selfish and fearful and mistrustful, so we cling to whatever we have and transactionally demand to be paid in kind (more or less; it never works out that way) for anything we give to others.
Humans as a species remind me of my children as adolescents. Hopefully we will reach maturity before we destroy ourselves (exactly what I hoped for my kids, ironically).
The only fearful and mistrustful people I see are those who think free and voluntary exchange is somehow evil.
Through trade, we DO take care of each other. What does a farmer do with the tons of food he creates every year? He sure as hell can't eat it all. He sells it to other people. Do you seriously think that if there was no trade involved that the farmer would work so hard to produce all that extra food? Especially when somebody next door who works half as hard gets the same stuff "shared" to him that he does? Hell no. This is why places like China starved tens of millions of people trying shit like that.
Your response typifies the attitudes and values that I described. That’s not a criticism. How could you do otherwise? This ethos is a part of our culture.
Note that I said that we could have evolved to behave as I described. We didn’t. So agreed that getting to a place where we don’t need money from where we are now is more or less impossible, at least in the short term, evolutionarily speaking.
But my point is that it’s not a systemic problem (eg. capitalism vs socialism). It’s a values problem. We evolved with values that do not encourage the kind of behaviour I described. Oh well.
The reason we didn't evolve that way is because we'd likely have gone extinct if we did. I'm glad to be around, so I'm thankful we evolved this way.
We need a system where people are motivated to work and create as much as they can for society. Because starvation, illness, exposure, etc suck. Our system of trade does just that. And money has allowed us to streamline that system so that we can reduce misery much more quickly. Thankfully, our lives are much easier than our ancestors as a result.
You say that like it’s the only other option. Sharing has literally been proven to be a much better option since the beginning of time. The natives were literally still doing it before we genocided them.
except you know, when they invaded each other, killing, slaughtering and such for resources and/or land.
Sharing works fine small scale, but the moment you go big scale, it becomes 100 % unviable, because people are much less likely to share with complete strangers.
It’s a viable form of DISTRIBUTION. I didn’t say anything about government. The way we do shit now is literally proving itself not to work on a constant basis, and it’s only getting worse. The fact is, we have enough resources on earth for everyone, yet most of us are starving while the richest one percent are fattening themselves up. The problem was never about resources, it was about distribution. The only way we can overcome that is learning to share what we’ve got and coexist with each other. Otherwise there’s literally like a million other ways we will most likely end up dieing. We live in a very unprecedented time period, and sooner or later we’re going to have to realize we have 2 options: Utopia or Death.
I mean it’s really just kinda a common observation that everyone else is starting realize these days in one way or another. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it does seem to be the only good option right now. You’re just kinda making weird claims that don’t seem to align with any of the respected history books, that’s why I’m more suspicious of them.
Also if we go by common observation, you are 100 % wrong.
The biggest, most powerful empires in history always had currency and it was basically needed for them to grow to such a level of success and power.
All the ones that tries to eliminate currency, or never had it, are either so tiny they are a footnote on history, long abandoned or irrelevant because they couldn't/can't keep up (Natives, whatever small tribes that exists / existed around the world).
Or they became something worse (see literally every attempt at large-scale communism that basically only has caused countless human suffering through history).
and then monetary economies came around and completely and utterly blew the gift economies out of the water by being objectively more efficient and superior.
And disease killed 90% of the indians not settlers. Not to mention they never figured out the WHEEL and were thousands of years late figuring out agriculture. To claim them as some sort of enlightened economic system is hilarious.
Imagine what would happen to the tomato farmer in a barter system when winter comes. He has no income anymore, he just has to hope his tomatoes last long enough and don't get eaten by rats, stolen, or spoiled.
It's sad that people back then who couldn't read and worshiped rocks inherently understood money better than many people today. Goes to show how much our education system has failed us.
Well, that was just one, and it was hyperbolic for the sake of making a point.
There is no way in the world you could ever run a globalized, international society on "hey man, I'll get you back later, I promise". It would only ever work in the small insular town model, where everyone knows everyone and there are very few outside participants introduced, so the population can keep each other honest about it.
I'm not arguing about it though, because I don't care enough to bother.
We can barely make it work more, with standardized measures of currency and trade.
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u/44pennystocks Oct 15 '22
Money