Bar Stool Economics

[ch1ck3n_b0k]

A community (or country) of unselfish people with no need of money or individual reward (after all, money is basically the symbol of reward for accomplishing something) sounds very desirable and utopian. It sounds like the original idea for communism, actually - each individual would contribute towards the community according to his ability, and would take according to his needs. And that is just how it works with social insects such as bees and ants (and the Borg, lol!). However, in species that evolved such a "perfect" social world, the individual means absolutely nothing and the community means everything. An individual bee or ant is sacrificed for the good of the group without a thought. I am very oriented towards individual rights and responsibilities, and am very glad that we did not develop along those lines.

I too am very glad we did not develop along the lines of a Borg type society. /high five for a fellow Trekkie?
There are pockets of "civilization" that do live more in "harmony" if you will. However to us their lives may seem bleak due to the conditions/circumstance in which they live.

Money (or some sort of individual reward) is the result of our innate competitive spirit. Our competitiveness causes both a lot of good, and bad, in the world. Without something equivalent to money, the competition would seem kind of pointless to many, and for better or worse, would probably decrease A LOT.

Yes we are very competitive creatures due to how we've evolved. We still "remember", genetically at least, the need to fight for survival. We've done our best to take Darwin out of the equation to a point, at least in "first world" nations, but our genes still remember, and thus we compete. We just compete in a much different way.

In much of the animal world, the payoff in competition means the best (or most) mates for the strongest or best (however that species defines "best") males. And it may mean more or better food or shelter for individuals in some species. That usually equates to a higher survival rate for offspring of the individuals better at competing for those items. So their genes are carried forward.

Have you ever read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins?

If humans didn't feel the need to compete and to be rewarded for it, then we would be more like bees and ants and less like the species we are. Some might argue that it would be better that way. I don't know - but it certainly would be "different". Of course, maybe we could emulate the social insects "just a little", and keep our own unique traits, but temper them with more compassion. Some people (and societies) do that better than others. If those societies are "better" (more successful than other, more individualistic societies), then they are the ones that will survive into the future. There is probably a place somewhere along the line between ants and bees to total individualism that works great for our species, although I am not sure exactly where that line would be drawn. It probably changes a bit (or maybe even a lot), depending on the circumstances and challenges faced by a particular society at a particular time and place.

Thanks for your very well thought out reply.

I see why Darcy likes you =)

 

[ch1ck3n_b0k]

We won't evolve past the need for money. Money is just an easier way of swapping things around. We could evolve to being more unselfish, but we would still need money to facilitate sharing resources. Suppose you want to give food to someone who is hungry. If they live near you you can just hand it to them, but what if they don't? The money serves as a more transportable equivalent to food. What if you have lots of strawberries and want to share yummy homegrown goodness because you are a highly evolved person who wants to share, but many of the people you wish to gift with your seasonal bounty can't eat strawberries. You swap the strawberries for money, making no effort to profit, just to swap, then you swap the money for other people's fresh seasonal produce that you can then give to the people who can't eat your strawberries.

Even if somehow we evolve out of wanting to get ahead and so on, we will all need money as an exchange medium. People studied this in WWII POW camps. Guys that had cigarettes would swap them for something else, and they weren't looking to get ahead of the other POW on the swap, they were looking for fair swaps. Cigarettes became a default "money" that POWs traded for other things, and everyone was happy to get a Red Cross box that included cigarettes, even if they didn't smoke, because they could swap a pack of Lucky Strikes for a Red Cross candy bar and both POWs wound up happy with what they got.

I do agree with you, to a point. We could evolve past the need for money, we won't however in our lifetimes, or our childrens lifetimes, and so on. As far as always needing money as an exchange medium goes, well I guess I hope one day in the not to very distant future someone makes the replicators from Star Trek a reality. Then we won't need to utilize money as an exchange for feeding people who need it. Money causes more harm than good when it comes to attempting to solve or mitigate the problem of starvation on a global scale.

 

[ch1ck3n_b0k]

Money is not the problem. That is very shortsighted.

Oh, and I thought I was being overly "farsighted". Like probably never gonna happen like evar farsighted. =)

Right now we are governed by a group of people who are making the rules, with or without our consent. To change the rules we will require their permission. Lets ask them if they will give up all the benefits they have received for being our servants.

I think the rules they are playing by are being given to them from somewhere else. We should never require their permission to change the rules. That's partially what the second amendment deals with, but that's a whole different can of worms we probably shouldn't pry open right now.

 

[ch1ck3n_b0k]

"Money" as a concept is not in itself bad or good. It's basically a common medium of exchange for good and services. It makes a much easier method for the exchange of goods and services than a barter system would be. Take for instance, trying to figure out how many chickens your fixing someone's toilet is worth. And if someone didn't have chickens, you would only be interested in fixing their toilet if they had something they were willing to trade that you may want in exchange. So the idea of money was really to create a set value in currency that the chickens would be worth and what your plumbing services would be worth in the same medium. But what was needed (and STILL is needed, in my opinion) is some sort of STANDARD in value. For instance, the gold standard that are currency was based on valued a $1 bill on $1 worth of gold which it could be exchanged for upon demand. Then later a silver standard was adopted. Some probably have those old "silver certificate" dollar bills as collectibles. But the whole idea of a gold and/or silver standard for the currency was that it LIMITED our government on how much it could spend because they could not print up any more money than could be backed up by those precious metals.

Once that got thrown out the window and we went to a currency that wasn't backed by ANYTHING other than the promises of our government that it was worth SOMETHING, then things began to unravel. Really, right now, who is to say what a $1 bill is worth? The accurate answer to that is that it is worth exactly what anyone who wants to sell you something says it is worth. And they can pick any figure they want for it's value. That, is EXTREMELY dangerous for a society to be based on as the manner in which all commerce engages in the exchange of goods and services for "something" based merely on smoke and mirrors.

I've often heard people say that it's frightening how fast prices are going up on things these days. Yes, it IS frightening, but not for the reason they are stating. What is TRULY frightening about it is that we aren't talking about price increases at all. What we are seeing is almost daily reductions in the VALUE of our money instead. Even scarier is that because there is no fixed value of money, and it is only worth what people are willing to exchange it for, all it takes is a panic to sweep across the financial backbone of this country where all confidence is lost concerning what the value of that money will be TOMORROW, and then a nasty little phenomenon called HYPER inflation sets in. What happens is that people spend like crazy today, because their money will be worth a lot less tomorrow and they want to get rid of it as fast as they can before that happens and the things they could buy today will cost MUCH more tomorrow. This can snowball way out of control, and has actually happened in the past to some countries. Heck, I have postage stamps from Germany that were worth 30 MILLION marks back then. Not that they were especially valuable, as it is really only an indication of what a postage stamp cost in relation to the VALUE of the money people had to pay for such things. Lord only knows what a carton of milk cost then in Germany....

And do you THINK the governments of those countries that went into HYPER inflation realized that was going to happen when it did? And were they able to stop it before the damage was done? Is our government smarter than they were? Don't bet on it....

:bowdown:

Not much to add here Rich, other than to ask if you've seen a couple of documentaries. First, The Money Masters, and second, The Secret of OZ. If you haven't seen either one I'd recommend them both. The first one is pretty dry, well actually they both are pretty dry, but extraordinarily informative.

That goes for all of you, if you want a crash course in the history of "money", at least in its current incarnation, those two docs will give it to you.

 

[kathylove]

"Have you ever read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins?"

Yes - bits of that book enter into most of the posts I ever make about biology or psychology. I should read it again one of these days - it has been a long time, and I really liked it!

"high five for a fellow Trekkie?"

Isn't everyone, lol? At least most of my friends, anyway. Actually, I would say that Spock (and Vulcan ideals of logic) probably helped shape my childhood development more than any other TV show or movie. I certainly could have chosen worse celebrity / fantasy role models!

"...to ask if you've seen a couple of documentaries. First, The Money Masters, and second, The Secret of OZ. If you haven't seen either one I'd recommend them both."

No, haven't seen either of those. I will try to remember to check them out - thanks!

 

[wstphal]

"high five for a fellow Trekkie?"

Isn't everyone, lol? At least most of my friends, anyway. Actually, I would say that Spock (and Vulcan ideals of logic) probably helped shape my childhood development more than any other TV show or movie. I certainly could have chosen worse celebrity / fantasy role models!

Me too! Spock's logic & McCoy's compassion helped shape who I wound up being.